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Comment by ixtli | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like you're saying that this is a step in the direction of "fixing" academia. I don't see any evidence of that, all i see is fewer scientists receiving decreasing funding in a state where weve already been slashing basic research investment for generations. Also, there is no evidence that the ones that are leaving are the least productive. Intuitively it's likely the opposite: the ones who have the most potential will find work elsewhere and will be the first to leave.

EDIT: I would also like to say that i have never seen evidence that we can measure the performance of 10k PhDs in a single dimension at all. So a claim that this could be good for scientific research and development seems unprovable at best.

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I'm not claiming that this is a step in the direction of fixing academia; I'm claiming that, because academia is currently broken, we shouldn't assume that the ~10k people who got PhDs under the current system are people doing actually-valuable work for the federal government and ultimately the American people.

Knowing current administration anti-science approach to things like climate and health, I wouldn't be all at surprised if many of those who left academia were ones producing quality work that just didn't align with Trump admin's ideology.

the unscientific stuff was actually past administrations which told us cheetos is more healthy than eggs and meat lol

Turns out, if we feed data in and query it in the right way, we can come to charts that allow bad conclusions just like any other.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/16/lucky-charms-healthie...

If anyone is curious, as I was, where this misinformation came from: it appears to be a criticism of the Food Compass rating system from Tufts University. The connection to "past administrations" seems to be added by the person I'm replying to. They've also swapped Cheerios with Cheetos.

>On social media, I have seen graphics showing certain breakfast cereals scoring higher than eggs, cheese, or meat. Did Tufts create these graphics?

>No. Food Compass works very well, on average, across thousands of food and beverage products. But, when this number and diversity of products are scored, there are always some exceptions. These graphs were created by others to show these exceptions, rather than to show the overall performance of Food Compass and the many other foods for which Food Compass works well. But, as objective scientists, we accept constructive criticism and are using this to further improve Food Compass. We are working on an updated version now – see our versions page for more information.

https://sites.tufts.edu/foodcompass/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00381-y.epdf

I suspect you're right, but what we are and are not surprised by is self-referential rather than evidentiary.

But are we supposed to be content with not being given enough information to make a meaningful differentiation between people with PhDs in human resources and $IDENTITY-studies vs PhDs in organic chemistry and climatology?

When there's hostility towards discernment, it makes me feel like the two political strains are working together to use a one-two punch of credentialism and anti-intellectualism to erode empirical investigation into reality.

> 'm not claiming that this is a step in the direction of fixing academia; I'm claiming that, because academia is currently broken, we shouldn't assume that the

Why?

If you go that far then

- senate

- scotus

- violence

- SV

- tech bros

- lies about AI

What is not broken.

The idea of academia is it is an investment. Look at internet, DoE, Genome, vaccines - a lot from academia. Companies barely do that.

Indeed. You're far more likely to get sensible policy opinions from a STEM PhD who knows what science is than from sleazy opportunist politicians, investors, and PR people.

You might even say that the opportunists dislike STEM because it gets in the way of their opportunism.

Would you have said the same for folks doing NLP circa 2015?

these folks were already associated with FAANG. Most of deep learning progress comes from industry funding, not academia

And where did those people get their Masters degrees and PhDs from?

It also flies in the face of China's currently accelerating pace of research and breakthroughs by producing insane numbers of STEM majors and PhDs

China is famous for low-quality research and bad papers, which is exactly what you'd expect from a system that grants an expanded number of formal credentials to people who aren't actually doing good scientific research.

China was famous for low-quality products as well.

While there have been substantial improvements, it still deserves its fame.

Be that as it may, China also has persistent threat actors outfoxing American cybersecurity in the form of Salt Typhoon. The cards are on the table, and the US is already undoubtedly losing several fronts of asymmetrical warfare.

I have a friend who, to explain it simply, worked medium high up in the CIA for 8-12 years during Bush and Obama. The only time he gets serious about talking about his time there is on this topic. Chinas cyber security is, according to him, light years ahead of the US to the point where its embarrassing.

If I understand Salt Typhoon correctly it's a masterpiece. The descriptions I've seen indicate that they penetrated lawful intercept. Lawful intercept operates outside network operators network management systems because it was designed not to trust the network operators. I am skeptical of claims that Salt Typhoon has been eliminated from US networks. Any such implicitly claim to detect lawful intercept traffic and ensure it isn't nefarious, which traffic that system is designed to hide.

Yes.

I think well meaning people in the west are looking for a silver lining and in the process overcomplicating a rather simple issue: the US government is cutting spending everywhere while its electorate demands even deeper cuts. The money has dried up and people are leaving.

(One of my best friends was a nuclear medicine phd who left his cancer research lab after covid to work at a VoiP company, so i too have anecdotes)

Sigh.

The US is in a weird spot. The electorate does not generally want education and research cut.

Republicans here have convinced their base that education and the educated are bad, which has fed their desire to cut academic funding and research at all levels.

That is to say, the federal government doesn't have a popular mandate to do any of this. They simply hold all levers of power through a slim majority of the voting populace.

And lets not forget that its only 22% of the total amount of people who live here. A large minority of potential voters are disenfranchised and do not vote. The government isnt just without a mandate it is extremely unpopular.

Which breakthroughs, specifically? There are no Chinese institutions pumping out nobel prizes. Zero.

10 years ago were no Chinese companies pumping out world-class cars either. But here we are.

I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to.

Geely owns Volvo and IIRC a significant portion of Volvos are Chinese made now.

There's a number of companies or brands that are now Chinese owned. China knows that home grown brands (like Geely) don't work on an international stage, so they buy well known brands like Volvo.

It's a bit of a silent behind the scenes takeover but I'd say that China is now seriously making competitive cars. If you can follow the brands and notice.

Lol, the fully homegrown BYD is destroying Tesla everywhere outside the US where it’s basically banned and you’re taking about Geely and Volvo and behind the scenes. It’s all out there on the stage.

I don't really give a shit about Tesla though. Or BYD for that matter.

By my eye, Volvo / Geely cars are the most impressive.

I don’t really give a shit about your opinion though.

It’s just objective fact that BYD along with Tesla are world class cars and therefore they should be the main discussion point here.

> It’s just objective fact that BYD along with Tesla are world class cars

World class propaganda maybe. Cars definitely not.

I'll give China the Volvo brand. I can see the quality difference at any car show. I remember seeing some other nice looking Chinese cars but BYD (and Tesla for that matter) are objectively awful.

They’re still world class cars as they sell well everywhere in the world. The quality compared to some other smaller brands are not really important criteria in that context.

Geely is Volvo's parent company but Volvo still designs and manufactures its cars. Geely gets to benefit from Volvo technology for its own Chinese brands.

Just like Tata owns Jaguar and Land Rover but it doesn't mean India is "pumping out world-class cars".

I left China in 2017 so my info is a little dated but unless there was a _giant_ leap in quality I wouldn't trust a Chinese car any more than I trust other Chinese products (products made to spec in China is a different matter altogether). And when I was there anyone in China who could afford a foreign brand wasn't buying Chinese brands either.

It's not that Chinese are incapable of making great products, but cutting corners and crappy customer service is deeply embedded into their business culture. Things are changing but there's still a long way to go.

You can't buy $100 worth of merchandise for 1 penny. It's the manufacturer's principal's bid and proposed criteria that are key.

There are still a lot of third world populations in the world that need low quality, low price shit. Including parts of the U.S. population.

> It's the manufacturer's principal's bid and proposed criteria that are key.

Agreed. And Chinese brands are, on the whole, more concerned with cost than quality. Things are made to look shiny on the outside with a great "spec list", but are crap on the inside.

https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/nature-index-resear...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: Oh, that's old. In 2024 Chinese institutions only made up 7 of the top 10 most productive research centers but in 2025 they are account for 8/10: https://www.natureasia.com/en/info/press-releases/detail/911...

That's a volume based index, not impact, thus reinforcing my point.

Idk man, i dont keep a list of China's breakthroughs handy. You can find the same results on google that I can.

And I wasn't aware that breakthroughs needed to be nobel laureate worthy at a minimum to still be considered breakthroughs.

People start being inventive when tight on resources, so a bit of evolutionary pressure is not a bad thing.

You are assuming there is meaningful work for them in the federal government. There might be more productive work for them in industry. Their contribution to the workforce could put pressure on inflated salaries, if that is the case.

If their credentials exceed their defacto responsibilities in the government, they might be blocking someone else from being promoted or otherwise "growing" or whatever.

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