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Comment by angelgonzales | Hacker News Reader

Totally support you!

I have done research and analysis long enough to understand that we all need to remain humble and refrain from assuming a conclusion without substantial evidence.

When I read the sentence “All of which have had deep funding cuts.” I speculate that this response is a simple signal amplification without any added evidence and without critique. I think it’s an attempt at self and collective affirmation.

Who is to say that funding cuts in academia won’t have short and long-term benefits for society and also result in a net increase in happiness and productivity? We simply don’t know yet. Supply and demand of valuable thought and research may redistribute within the economy!

I think there are very political people out there, the world may benefit from forums which cater to people who are political and separately to those who aren’t very political!

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>> Who is to say that funding cuts in academia won’t have short and long-term benefits for society and also result in a net increase in happiness and productivity

Don't we already have evidence of this? Many developing nations do not have adequate funding for academia and it is not increasing their happiness and productivity. Neither we can see any benefits on the society.

> Who is to say that funding cuts in academia won’t have short and long-term benefits for society and also result in a net increase in happiness and productivity

Who is to say that if I stop eating I won't see long-term benefits and also result in a net increase in happiness and productivity?

> Who is to say that if I stop eating beef I won't see long-term benefits and also result in a net increase in happiness and productivity?

See how considering the tiniest amount of nuance instead of oversimplifying everything tends to allow more interesting thought patterns?

Does it? The point was that stopping calorie intake leads to death. That's not a controversial statement. Stopping funding is similar, it ends the thing it used to fund. Expansion of human knowledge, in this case.

Unclear what that would have to do with beef. Are you saying that beef is bad for health, so stopping only that from entering your mouth is good for your health, and similarly, academic research is bad, so ending that could be good for society? Which type of research is better for society, assuming you'd like to keep some way for society to expand its knowledge of the world?

In your own allegory, stopping calorie intake would be akin to defunding " Science ". Obviously that brings death to the body and brain drain to the country, no one disputes this I think.

But that's not what is happening here, so I'm not sure why you would choose to use this allegory.

Indeed, cutting 100% of gov funding to Harvard Medical School results in defunding them by 20% or so. In your own allegory, that would be akin to reducing calorie intake of a particular type of meat (say, beef) but only by 20% . So: is it bad over the long term? Meh, who knows? It's not trivial to answer, right?

Do you have any reason to actually support this kind of otherwise completely specious argument? Yeah, sure, limiting some things that are not good can make a good result. Where's the leap from that to the medical research that's being stopped?

> So: is it bad over the long term? Meh, who knows? It's not trivial to answer, right?

There are two statements here:

1. Your "who knows if medical research funding being severely reduced will lead to a worse outcome in terms of research results; not trivial right?"

2. My "reducing funding of medical research will have a negative impact on research results."

It's not hard to argue that the first one is the claim that has the burden of proof.

I do not agree with your postulate that funding any medical research necessarily brings "long-term benefits for society and also result in a net increase in happiness and productivity".

Surely that needs proving. And it seems quite hard for the argument trivially collapses if said research is done by incompetents who misinterpret results, is done by frauds who fake the results, or if the money given is squandered isntead of researching, or if the research results are not written down and shared.

And you are saying that those misuses of money were happening at Harvard?

Must be really easy to get a research position there if every idiot fraud is able to.

> And you are saying that those misuses of money were happening at Harvard?

Out of a more than $2.6B research grant package, yes I do feel pretty certain that there's some misuse happening. Don't you? Misuses of money routinely happen in all sorts of places on much much lower amounts of grants/donations, so what do you think makes Harvard immune to it?

There's also the fact that the institution seems open to settling, an indicator among others that they aren't confident in their ability to sustain an audit (per the NYT: "Harvard Is Said to Be Open to Spending Up to $500 Million to Resolve Trump Dispute" https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/us/politics/trump-harvard...)

> Must be really easy to get a research position there if every idiot fraud is able to.

Indeed. Presumably this is a reason for the Trump admin's demand that Harvard turn over employment forms for university staff. The good news is that Harvard seems to be complying (per The Guardian: "Harvard to comply with Trump officials’ demand to turn over employment forms" https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/29/harvard-tr...), so if there's anything the admin disagrees with we're sure to hear all about it soon.

Hm interesting. You seem to assume that cutting funding by 20% will cut exactly the fraudulent parts. That naïve world view is quite impressive tbh.

>> Must be really easy to get a research position there if every idiot fraud is able to.

> Indeed. [...]

Hm alright. About 10 of my friends have tried over the years to get into Harvard for research positions, only 2 of them succeeded. I must be surrounded by stupid idots then. Not clear to me how the rest of your text provides any supporting argument (what does providing employment forms have to do with it?) but I'm likely just as stupid as my friends.

> You seem to assume that cutting funding by 20% will cut exactly the fraudulent parts.

Not at all. What I'm saying is that, based on (a) the astronomical amounts involved, (b) the absence of previous audits on the spending of said amounts, and (c) the fact that the institution is immediately agreeing to a settlement:

(1) it seems pretty improbable that there's not some sort of misuse of funds

(2) it seems pretty improbable for a cut this size not to touch at least some of the fraudulent parts along the way.

I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise. Is it that you somehow believe in Hardvard's perfect integrity, or in the administration's exclusive targeting of legit programs?

> I'm likely just as stupid as my friends.

That's probably it, but it's not uncommon at all. When choosing their friends, most people optimize for similarity rather than difference. You could also think of it as being likely as intelligent as your friends!

Obtuse and naive.

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