Hacker News Reader

Comment by b65e8bee43c2ed0 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think China needs the kind of scientists disproportionately affected by the bad orange man's vendetta.

The chaos is affecting pretty much all areas of science, not just the controversial ones. I work in non-controversial, pretty run-of-the-mill chemistry research and the attacks on the NSF have certainly impacted our funding situation. Very long delays in proposal review, complete pivoting to AI, etc. I have co-workers panicking over the green card changes. And the overall morale is pretty grim everywhere.

Edit: don’t forget how he’s forcing NSF headquarters to move. All the NSF, not just the “bad” research.

Almost everyone has entertained the idea of leaving the US for more stability, which is required for research.

I work for an org that makes research software for chemistry and other branches of science and it's definitely hit us in sales. No one wants to spend money if they don't know if they're going to get or keep the grants they petitioned for.

Oh I’m sure we could commiserate about that. I think we work in vaguely the same area.

Unfortunately, getting money from industry isn’t much easier in my opinion.

We have some software projects we want to spin out into a small business or non-profit (because federal funding…), but industry is absolutely cold right now. Had a few very promising partners lined up, but it all evaporated last spring. Between tariffs, AI spending, and now oil, everyone is reluctant to spend.

You're writing a response to a racist who supports Donald out of racism, even despite the innumerable policy failures.

Well if they want to stop all improvements to their electric car industry that is letting them out compete European, Japanese and US manufacturers, solar panels have clearly not been important to them, and their rocket programs don’t need anyone working on transfer orbits and god forbid anyone describes the materials they test as “diverse”…

You mean Vaccine researchers? Or renewable energy researchers?

oh, don't be coy.

https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/NSF-Terminated-Award...

I wouldn't even need to cherry pick.

The first item on the list is 44M for quantum materials. Can you please explain why cancelling it is in the national interest of the US? Other than the fact that Harvard didn't admit Daddy's favorite boy?

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=1231319&a...

Appears it didn't receive any funds since 2022 after being extended for years (so your "daddy" is Biden) and wouldn't get any more money so was canceled to get it off the books.

If anything this shows the list includes regular grants that were canceled for normal reasons, which further demonstrates the cuts were not of real science.

that doesn't imply anything at all, just that some grants weren't cancelled for political reasons

It implies that this list is the entirety of the cancelled NSF grants instead of a cherrypicked woke subset.

Some of those titles look so satirical it's difficult to believe they're real:

Culture Change for Inclusion of Indigenous Voices in Biology

Strengthening Inclusion by Change in Building Equity, Diversity and Understanding (SICBEDU) in Integrative Biology

An Equitable, Justice-Focused Ecosystem for Pacific Northwest Secondary CS [Computer Science] Teaching

Great to read these are being defunded.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com