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Comment by wisemanwillhear | Hacker News Reader

Why does science need to be through the government? Irrespective of the proposal, science research is just as open after this change as before so long as it's funded by private citizens who can control the channels through which they donate to this work.

On the other hand, if we can't get private citizens to donate to science research, then they are not likely to vote for it either--polls don't register much of a concern from the average citizen*. I don't think most of us want to be under a dictator or go back to having a king.

That means the only practical option is to act of our own volition and support science through vocal advocacy and private money. In this way, we can each donate to the research we care about the most with maximum academic freedom.

* https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.asp...

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It was realized some time ago that having citizens decide to "donate to the research we care about" was not the most efficient way to get the most important research done. So we switched to a system where we pool our resources (taxes), and then use a somewhat complex process (described in TFA) to decide how to allocate them to possible research.

and those taxes are distributed by our government... which is political. simple as.

so it's political ... so what?

So why should any function of government be free from politics? The point of our system is so we can give feedback and adjust the system

I don't disagree. I'm not sure what point you're responding to.

You're missing the key distinction here: not only are the seeds selected by a political body, but the active weeding of previously planted seeds is now inherently political.

Both are bad, but one allows some diversity; the other produces a monoculture.

A political monoculture that can be completely upended before even any useful crop is grown, given the nature of a working democracy versus the length of research projects.

And yes, I'm aware that those last two words are no longer guaranteed.

Given the apparent low levels of scientific literacy among the U.S. public, I can’t imagine their ability to discern priorities or worthwhile lines of investigation would be any more useful than a coin toss. Or worse.

This is a very “taxation is theft” take.

Everyone knows that many things that are not directly beneficial to society would go unfunded because humans optimize for what’s around them, and things that are self-interested.

There isn’t even alignment. One person wants to fund science, the other wants to fund high speed rail, the other wants farm subsidies, one wants social security and the other wants the military. Government balances all of that together. Of course people will make value judgements about their pet interests and declare the other aspects to be better funded separately.

Private citizens fund scientific research through their taxes. This has been the most practical way to fund science for decades.

>Private citizen fund scientific research [under threat of prison or deadly force.]

I mean I'm not inherently opposed to laws or government, but I think a lot of people need to be more measured and considerate of what they are using tax money for when it is being taken from their fellow citizens at gunpoint.

ignoring a gratuitous reference to use of force, absolutely. having a discussion as society about what we are funding is in fact democracy. sadly there is an issue in the sciences in that lay people may have difficulty seeing the benefit of connecting the dots. but we should try. and as flawed as it is, the adversarial system we have in the US is at least a forum for those discussion.

using grep to defund grants that contain words we don't like is the exact opposite of measured and considerate. so is punishing scientists for the sin of working for a 'woke' institution. in fact all this seems extremely punitive, and not in the spirit of optimizing outcomes for costs at all.

note that this policy explicitly removes the requirement to provide any kind of rationale. that sort of directly contradicts the notion that this is a measured discussion about priorities.

I agree. This administration is ground zero for mismanagement of funds and outright corruption. Just look at the director of the FBI and former secretary of DHS. Both have used and continue to use tax payer money for personal use. It should make every tax payer livid.

It does make me livid, just as much as the waste of taxpayer money on pointless (and sometimes outright racist) research here makes me livid: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335722

Believe it or not, it's possible to hate both Kash Patel/Kristi Noem and the unelected bureaucrats burning tax money on awful research.

Sure that’s fine. They funded research that you think is wasteful and you would like to have tools to provide that feedback. The issue with this OMB change is that it is not that. The OMB change is a change that allows the administration to cancel any grant for any reason without answering to citizens about it.

BTW your “believe it or not” is quite condescending. Do you talk to people in real life like that?

The president is elected, the bureaucrats that were making the decisions before were not, that's the difference.

>BTW your “believe it or not” is quite condescending. Do you talk to people in real life like that?

Yes, especially when they're the sort of people who support taking my tax money to fund idiotic and outright racist "research".

> the bureaucrats that were making the decisions before were not

Russ Vought was not elected either.

Correct, bur he is directly accountable to and acting under the direction of elected officials, most other bureaucrats in the civil service are not.

That’s even worse, the incentives are completely misaligned for a political appointee vs unelected civil service workers who are just carrying out their jobs.

Again, the status quo is that funding recommendations are made by expert peer review by PhD scientists. Political appointees literally do not have the knowledge to make the calls this policy directs them to.

So you want every decision in government to be made by a politician instead of an expert? We should start with the military right? Get those bureaucrats generals out of the battlefield and put some elected officials in charge of our battle plans so our plans aren’t wasting tax dollars!

If that sounds absurd… you’re right! It is!

Science needs to be done through the government because of a) hire incredibly expensive science is and b) hire incredibly concentrated wealth is.

The USG is quite often the only group able and willing to fund most projects.

autocorrect is the worst, right?

Screw that mentality. I already paid more than enough in my tax dollars.

What do you mean by that?

It means I'm in the tax bracket that gets to pick up the slack for people who make way more than me but don't pay their fair share.

I want a competent government who directs the funds in an appropriate way. Not one who sets up a shush fund, using my (tax) money, to pay their private army of thugs.

Private capital is good at funding research that is likely to provide a short-term return on investment. It's not so good at funding basic research, where most of the paradigm-shifting breakthroughs come from. These provide a huge return on investment, but it nets out to society at large on time scales of decades or centuries.

Contrary to what you said, there is actually quite a bit of private philanthropic funding for research, it's just that it's not evenly distributed. The vast majority of it seems to go to medical research, in particular cancer and Alzheimer's. That's obviously a good thing, but my point here is that we can't necessarily depend on private philanthropy to distribute funds optimally.

https://www.cato.org/blog/governments-should-not-fund-resear...

I'm generally a fan of Cato and a libertarian approach to economics, but I'm still not convinced that we should be spending zero public money on basic research. I would like to see a decent amount going into mathematics and theoretical physics for example, and I doubt those fields would stay afloat on donations.

This seems to be a good middle ground then. It allows for a way to prevent political projects getting grants under the guise of "scientific research", at least when they directly oppose the voters. I don't see any push to defund basic research, and if politicians start doing that there's at least a way for people to voice their disapproval through voting.

Aside from that, so much money was wasted on Alzheimer's research based on fraud.

It is as though you’ve never heard of game theory, much less the concept of a coordination or free rider problem.

This comment reflects a level of ignorance that would make Dunning & Kruger facepalm.

The idea that you compare a democratically elected government’s taxes… to that of an unelected tyrant show a complete lack of perspective.

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