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Comment by naturalmovement | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of collateral damage that could have been avoided if millions weren't being squandered on dubious "science" like studying grooming habits of trans aboriginals in the Central African Republic (a made-up scenario, but there are many like it).

At some point the baby's going to be thrown out with the bath water until the course is corrected.

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Seriously, when our tax dollars pay for idiots to play around with lizard spit[1] all day, why should we trust anything they want to fund?

[1] https://biomedical-sciences.uq.edu.au/article/2024/04/rise-o...

What's next, paying them to study worms??

https://www.wgal.com/article/new-world-screwworm-pennsylvani...

Should've added an /s there

This link is much funnier if you don't give the punchline away. /s or /h or /ffs?

I am still trying to figure out how being against science, higher education, new energy, skilled South Korean workers, and for tariff-of-the-day lotteries, crypto grifts, Chinese-made "American-manufactured" phones, random wars and red hats is pro-manufacturing, pro-domestic investment and balancing the budget.

It's the "new math" of economics. I can't keep up.

Aren't you in any way concerned that you can't give a real example of the sort of thing you're talking about, and have to make one up? This should be the wake-up call that makes you re-evaluate your priors.

The reality is that reactionaries often describe "useless" scientific endeavors like "condoms for worms" that end up being the only thing stopping parasitic screwworms from infesting the US cattle herd, which will end up costing us hundreds of millions of dollars to resolve- and spike the already-high cost of beef for decades.

Anyone that wants to see real examples can turn on showdead in preferences.

There's nobody gatekeeping what can be studied and what can't. You claim millions are being wasted; by who? Is the goverment funding the studies you deem as wasted? If so you'd think that rather than making up a study you'd be able to give a single example. Should be very easy if millions are being wasted on these what I'd assume you'd call "bogus" studies.

Instead of getting upset about made up scenarios, why don't you find some real scenarios? Like the one this thread is discussing, for instance.

Nice try to divert the discussion...

Could you explain what's wrong with monitoring the oceans surrounding the US? Take any angle (moral, scientific, public interest, economic p.o.v.)

Hint: in the greater scheme of things, science projects like this are ridiculously cheap.

A lot of this “dubious science” isn’t dubious at all. Rather, people just have a political view on it. Like climate change is considered dubious science by the right. It’s not, but that’s how they view it.

To me this argument sounds like, " the Dems funded too much trans science so you made us defund climate and social science and damage the rest"

Is that about right?

> a made-up scenario, but there are many like it)

There are many made-up scenarios, but not many real examples of what you are using to justify the weakening of the entire nation.

And the fact that you had to fabricate something is literally proof of it. Now, go find any supposed "waste" and you'll find that, again, the science has been completely misrepresented to the public by an anti-science media source that was focused on creating fake propaganda rather than properly informing the public.

Seriously. Prove me wrong, go find all this bath water that you claim exists, post it here!

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