It’s a big jump to assume competence in targeting half of all science funding. As you saw in my link above they eliminated an entire graduate class of biomedical researchers. That’s a few dozen lifetimes of research that won’t be done now, delaying breakthroughs
What’s the alternative if you believe we can’t sustain the funding? Who is competent enough to decide whether “a whole class” of biomedical researchers are worth spending public money on or not? These aren’t easy questions with happy answers.
And if I am tuned in at all enough to take a guess at the impetus, it would be “why are we giving exorbitant grants to academic institutions where 90% of the money goes to support their administrative process instead of actually fund grad students doing research?” And the message from the government might be “cut the fat” and the response from the academic institution is either “no” and the students are collateral, or it’s “yes” and the college, not the gov’t, decided the specific grad program wasn’t valuable or important enough to retain.
This is happening concurrently with a 2.5 trillion dollar tax cut for the billionaire class. So if your concern is with the deficit then maybe reconsider doing that.
The basic science research that’s being cut is responsible for the US being at the technological forefront. Cutting that pipeline will mean that industry will fall behind.
The administrative costs allow researchers to focus on research and not on administration. Also if that’s your issue then maybe don’t pull the rug from these institutions by canceling grants that were already approved. The financial urgency does not warrant it. You can have a conversation about admin costs that takes place over a year or two. That’s not what’s happening here.
But that doesn't mean the administration is anti-science. It means they believe the situation is dire enough to justify drastic cuts. And that is a policy call regardless of your scientific beliefs.
In other words, one can reasonably take a position of “don’t publicly fund addressing an issue even if research supports it existing and even if that same individual espouses the conclusion of the research and might fund it privately”.
Call that what you want, but it is not a grand scheme to undermine science and replace it with fake propaganda.
The science projects are a tiny fraction of the budget. Cancel all of them and you won't make a dent in the deficit.
Add to that the administration's deliberate rejection of climate science and putting an anti-vaxxer in charge of the health department, and there is no way to avoid the straightforward judgment of "anti science". This is ideology and nothing else .
It’s a big jump to assume competence in targeting half of all science funding. As you saw in my link above they eliminated an entire graduate class of biomedical researchers. That’s a few dozen lifetimes of research that won’t be done now, delaying breakthroughs
What’s the alternative if you believe we can’t sustain the funding? Who is competent enough to decide whether “a whole class” of biomedical researchers are worth spending public money on or not? These aren’t easy questions with happy answers.
And if I am tuned in at all enough to take a guess at the impetus, it would be “why are we giving exorbitant grants to academic institutions where 90% of the money goes to support their administrative process instead of actually fund grad students doing research?” And the message from the government might be “cut the fat” and the response from the academic institution is either “no” and the students are collateral, or it’s “yes” and the college, not the gov’t, decided the specific grad program wasn’t valuable or important enough to retain.
This is happening concurrently with a 2.5 trillion dollar tax cut for the billionaire class. So if your concern is with the deficit then maybe reconsider doing that.
The basic science research that’s being cut is responsible for the US being at the technological forefront. Cutting that pipeline will mean that industry will fall behind.
The administrative costs allow researchers to focus on research and not on administration. Also if that’s your issue then maybe don’t pull the rug from these institutions by canceling grants that were already approved. The financial urgency does not warrant it. You can have a conversation about admin costs that takes place over a year or two. That’s not what’s happening here.
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Zero effort was put into deciding what is wasteful. They just cancelled everything.
But that doesn't mean the administration is anti-science. It means they believe the situation is dire enough to justify drastic cuts. And that is a policy call regardless of your scientific beliefs.
In other words, one can reasonably take a position of “don’t publicly fund addressing an issue even if research supports it existing and even if that same individual espouses the conclusion of the research and might fund it privately”.
Call that what you want, but it is not a grand scheme to undermine science and replace it with fake propaganda.
The science projects are a tiny fraction of the budget. Cancel all of them and you won't make a dent in the deficit.
Add to that the administration's deliberate rejection of climate science and putting an anti-vaxxer in charge of the health department, and there is no way to avoid the straightforward judgment of "anti science". This is ideology and nothing else .