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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".
I’ve semi doxxed myself on this platform by saying what I work on before, so I don’t really mind doing it again.
I work on developing models that estimate the water content of vegetation from satellite imagery. This has direct relevance for fire risk forecasting, and I use it to study where droughts affect forests most.
You can judge for yourself the usefulness of this, but also, I think the thinking generally reflects a wrong perspective about where benefit in science comes from.
Some systems are weak link chains, and others are strong link chains. The quality of a weak link system depends on the strength of the weakest link, and the strongest is somewhat irrelevant. An example of this is food safety inspection. One key mistake and the mission is a failure.
However, science is more of a strong link system. There can be a lot of low quality papers, sure. But really the benefit we gain from science arises from top quality research that gets done. You can have 100 people doing low impact research, but if you get out of that investment even one big breakthrough, it can be very worth it.
The problem here is that science is sort of a blind search as well, we don’t know where big breakthroughs might exist. Who would have been crazy enough to say that studying Gila monster venom would lead to one of the most important drug class discoveries in the 21st century. You might say, ah ozempic type drugs, who cares, I’m not fat. But maybe the next unexpected discovery reverses Alzheimer’s, who knows. Maybe you are destined to get Alzheimer’s, at that point, would have been nice to have some strange new drug class that combats it.
Saying, “hey, random PhD student, I don’t think your work is that important in the end and thus I’m fine with weakening science in the United States across the board”.. it’s certainly a position one may take, but I’d say it is not at all a smart one regarding human or national advancement.
I think that work sounds really cool. I hope a private company wants to continue it and you get hired.
But I mean come on "you have to give me and my friends money or your country will fail" is obviously not a compelling argument. If it don't make dollars it don't make sense.
...The whole point of government is that there are some public goods that only indirectly make money, or otherwise increase quality of life in a cost-efficient way due to pooled resources?
Forest fire forecasting and management is almost definitionally something the government should be funding itself - the government owns a lot of fire-risk land, massive forest fires affect broad swaths of society, and the net effect can be monetary (even massively so) but is so indirect that private commercial interests might not have good reason or incentive to fully fund it.
"If it don't make dollars it don't make sense" is an absolutely terrible heuristic for government spending.
This is pretty much the same argument made against things like trying to reform USPS. Yes, it loses money, but guess what? Life itself is inherently a money-losing enterprise. I think of Bostrom's phrase "a Disneyland with no children," and I feel like the spending-reform types are unconsciously drawn to trying to instantiate it.
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