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A quick report from the world of science and academia.
Strange times indeed. Grant proposals my lab has been working on for months have disappeared. I’m seeing and hearing of several nodes in my network which are in federal positions just disappearing.
I also advise students who are building software products for clients, and of both clients that are government agencies, NASA and US Forest Service, today I have learned that one has essentially cancelled the project at its end stages and the other has been MIA for weeks (Ironically, the cancelled product was a system that would significantly improve the efficiency of a key NASA analysis workflow).
Today I see news that the NSF research experiences for undergraduates, which trains undergraduates to conduct real research and which I personally credit with making me into a scientist, is being shuttered across much of the country.
The grant I’m relying on to complete my PhD is on shaky ground according to people close to the problem, and I fear that funding cuts could affect the only backup plan I have, which is continuing working as a teaching assistant. (A luxurious $15k per year + tuition remission). The key expert on my committee in the tech I’m using is at NASA and I fear for the longevity of his position.
Feels like the government is just dismantling the world I’ve spent my life working to become a part of, and I can’t say that I quite understand why.
I’m in a hard science field with direct applications to societal benefits. I believe that what I’m working on is something many would recognize as important. And I also think there’s a pretty clear link between training people who do this sort of thing (STEM generally) and national wellbeing and competitiveness.
I could understand this all better if it was just Trump doing it alone. Sort of a lower class rebellion against the educated class. But what really has me confused is the fact that it’s being spearheaded by Musk and “tech” people.
When DOGE was first announced I thought, great! I deeply dislike Trump but maybe this will make it actually be quite worth it in the end if we can fix the behemoth of government and make it more efficient. Maybe the country will be able to start to build things again, like the tech guys say, it’s time to build! But what we got was quite different from that hopeful version of me had in mind. SV types spearheading the dismantling of the US institution of science. That was not on my bingo card! Why was this the first move of DOGE? Noah Smith argues that it’s an ideological purge rather than an attempt at efficiency, and I guess that makes sense. Ultimately science funding is quite small potatoes in the federal budget. So why is it among the first major target of the administration and DOGE?
I don’t want to catastrophize here. Science in the US is being weakened and downsized, and somewhat purged for touchy topics, but it’s not being destroyed. I’ll probably be able to pull through and finish my program, at least that’s my current hope.
Yet it seems quite obvious to me that these moves are going to significantly weaken the US against competitors such as China. Science has its flaws, but it’s still the secret sauce of western societies’ success and a key part of the economic engine. I’ve always thought of Elon Musk as a big picture, long term thinker who understands the role of science and technology in human advancement. So I’m at a loss for why he would direct focus onto weakening science in the US as among his first moves if his interest really is with the medium to long term success of the US.
Your entire post hinges on your audience trusting this to be true. I have no reason to believe any bureaucrat in the proximity of the chopping block has any better reason to decry DOGE's mission than "saving my own skin".
He's not a bureaucrat. He's a PhD student.
Do you have anything more interesting to say when the wording "any bureaucrat" is changed to "anyone"?
Do you? Why call him a bureaucrat if that turns out to be neither true nor relevant to your argument? Surely you did know that he's not a bureaucrat given that it's in the second sentence of his post? I am trying to gauge how carefully you actually read the post we are discussing.
I'm having a hard time understanding what exactly your objection to this post is. I also know postdoc cancer researchers whose funding is imperiled by doge cuts. Do you think that:
I (and OP) are lying, funds are safu
The people I know (and OP) are not actually researching stuff that's useful (based on what? Who are the cancer experts in DOGE advising on what research is useful to fund?)
Something else?
My objection is obviously that he has skin in the game and as such should not be trusted for analysis of said game.
I am heavily sympathetic to your concern, but research, especially military-related research (which is 40% of federal basic research), is not an area where we have much of an alternate mechanism, for reasons I outlined here. It's not like business, where a dispassionate economist can sit back and confidently believe that the market will appropriately determine winners/losers with showers of cash/bankruptcy, depending on whether they ultimately provide value to the market, in this case comforted by the fact that they are putting their own skin in the game.
Instead, we have a situation where your military is very very rarely 'tested' (in fact, ideally it is very rare). You very rarely get actual feedback. When you do, you do not have access to the counterfactual of what would have happened if you had invested differently. Yet, you almost certainly have to invest in this in the modern world. Your adversaries are investing, and from what I've read, the adversaries of the US are investing very specifically to counter existing US systems (and near-term planned systems they they've learned about via espionage). If you simply stop and they do not, it is highly likely that they will counter your systems, push further to develop overmatch systems, and proceed to be able to conquer you and yours.
As such, your problem is to determine how to invest. This is a wicked problem. As I said in the linked comment:
Those experts will have skin in the game. The general who thinks airplanes will change the nature of warfare? Probably part of whatever cluster of folks who became the Army Air Force. They were probably personally invested in aircraft. If their ideas were embraced, they were likely to be the people leading those efforts, in charge of said investments. If their ideas were not embraced, they were likely to be sidelined, a bit player in comparison to whoever else's theory of military progression was embraced. Those other people, with other beliefs, telling you that airplanes are just toys? Yeah, they have skin in the game, too. They think that there's some other thing (probably in their portfolio) that is going to be dominant in the next fight. Who do you believe? How do you invest? Do you just cut them all off because they have skin in the game? As discussed, that's probably not going to lead to better results, and you probably couldn't measure it with respect to the counterfactual even if it did.
It is fundamentally a wicked hard problem, especially because the nature of warfare is anti-inductive (as soon as you find and exploit something that seems to work, your adversaries notice and respond accordingly). Trudging along and trying to just make the best decisions for your research investments at each point in time, knowing that everyone who is trying to convince you of their vision of the future probably has skin in the game, is probably the best you can do. At least, I don't really see a better way to proceed. I also don't think the right response to realizing that there doesn't seem to be any good options other than trudging is to just give up and quit, either. I think that probably leads to China just countering all US systems and dominating militarily.
Isn’t SV getting pretty heavy into military and doing a great job eg Palantir
I believe so. I don't see what the relevance of that really is, though? Is your point that now we should be more suspicious of what they're saying, because they have skin in the military funding game?
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So you don't believe that any useful research is imperiled by funding cuts?
If you do believe this, then there's really nothing objectionable in OP's post, because it's entirely possible that he was doing such research.
If you don't, what evidence would change your mind?
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What this amounts to is “no one should be allowed to argue in their own defense” which is of course a ridiculous and fanatical restriction to put on someone sharing their own perspective of a rapidly developing situation.
There is a distinction between:
"you should be allowed to argue in your own defense, with everyone aware that the outcome personally affects you"
and
"you should be allowed to be a supposedly-neutral third party in your own defense"
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The correct response to bias is not to throw it out - everyone has bias - it is to properly weight the biased evidence and seek other sources to come to a holistic conclusion. It’s bizarre to ignore biased data because underneath the bias there is also the other axis: direct experience. Just as bias is bad, experience is good, and they often co-occur. Tossing everything with a hint of bias also means tossing a lot of experience.
It’s kind of like the lobbyist problem. A lobbyist still has subject matter expertise. You can still meet with a lobbyist. Lobbyists can represent good causes. You just have to also include more effort in seeking out non lobbyist opinions to combine into a conclusion. Unfortunately outlawing lobbyists doesn’t work because there’s no bright line for what counts.
I'll respond by saying it's unsurprising that one who argues on behalf of science targeted by DOGE is also in the corner of lobbyists.
LOL, not my most tactful argument but this forum is about "light not heat" so I'm willing to be less persuasive if it means I'm more intellectually honest.
One of these days I do want to do a top-level post about lobbyists. Maybe this isn't the right spot, but it simply isn't obvious to me that there's anything inherently evil or awful about a collection of lobbyists and special interest groups duking it out on a variety of issues and competing for lawmaker attention. I mean, first of all, what's the alternative? Second of all, how can you tell the difference between a well-meaning non-profit advocacy group and the "bad" kind of lobbying? And finally, it seems objectively true that for better or worse, there are numerous areas where good legislation literally cannot be created by a well-meaning, completely fair, and intelligent individual with a little extra time. At some point you do need people with specific industry/subject matter knowledge, and there's a limited pool of people with those qualifications. And absolutely zero of them are going to be completely impartial.
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