For years I’ve contrasted the way that US science allocates cognitive effort from the bottom up via individual scientists responding to career incentives with the way things were done in the Soviet Union, from the top down, by the Party setting rear b priorities. I can’t do that anymore. - ThreadSky

carlbergstrom.com • 79 days ago

For years I’ve contrasted the way that US science allocates cognitive effort from the bottom up via individual scientists responding to career incentives with the way things were done in the Soviet Union, from the top down, by the Party setting rear b priorities.

I can’t do that anymore.

Reposted from Nature

In an unprecedented move, the US National Institutes of Health has begun mass terminations of research grants that fund active scientific projects because they no longer meet “agency priorities”.

https://go.nature.com/4bpG2It

Comments

zachhensel.bsky.social•79 days ago

Who would sign in the world would sign off on this given this precedent? https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-10

zachhensel.bsky.social•79 days ago

You’d think the self-styled rationalists daring to reboot race science would not like guidance that nominally defunds their research. The boldest take I can find from one is, at best, a subtweet that went over the heads of his audience and is limited to banned words.

keawijkstra.bsky.social•79 days ago

They start with intellectuals, science, cultural institutions, journalists,dissidents. When they are cut and silenced, the oppression of the people begins.

everydayhuman.bsky.social•78 days ago

Wolnt universities Sue? I mean I googled how much my county, small place one of the poorest in Pa really has held up and it’s staggering, we have I think 914 grants. I mean the Supreme Court did set precedent that the United States must honor its debts for USAid. So maybe a class action ?

sciencelizard.bsky.social•79 days ago

US actually does both. NIH isn't the only game in town the National Labs are a crazy world of mission driven science. Just like in Oppenheimer's day, they very strongly favor people who can form alliances with powerful people (moreso than e.g. NIGMS, though perhaps on par with NIA).

sciencelizard.bsky.social•79 days ago

You can even argue NIH was never TRUE curiosity driven, that was all NSF (Carl Woese thought this way). I don't actually think it matters for people like me, who easily see connections between Things I'm Curious About and A Given Broad Mission to Help Humanity.

gcnp58.bsky.social•78 days ago

ONR/NASA, and over the last several decades at least, NSF, are program directed, where a scientist's "curiousity" is constrained by the overall programmatic goals of the agency. America was never a true ivory tower of pure intellectual freedom.

sciencelizard.bsky.social•78 days ago

I feel like "curiosity driven science" is a little like "liberty and justice for all"- bit of an Aspirational Value I agree with, but have never seen fully realized in reality. Still worth fighting for.

gcnp58.bsky.social•78 days ago

Exactly. I had a group leader who would say to us "You all have a set of wrenches, now go find bolts you can tighten with those tools."

sciencelizard.bsky.social•79 days ago

But I will say this- it is not a coinkydink that NIH has the capitalism style ethos/funding structure and also the Ponzi scheme career ladder structure, vs. National Labs having more communism style ethos/funding structure and Professional Guild scheme career structure. The later is way better.

uhjustin.bsky.social•76 days ago

There’s a Lysenko stink to all of it.

martyrye62.bsky.social•68 days ago

Meanwhile in the stoneage

kegill.bsky.social•78 days ago

Carl, is this legal?

rockmondo.bsky.social•79 days ago

I think a whole lot of the kindness the Establishment seemed to show working class in the US and the West from the New Deal to Clinton, was in response to the challenge of Communism, Period, and now we are seeing who they Really were all along.
Welcome to the 19th Century. Rich people never left.

sciencelizard.bsky.social•79 days ago

Clinton absolutely gutted Welfare the likes of which Reagan only had wet dreams about.
Being The Only Global Bully Game In Town was always really bad for our collective soul. And also we haven't had a good economy *for workers* (rather than Professional Consumers) anytime in the last 40 years.

rockmondo.bsky.social•79 days ago

Science lizard? I will follow you.
And I agree. The way the US wore triumph in the 90s gave way to the Victim-Stomp psychosis of the 00's, so we often forget how twisted that triumphalism was, when America ws Great Before.

uhjustin.bsky.social•76 days ago

Yep. After the major fall of the guilded age, socialism, communism, and other economic interventionist ideas became a necessity. We got by on inertia for the New Deal and Great Society during the cold war in response to the threat of communism, but conservatives always wanted to tear it apart.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply