Comment by timr
13 hours ago
> If the scientists haven't left science behind after an experience like this, probably nothing will....I think I should feel angry, but I just feel sad for all the humans involved here, I hope they manage to come out with a more positive perspective than I'm able to here.
As someone who spent far too much of my life pursuing that goal, I have an unpopular opinion: US science needs some cuts.
The first project (the space telescope) makes me sad, simply because it's pure science that probably wouldn't get done any other way. And it probably costs nothing, in the grand scheme of things. See also: climate data gathering, oceanology, etc. I don't support cutting things based on politics in any direction.
But as you go down the article, you quickly run into projects that are, frankly, a gigantic waste of money -- like "determinants of health inequality" work which burns through money repeating things we already know (racism is bad! poor people are sicker!) and accomplishing exactly nothing:
> Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD)...wanted to increase research into the social determinants of health—structural racism in home-loan practices meant that nonwhite people got iced out of home ownership and generational wealth, which forced them to live in neighborhoods closer to toxic sites such as factories and highways, without sidewalks and amenities. “It’s a challenging field to quantify, but we’re getting to a place in science where we can start asking these questions,” Norton says. Now the topic is verboten in U.S. grants. “That whole line of research has been shut off and censored because some people find the words ‘structural racism’ offensive.”
It's laughably absurd to claim that "we can start asking these questions", because I'm here to tell you that ineffectual 'scientists' were doing the same research when I was a graduate student, which wasn't yesterday. This kind of stuff has always had ample funding, while legitimate researchers have to scrimp and wheedle to do anything novel. It sucked. It's not "censorship" to eliminate it, and the bureaucratic imperative -- along with being accused of "racism" if you cut it, as in this article -- essentially guarantees that it lumbers on for decades.
Even in "harder" sciences, it's really a case-by-case basis. You see so much questionable science getting huge funding, simply because it's done by a consortium of big names, in trendy areas. Frankly, there were many days where I felt/feel that the US scientific funding process should just randomize grants who meet a basic competency threshold. It would be a much-needed revolution for younger scientists, though of course, it would also lead to endless squealing from beneficiaries of the current system. One of the side-effects of cutting any budgets related to science is that it leads to articles exactly like this one, quoting the people who lost funding.
So while I'm saddened that a lot good projects are having a hard time, if it leads to a more focused funding of actual, legitimate science, I'm largely in favor -- even if "Scientific American" doesn't approve.
You seem strongly in favor science that you understand, and opposed to research that you don't take an interest in or have read.
I don't think you'd accept news media accounts of space science. But you're accepting their synopses of social science without looking deeper.
Perhaps I am wrong and you're actually an expert on sociology or some related field. But you are not accurately describing how the field works and what it does. It's hard to make the case for it when you're willing to dismiss its existence based on such a limited view of it.
> You seem strongly in favor science that you understand, and opposed to research that you don't take an interest in or have read.
Just say it the clear way, so that everyone can see what you're doing: if I don't like it, it must be because I don't understand it.
I'm not well-versed in social science either so I don't have a slam dunk here, but I'd be very willing to bet it's more involved than you're portraying.
To flip it on your space telescope, another one? They've been doing this for years, they're just going to tell us there's a lot of galaxies out there, boring.
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Perhaps better than "if I don't like it, it deserves to have its funding cut"
The replication crisis in science is particularly bad within the social sciences, and also particularly bad within sociology. When experts within a field are unable to converge on a result, it's pretty decent evidence that the field has a major problem. And for sociology, the problem isn't that the math is too hard, it's that the practice of sociology is pretty much a political exercise masquerading as science.
> The replication crisis in science is particularly bad within the social sciences
This is true. Your conclusion is false and prejudicial. The problem is better characterized as social science is being harder to do well than we tohught.
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Do you have a specific example of a wasteful STEM research project that was cut?
My (perhaps wrong) impression was that wastefulness was given as the reason for making the cuts, but that the cuts were done broadly and indiscriminately [1].
In other words, the actions don't match the stated goal of reducing wastefulness. They seem more like a punishment for the members of all scientific institutions, and deterrence for curiosity-driven research.
[1] For example, the cuts to the STEM grants & projects didn't seem attached to any evidence of said projects' wastefulness.
> work which burns through money repeating things we already know (racism is bad! poor people are sicker!) and accomplishing exactly nothing
Why do we need to study the sun? We already know it goes around the Earth.
Flippant, but the point should be clear. Some of the most taken for granted things can also be the ones least studied... And least understood. Wouldn't you like to know why being poor leads to worse outcomes? Perhaps confounding factors?
Yes, we should fund grants to make sure that the heliocentric model is still wrong.
I just want to say that what you say makes a lot of sense to me and I am happy people like you are pushing against the narrative.
Yours is an "ends justify the means" argument, but are you comfortable with the way these cuts were done? Would you approve so robustly of your own research being cut with a keyword search for government-unapproved terms?
> Yours is an "ends justify the means" argument, but are you comfortable with the way these cuts were done?
Generally no. But I also think that certain classes of keyword filtering were probably a good idea. Filtering for any grants with "structural determinants of health" and reviewing them intensively with the goal of defunding 99%, for example, is probably a good idea.
> Would you approve so robustly of your own research being cut with a keyword search for government-unapproved terms?
I mean, there's zero chance my research would have fallen afoul of any such terms, but let me put it this way: my field was completely up-ended by DeepMind. They not only won a Nobel for that work in record time, but used an approach so severely out of fashion that it couldn't really get any attention.
I guess I'm saying: I don't think it would have been so bad to cut most of it, if it meant that we got more actual diversity in the field.
> I mean, there's zero chance my research would have fallen afoul of any such terms, but let me put it this way: my field was completely up-ended by DeepMind. They not only won a Nobel for that work in record time, but used an approach so severely out of fashion that it couldn't really get any attention.
Someone else mentioned that a project got cut because they used the term "engendered".
The keywords search cuts were not exactly skillfully enacted.
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Like that program to study the mating patterns of sterile flies in Panama, right? They cut that because it was a $300k waste of money. Do you know what happened after they cut it? The US got a $300m infestation of those flies.
How does it feel to spread miss-information on internet? The Panama barrier was broken by screwworms 2 years before the cuts. It was dumb decision but didn't directly cause current infestation.
Thank you for providing your perspective. I really hope HN has a 'pre-vouch' button as I know your comment will be flagged in no time, even though it's quite articulated.
I believe it's a fairly common attitude. Thus far it doesn't seem to be down voted.
I wrote what I think of as a fairly coherent objection. I expect it to be voted down. Would you also recommend "pre vouching" for it?
You didn’t write a coherent objection, you just said I didn’t understand what I was talking about.
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As I expected, the comment I wanted to 'pre vouch' is dead and flagged now.
> I expect it to be voted down. Would you also recommend "pre vouching" for it?
I expected your comment is upvoted, as HN community generally does to 'you don't know what you're talking about' kind of comment, so no.
Medium effort flame bait
A fair bit of "science" is about providing training to the following generations. Sure, your example isn't going to turn up any new insights into structural racism but it is something that you can point grad students at to learn how to capture data.
Diabetes is getting worse, just saying that "we looked at poor people's problems 50 years ago so don't need to look at them again" isn't going to flag it up.
> Diabetes is getting worse, just saying that "we looked at poor people's problems 50 years ago so don't need to look at them again" isn't going to flag it up.
Great! Do actual research into curing/treating/preventing diabetes. Do randomized trials on nutritional interventions in poor communities! Do any of a million other things that might actually affect the problem.
Do not: perform another observational study to see if poor people get diabetes more than rich people.
I agree that pure science should not be cut and prioritized. The more frustrating thing about the type of sociological research you critique is that it feels like that data already exists somewhere - between health insurance companies, google, social media, etc. We know that we can de-anonymize data to get very specific actionable data for advertising. American scientists should have a Mega API from Palantir to ask their questions as well, and it ultimately won't cost as much.
Side tangent, I wonder how much China does these kinds of sociological studies, and the differences in infra/how they conduct the research. Lord knows we're not the only ones getting fat over here.
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So where are researchers who want to study topics you don't personally like supposed to get funding, in your view?
> So where are researchers who want to study topics you don't personally like supposed to get funding, in your view?
I'm sorry, was I not clear enough? Bad research should not get funding. Or at least, it shouldn't get it for decades and decades, while producing no results [1].
One's desire to do research into irrelevant questions does not entitle you to support in the name of "science".
[1] I'm OK with some crap science getting funded if every renewal is random!
Just because the medical system hasn't adapted to the (frankly astounding) findings produced by SDOH research doesn't mean it's not valuable or should be stopped. The takeaway from SDOH is that social determinants are by far more powerful forces on people's health than actual medicine.
You would prefer we spend all of our money on the 10-15% of health outcomes determined by actual medical care and simply ignore the remainder, and you argue this from a point of "logic?"
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I understand you personally are of the opinion that it's bad research, but thank God you're not in charge of funding research, because I pay taxes too and I think it's good.
But that begs the question -- how do you determine what is relevent and irrelevant research, beyond just consulting your personal feelings? Because if you have a sure and nonbiased way to do that which will satisfy all the current stake holders (the entire tax base and US population), I think everyone would agree we should that!
But if you don't have a proposal beyond "I don't like it, it's bad" then I'm sorry, the current system with all its flaws (delegating funding decisions to renowned experts in their respective fields rather than the sensibilities of the HN comment section) is far superior to that.
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From anywhere except from the tax payer. Lord knows there are academic institutions sitting on a lot of cash.
Why not, I pay taxes too and I want researchers to study things you don't like. I don't want to fund the military, should they get their funding from Lockheed? Lord knows they have enough...
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What the fuck
Intelligent response.
America is facing a multi-generational technical decline never before seen that will do irreparable harm across all fields of research, let alone the human cost especially borne by young scientists who have more to lose, and your grand insightful take is that well, some of it deserved to get cut, when you're not even the one making the decisions of which ones do receive funding.
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It's actually more contrusctive to outline what the post you both are replying to you don't like and more specifically why?
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