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Comment by frickinLasers | Hacker News Reader

> ironically, the very people most likely to move abroad (in it for the career, not for the principle) are biased to be the types bringing down our system of science.

What the hell are you talking about? I chose to get into science for the benefit of the masses, rather than, for instance, helping some corporation abuse human psychology to sell more ads. If there is no money to do the science, I have no choice but to emigrate.

edit: And to give you an example of the science being targeted by these early moves: pulse oximeters have a racial bias leading them to overestimate the oxygen saturation of minorities, which led to deaths during the pandemic. All the work toward addressing that issue at the FDA has now been terminated, because it's related to DEI.

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> I chose to get into science for the benefit of the masses

why do you suppose most science benefits the masses?

a stunning amount of science is negative. homme hellinga cheating and claiming a triosephosphate isomerase, for example. stripey nanoparticles, as another. Thousands of western blots that were cleverly edited by unscrupulous postdocs. everything by diderik stapel. anil potti.

those are the ones that got caught. so many more got away with it.

and yes, if you can't tell, i know what the fuck I'm talking about.

> And to give you an example

why dont i give you an example. NIH is responsible for 80% of the budget of an NGO that collaborated with WIV and advocated for GOF research. on the grounds of likely being responsible in part for the deaths of millions worldwide maybe we should suspend funding to the NIH until all of its policies can be reviewed

Luckily those things never happen in the private sector. Theranos?

what does being the private sector have to do with anything? We're talking about use of taxpayer money.

I'd like to make the point that private and public are coupled, in a way that if you dismantle everything public/tax funded, there is effectively nothing left except private by definition (with all it's upsides and downsides where the latter will be amplified in the absence of public oversight bodies funded by public money based on public law).

Now I (as a non US citizen, but one of a country that has it's fair share of needless bureaucracy) wholeheartedly agree that there is waste, a lack of oversight/transparency and probably a need for more say of the common taxpayer on how their money is spent.

But as someone who learnt the meaning of the Terms "Gleichschaltung" and "Ermächtigungsgesetz" in school, I wholeheartedly disagree with the current measures and how they unfold right in front of our eyes.

The small fraction of people perpetrating fraud does not warrant leaving science for private corps to pursue. The end result from that is companies sitting on their IP and suing anyone who comes up with something similar--with the cost passed on to consumers, and the pace of technology development slowing.

You still haven't explained how this is biased toward people "in it for the career, not for the principle."

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