pritchardjr.bsky.social
Bewildered vagabond and student of the stars. Professor of uncertain opinions. Imperial Astrophysicist.
(Opinions mine, not employers)
243 posts
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286 following
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That would help definitely. Here part of the idea here is pooling grant funding to allow long contracts. I guess a group of ~3 PIs might currently sustain 1 PDRA. But the PDRA would have to move between projects & sub-fields to work on what was funded and maybe not have specific domain knowledge.
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I’m not sure of that. It would probably lead to considerable loss of independence for postdocs - who would move between PIs/projects frequently. Firing postdocs would become far more of a thing. And I doubt postdoc salaries would get any better.
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This is why so many of the federal workers I spoke to were stunned by the Trump administration’s actions. Keeping the US the #1 science and technology leader has never been a partisan issue. No one predicted the wholesale assault on these foundations of American prosperity. 8/
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Is there some reason this new manifesto isn’t linked in this story? That seems a weird oversight. It would be good to read it.
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Interesting post. The failure to maintain key capacity to be able to scale up dramatically at future need is particularly concerning.
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Nice. Competition of the peers.
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Also a shame to see so many of the places I thought highly of in the 30 years war end up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. But I do look forward to visiting Thuringia.
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Pottery helped me through my PhD. It was joyful to spend some time with hands in warm clay making misshapen pots with no expectation of excellence.
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That would be a fine thing…
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Yeah. I just encountered that ADS was down too. A world without ADS would be bit bleak…
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It’s a great opportunity to impact things for the better either way! :)
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Congratulations! I assume anyway. Deaning seems a mixed blessing and curse.
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I mean it’s nothing like the bonkers US situation, but still…
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Have fun! It’s a lot.
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I think ArXiv is more part of the longer term question of is it really a good idea to increasingly entrust preserving the scientific literature to a single organisation in a single country. Low level worry for now, but rising slowly.
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This crossed my mind when the arXiv mirrors were shut down last year. It makes sense cost wise and technically, but does make everything a bit single locale-dependent.