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When you write comments like this, you are literally begging people to take the other side of your argument, which will inevitably have less to do with the technical details of why TB treatments are first-line therapies for bladder cancer and more to do with the First Amendment and visa protections. It's a way of having exactly the same tedious argument on every story, no matter what the story is about.
We are breaking the innovation machine and pretending discoveries will just keep happening.
I am moderately pessimistic about the state of research because I do hear things I don't like, but this is compensated by my belief that US academia has a ridiculous amount of institutional entropy, and I'm perfectly willing with temporary issues if this means at least some of the long term problems will be improved. So overall... cautiously optimistic? Long term at least. Is that cheering?
And since the grandparent also mentioned visas - here at least I have a pretty simple opinion. Congress should step up and reform immigration laws. They've avoided doing this for decades, and it's kinda useless to put the blame anywhere else. (for context I'm not american, and my country just had the visa waiver canceled this year by the current administration, so I'm actually on the other side of the fence).
I am confused how 'burn it all down' will solve any problems, let alone long term ones.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how innovation works. The 'deal' of basic science in the US is that the government funds broadly and without prejudice. Topics are decided by experts and overseen by experts. These experts are taking large pay-cuts (compared to their worth in industry) to have the freedom to investigate their own interests. In return the public gets a vast amount of R&D on the cheap, much of which doesn't seem to have immediate ROI, but as we well know, has tremendous long term ROI.
Yes sometimes those ideas are dead-ends or don't replicate. Yes sometimes fraud/plagiarism happens. Yes sometimes people research minorities or marginalized people. Certain interests have made some people believe that these are symptoms of a broken system when in reality they are all just parts of the scientific process and freedom of thought. These interests mostly have used culture war issues as a wedge to defund science broadly.
So no, we should not destroy tomorrows cancer treatment (which could save you or the ones you love) because some tech-oligarch wants more money/power.
I'm not exaggerating. The innovation machine is currently ablaze. Even funded grants for things like cancer and alzheimers aren't being paid out because they fired all the grants processors. Multiple whole universities have been defunded entirely. An entire generation of scientists will have their careers stolen from them if this continues.
Seems easily understood. Only 5% of humanity are USians, for the rest, 'your loss is our gain'. Where cowmix wishes for all the brilliant minds to come to the US, the countries that lose those people call it a 'brain drain', and the reduction of that brain drain is most welcome.
The Germans also spent so much money on so many absurd things that had they simply directed it more precisely to the bomb at an earlier time, cost at least wouldn't have been a limitation. Even as things stand historically, they created a number of completely cutting-edge weapons despite all the catastrophic problems you describe, so much so that the US, USSR and UK all spent years after the war, largely cribbing off what the Nazis' R&D had already developed to some extent.
But, none of this as necessary for delivery of the bomb, especially if we're talking about Nazi Germany, which could have (had it developed the bomb) used any one of its Dornier, Heinkel or Messershcmitt bombers to do the same. Given the size and weight of the two American atomic bombs, the Germans probably could have even used their medium bombers like a modified Heinkel 111, had they already developed their own atomic bomb with a size similar to Little Boy.
You're perhaps confusing useful co-developments with need.
Also worth noting, had Germany invested resources well -instead of frittering them away under Hitler's often incoherent leadership penchant for forcing through personal whimsies and irrational strategic desires- it could have redirected the whopping 160 billion in 2024 dollars that it spent on the largely worthless Atlantic Wall into all kinds of powerful projects.
There's a figure that dwarfs both the Manhattan Project and the B-29 combined. The Nazis could have invested in atomic development while still developing their strategically inert but technically marvellous V Weapons with that kind of money, which they spent anyhow on concrete nonsense.
It's sort of ironic too, since Hitler directly benefitted from the Maginot Line being useless, then went ahead and built his own colossal version of the same foolishness against invasion.
Also, the Germans developed a very useful surface-to-air missile during the war. It was called the wasserfall, and genuinely had promise for severely damaging the allied bombing effort, but no, Hitler was fixated on his giant, immediately worthless V rocket, and wasserfall was neglected then cancelled, the technology applied to the much more difficult V2.
> Up to 3,600 kilograms (7,900 lb) could be carried externally. External bomb racks blocked the internal bomb bay. Carrying bombs externally increased weight and drag and impaired the aircraft's performance significantly. Carrying the maximum load usually required rocket-assisted take-off.
First, that lack of financial resources wasn't an obstacle to the Bomb. Hitler had his government spend absurdly colossal sums on other and ultimately useless things mainly because of his stubborn fixations (real surprise, that) and even with the scientific brain drain due to Nazi persection of jews and dissidents of all stripes, enough sharp minds remained in Germany to pull it off I believe, but only if the whole concept had been taken seriously enough, early enough and with good planning and funding.
Secondly: Assuming they'd actually developed the bomb, delivery would have been a very solveable problem at that point for stopping a western Allied invasion dead in its tracks.
Stopping the vast soviet army would have been a different matter entirely, especially if they only developed the atom bomb later in the war. I'm not entirely sure about even a nuclear weapon being enough to put a brake on that level of thirst for revenge, combined with so much military force for applying said revenge.
> even with the scientific brain drain due to Nazi persection of jews and dissidents of all stripes
My point was precisely about that brain drain, in particular the dismissal of "Jewish Physics" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik), which drove the atomic physicists right into America's open arms
So to watch the US destroy its seed corn with its own xenophobic brain drain is particularly ironic
repeating the same karma-farming copy isn't even mid at this point
try reddit
In fact, some other developed nations do it in far greater percentages of the universities' independent revenue.
Many also have quite comparatively easy immigration paths for both students and workers.
privately held wealth far eclipses other metrics like gdp
As I understand it, you are arguing that if the system was inherently good, then others would try to replicate it. I would then counter with if we had a good system, why should it be destroyed?
We have been able to reach enormous heights thanks to government funding, and no other system could have replicated that success. In every scenario where government funding is eliminated, the level of research progress goes down. As long as you understand that, then you can stand by your statements, but do not fool yourself into thinking we will continue making as much research progress as we have been for the last several decades.
Find another funding sources, a subsidized university in the US isn’t the only path, if its not found then your reality will be exactly as described. We agree! Thanks for your attention to this matter.
Your comment is intended as sarcastic, but what you are describing is 100% happening. Industry does not fund a lot of the education and early-career work of scientists doing basic research. Most of those PhDs are funded through federal grants. Fewer grants and more uncertainty means fewer opportunities for young people to go into the field, which means fewer people choosing to go into the field.
Motivated, intelligent people will build things and innovate whether tax dollars are involved in funding their research or not.
If the work is valuable, some non-government entity will fund it. Otherwise it should die.
At best all government can do is get out of the way so that private actors can solve problems and innovate. At worst it strangles innovators through higher taxes and more stringent regulation.
Look at the light bulb, locomotive engine, airplane, etc. Government involvement in major innovations is almost always peripheral.
Governments fund a massive percentage of the foundational work that is necessary for productizable innovations, that precedes it by decades. Private companies rarely fund this type of work.
Take AI. All of the current models are descendants of the work of Geoff Hinton. He labored for decades in academic obscurity, when AI was a punchline. It was only after these decades of government support did he get a result interesting enough for Google to hire him.
There are countless other examples like this, lithium batteries, GPS, the Internet. GLP-1 drugs came from the study of gila monsters.
I do think a lot of grant funding will cycle back around. There's every reason for commercial sourcing to become a larger portion of university funding as well as university funding directly from endowments considering the profit motivations in both cases. I think it's far from dead, just changing.
2) Very few schools have endowments that are large enough to support current faculty research costs; even Harvard can only support all research off their endowment for about a year.
3) Endowments are now taxed, so they will have even less available for research.
2) Endowments aren’t the only way to fund research, and not all research is equally valuable. Some is probably negative value, given the replication crisis.
3) Investment income from the endowment is taxed at a maximum of 8%. If that’s enough to break the US university research machine, I’m not sure it was ever working in the first place.
The ROI is not positive because there is no guarantee basic science will lead to any money-making outcome. That's not how basic science works and it is never how it worked, but basic science is absolutely crucial for advancing tech. If you can convince shareholders that it is e.g. worth investigating unusual crystal structures with no intended product in mind then people will gladly share some grants with you to edit so you can work some of that magic. It's just not feasible, no company would pay for that, but sometimes it leads to important discoveries that change the game.
And I only mentioned endowments because the parent of my comment did, but again, the important point is that endowments are not intended to entirely fund the research machine, and never will.
I’m open to the idea that government can play a role here, but only in a very small way. The government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on research. They are such a huge consumer of talent and resources that they are crowding out private initiative. This ain’t Bell Labs of the 1950’s. And if you asked those researchers what they think of today’s system, I’m sure they’d be appalled.
2) Harvard has a $54 billion endowment and spends $6.4 billion a year, that doesn't include tuition and fees, that's just what they have in the bank.
3) Actually spending the money is tax deductible and better for the economy.
See my other comment on the likelihood that any corporation would want to pay for basic science. When would any company choose to fund something that would not guarantee a return on investment? It goes against the nature of the goals of a corporation. I would love to know of for-profit examples of this. I'm sure there are a few, but I doubt there are many.
There are a LOT of countries that have much harsher penalties for speaking out than having one's visa revoked. For that matter, I'm not endorsing one opinion or another on any given topic here, only pointing out that it's a bad idea.
"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences."
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...
From what I can see that entire document is about whether someone can get a visa, not what they are allowed to say once they are in country.
Further one section says that visa applicants can't be denied entry for their previous speech if that speech is legal for American citizens.
1. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) - 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3):
- Relevant Provision: This section lists grounds for inadmissibility, including engaging in activities that threaten U.S. national security, such as espionage, terrorism, or other unlawful activities. Speech that is deemed to support or advocate for terrorism or terrorist organizations (e.g., material support under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)) can lead to visa revocation or inadmissibility.
- Impact on Visa Holders: If a visa holder's speech is interpreted as supporting terrorist activities or organizations designated by the U.S. government, they could face deportation or visa denial. For example, publicly expressing support for a designated terrorist group, even in a non-violent context, could trigger scrutiny.
2. Visa Conditions and Status Restrictions:
- Specific Visa Program Rules: Certain visas, like the H-1B, F-1 (student), or J-1 (exchange visitor), come with conditions that indirectly limit speech-related activities. For instance, visa holders must comply with the terms of their visa, such as maintaining employment or enrollment status. Engaging in public speech or activities (e.g., protests or political organizing) that interfere with these conditions could jeopardize their status.
- Example: An F-1 student who engages in unauthorized employment (e.g., paid speaking engagements) or participates in activities that lead to arrest (e.g., during a protest) risks violating their visa terms, which could lead to removal proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(C)(i) (failure to maintain nonimmigrant status).
3. Espionage and Sedition Laws - 18 U.S.C. § 793–798:
- Relevant Provision: These sections of the U.S. Code criminalize activities like disclosing classified information, espionage, or advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. government. While these laws apply to everyone, visa holders face heightened consequences because violations can lead to both criminal penalties and immigration consequences, such as deportation under INA § 237(a)(4) (engaging in activities that endanger public safety or national security).
- Impact on Visa Holders: Speech involving the disclosure of sensitive information or advocating for illegal activities could trigger these provisions, leading to visa revocation or criminal charges.
4. Hate Speech and Incitement - Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) and 18 U.S.C. § 2383–2385:
- Legal Standard: The First Amendment allows broad free speech protections, but speech that incites imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action (per Brandenburg v. Ohio) is not protected. Additionally, federal laws criminalize seditious conspiracy or advocating the overthrow of the government.
- Impact on Visa Holders: Visa holders engaging in speech that crosses into incitement or sedition could face criminal charges and immigration consequences, including deportation. For example, inflammatory speech at a public event that leads to violence could trigger scrutiny under these laws.
5. Public Charge and Moral Turpitude Grounds - 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2) and § 1227(a)(2):
- Relevant Provision: Visa holders convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude (CIMT) can be deemed inadmissible or deportable. Certain speech-related activities, such as fraud, defamation, or perjury, could be classified as CIMTs if they result in a criminal conviction.
- Impact on Visa Holders: Engaging in speech that leads to a CIMT conviction (e.g., making false statements in a public context that result in legal action) could jeopardize visa status.
6. Export Control Laws - International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR):
- Relevant Provision: These regulations, administered by the Departments of State and Commerce, restrict the dissemination of certain technical data or information to foreign nationals, including visa holders. Speech involving the sharing of controlled technical information (e.g., in academic or professional settings) could violate these laws.
- Impact on Visa Holders: Visa holders in technical fields (e.g., H-1B workers in engineering) must ensure their speech or presentations do not disclose ITAR- or EAR-controlled information without authorization, as violations could lead to penalties and immigration consequences.
7. Social Media and Public Statements Scrutiny:
- Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Policies: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may review visa holders’ social media activity as part of visa adjudications or entry screenings (per DHS policies implemented around 2019–2020). Speech on platforms like X that is deemed to conflict with U.S. laws or visa conditions (e.g., expressing intent to violate visa terms) could lead to visa denial or revocation.
- Example: Posts advocating illegal activities or expressing intent to overstay a visa could trigger adverse immigration actions.
The US government, while far from perfect, was once seen as a neutral partner in research — a place where scientists from everywhere could coordinate, mix, and build. It cost us relatively little compared to what we gained, and that leadership was admired both domestically and globally. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty damn good — and now it’s being killed.
Why would you expect a significantly different result for a subversive foreign influence on a Visa vs an otherwise disclosed spy?
If you think they will suddenly have a change of heart and start funding scientific discovery not just indirectly, but directly, then I have a bridge to sell you.
It also creates a really serious problem - if companies are funding the basic science, then they are going to want to own what they're funding. But collaboration and shared knowledge is exactly what pushes science forward.