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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.
I think you should take the responses and general lack of sympathy here as a wake-up call about what exactly right-wing rule in the US means for you these days. I've found this forum to be a very good representation of the substantive ideas underlying what becomes right-wing politics/the mindset of people pushing those ideas.
In this case: anything, no matter the cost, as long as it hurts the woke! Scientific progress? I don't care about your fake tears and sad puppies.
Progressives "long marched through institutions". They got it. Mission Accomplished.
Now having sowed, they get to reap. This important societal institution is being bogged down in partisan culture waring, but now also from the other direction. Who could have forseen this.
I've been to grad school. In some meager way I contributed to this important endeavor and lived in it for a bit. It is valuable and we need it. At least some of it. Too bad certain people made it partisan and now are shocked that there is a price for ideological capture.
Right so scientists and scientific progress at at best acceptable collateral damage in your crusade to punish these people as much as possible and at worst enemies just because being in the same industry makes you think that they're the same people. This is exactly what I was talking about.
"But scientists vote XX% democrat! They have to be the evil woke!"---well it shouldn't be that surprising that scientists overwhelmingly vote against the party of creationism and appointing anti-vaxxers as HHS secretary even if they might have had serious concerns with woke overreach. If you don't believe me, you can listen to Richard Hanania.
Creationists are proof academia is biased against the right. The academy tolerates infinite papers on anti-scientific bullshit like grievance studies, but somehow one branch of theology is off limits, and it just so happens to be right coded?
The fact of the matter is, the right has already tried to get academics to stop being so partisan your way, and it didn't work. Some might even say it could never work because progressives won't let it and sabotaged every initiative to ensure it wouldn't. So now we have decided to cut the cancer out entirely, and yes a lot of good cells will die along the way and that is tragic. But it's also the bed they made. They could always learn to code.
Thank you for proving my original point. At this point, maybe it was correct for scientists to have been so left-leaning because they saw through that the right had this much hate for them.
So 'the bed you made' was the response to nurses and members of the military who got the axe because they didn't get the covid vaccine. Learn to code was the response to coal miners who didn't want their mines shuttered and sent off shore.
Now is it fair to tar all academics with that brush? No of course not. But if that's how the beautiful, intelligent, charismatic, industrious elites behave, how else can you expect us dirty, stupid, fat, ugly and lazy proles to act?
When progressives assumed control of the zeitgeist I think they assumed they'd always stay in touch with the working class so they didn't need to work at it. As a result their respect for the working class atrophied, and through a blend of corruption and the seductive nature of power (and its accompanying feeling of righteousness) they have become woefully out of touch and almost fully captured by the unscrupulous. But in doing so they ceded the working class to Trump, who - whatever you might say about him - is at least able to feign respect for them.
People in the working class get so few wins that they naturally accept 'not letting the enemy win' as worth celebrating. The elites were supposed to stop this by behaving better, so the working class would have a better example to live up to. The elites stopped behaving better, as those examples demonstrate, so of course the working class does too. Extrapolating that into 'they hate science!' is how we got here in the first place.
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