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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

The scientific research community is torn asunder right now. I have never seen moods this bad. It is weird to see one of the US's greatest strengths thrown away for little gain.

Every single economic analysis of NSF and NIH research funding that I have seen has shown economic return on investment from $2.5-$10 for every dollar of science spending.

Cutting off the future of science feels a lot like "saving money" by eliminating retirement savings. Sure, the money isn't going into the retirement account and now you can buy more beer, but it's just sacrificing far more future gains for a short term gain.

Foolish at best, and traitorous at worst.

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My partner works in academic research. Morale is extremely low with many people exiting the industry entirely because of the uncertainty.

This is generational damage being done. Most of these people will not want to work in the public sector again, or at least anytime soon. The next admin will have difficulty coming back from this. This is by design.

> many people exiting the industry entirely because of the uncertainty.

It might be time to exit the US.

"Last week, Aix Marseille University, France’s largest university ... announced that it is already seeing great interest from scientists at NASA, Yale, Stanford, and other American schools and government agencies, and that it wants to expand the program to other schools and European countries to absorb all the researchers who want to leave the United States."

https://www.404media.co/nasa-yale-and-stanford-scientists-co...

This happened in particle physics in the 90s. What you'll see is Europeans being hired in 20 years to fill all the positions, when the continent has LHC and the US doesn't. I think there was also a smaller, but also very significant setback at the start of the Bush Jr. era. We're stuck in a vicious cycle where every cancer researcher votes for the candidate they don't think will fire them, and then the other candidate tries to fire everyone who they know didn't vote for them.

There is no gain, only loss

There's plenty of gain: $4.5 trillion in reduced taxes.

Not for you, of course. But for other people. You should be happy for them. Maybe they'll trickle some down on you.

No scientific researchers have been fired. Almost all of the terminations occurred within the international health aid nonprofit.

You have not been paying attention. No tenured researcher was. Plenty of post-docs were, the moment the grant money did not come through. If they have to resort to firing professors, the whole thing is neck-deep in shit. You need at least a decade for someone to end up there. If they leave, they will take their experience with them.

Also, there are things like this: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/03/umass-disbands-its-en...

This is a lost class. Do it for 4 years and you have a lost generation.

Plenty of PhD offers have been rescinded, and stipend cut.

We don't need more PhDs. People foolish enough to have sought a PhD will benefit as they are now limited to a master's degree, with which their career will be much better.

That is an incredibly short sighted view of the world.

>Every single economic analysis of NSF and NIH research funding that I have seen has shown economic return on investment from $2.5-$10 for every dollar of science spending.

But the academic institution didn't spend money on science. The did spend money on propaganda and promoting ideology.

> The did spend money on propaganda and promoting ideology.

Why are you spewing inaccurate propaganda talking points if propaganda is bad?

Can you provide an example of this propaganda and ideology? Do you really think this is true?

It's generally pretty easy. Any time some organization's name comes up for cuts, just do a quick search + equity, gender, or various other buzzwords. It's always the same, because that's the reason the funding for these orgs is being cut. In this case here [1] is a page they removed.

It's difficult to find the breakdown of where the job cuts are going, but as only 247 of the jobs being terminated are in the US, it's suggestive that the cuts are weighted towards their international branch - jhpiego (which is where the above link is from).

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20240807150252/https://www.jhpie...

This is the best you can come up with? Supporting women's rights is propaganda?

Propaganda doesn't mean something you have to disagree with or that is somehow wrong. Rights are a political and ideological component of a society, and trying to persuade other countries to adopt those social positions is most certainly propaganda.

Whatever you want to define it as, it is not science in any way, shape, or fashion. And funding intended to further science could certainly be far more well spent.

> This is the best you can come up with? Supporting women's rights is propaganda?

Is it hard science?

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