Comment by dwa3592
6 hours ago
My wife operates an optical trap (a sophisticated microscope, she uses it for studying gene/dna physical properties) and she's pretty good at working with that instrument. The number of people good at working that microscope are in the ballpark of 2000 (+- 1000) in the world! She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. We are moving out of the country at the end of August.
There are many biotech startups and private research labs thriving and paying high salaries with excellent benefits for that specialty right now - focused on genetic testing, editing, and longevity. Before moving abroad, widening the search outside of academia and considering moving internally might be worthwhile.
I'm surviving on consulting income for a wide variety of clients right now in this space, and let me tell you it's brutal and extremely difficult to get entry to this space for people that don't have a wide network and lots of industry experience. Academic experience typically doesn't count.
In addition there's a severe "passion tax" for these sorts of jobs, the salary difference for a "Data Scientist, Computational Biology", and "Computational Biologist" is pretty big, and hiring is also brutal.
I know a ton of extremely talented people who have been locked out of employment for a long time now. The high interest environment means that biotech investing has been hit extremely hard, as biotech is even higher risk than most software and AI spending (thanks for the correction, Schlagbohrer). Pharma companiees with big hits, like Lilly with GLP1 agonists, are hiring a bit as they try to move into the modern era of pharma with lots of AI tools, but it's still brutal.
> The high interest environment means that biotech investing has been hit extremely hard
I don't think this reasoning can work. To the extent these things are directly related, the relationship would have to be: returns on investment are at an all-time high --> more investing than usual.
Did you mean to write, high interest rate environment?
I don't know if it's so much that talented people are being locked out, as much as it is that communities everywhere, not just industry, are requiring a level of people skills that academic people lack but nonetheless thrive without.
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We are not convinced that we will be happy in the industry and part of it is the visa issues. She currently has a valid visa until 2029 but she just doesn't want it anymore.
Why would they want to stay in a country actively trying to dismantle democracy and science if they have another option?
Because it hasn't had as much time to dismantle democracy as all of the other democracies in the world have. lol
A lot of people in academia are mission driven - they don't care about the money, they care about the application of their work to benefit humanity and don't want to exist as a cog in a private corporation's profits. I think this mentality of "scientists just want to get paid a lot of money" is contributing to the anti-science views that are so pervasive in America these days. Some people are motivated by more than just profit.
And/or corporate culture has some major drawbacks compared to universities and national labs.
Why assume that this is about finding a job?
I happily had a job in academia in the US. Probably what most would call “successful” after exiting a startup and getting a PhD I was US engineering faculty for 8 years.
We picked up our keys to our new house in another country a few days ago and I start next month with a faculty promotion. Many of my colleagues are or are looking to follow.
Just out of curiosity, where did you move?
promotion is a good reason to move. good luck!
You are a fool if you think these companies are hiring enough to meet the labor needs. So many Phds I know are looking for work and yes they’ve applied to probably 500 jobs mostly in industry.
> considering moving internally
does that get you a new fed administration that isn't idiotically anti-science?
well lot of ppl are always moving out of america but few actually do. thats obvious by now.
Emigration out of the US right now is at historic, record-breaking levels. Have any other uninformed comments you'd like to make?
When words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom. -Confucius
I've read that asia is leading the world in scientific discoveries and therefore Mandarin gets the naming rights. That's privilege and the reason English is fleeting
I've read that too. Yet, I've also read stuff like [0]. The truth is probably somewhere it between
[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01902-0
where is everybody going ?
Relocation to the European Union is at all-time highs.
Canada, Europe, China.
not much talent is going from US to Canada, it's almost always the reverse if you look at top canadian universities
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Are people really moving to China? A country that will never give outsiders citizenship?
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where in Canada? i've _never_ heard that, but if so, great.
Canada? For lower salary and lower life quality?
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I'm in Australia.
And do you meet other people who recently moved, or talking about moving there too ?
where to?
My family is looking at Missouri to Spain.
Why Spain: Expat communities, cost of living, friendly visa options, beautiful climate.
Why leave: Sick of U.S. politics and the way it directly and indirectly affects us and how difficult it is to escape from it - it’s a major point of conversations with family and friends, it’s on the local radio, local subreddit, local social media pages, etc.
Also, I have over $7k in personal medical costs annually (out of pocket). That’s just me, not my family cumulatively. For Ostomy supplies, iron infusions, and more.
Man Spain is mentioned as a top destination with expat influencers, youtubers and now even on hn. I get the feeling that something is going to crack at some point. You must be pricing out locals and they can't be happy about that.
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americans pretending they aren't immigrants by using the term expat always cracks me up
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From what I understand, Spain has their own set of politics worth losing sleep over; perhaps as an expat you won't be as attached though.
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Housing is really expensive in Spain and Portugal right now. I live in BC and mid/small cities there are actually more expensive than here
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This is what happens when we are $40 Trillion in debt.
I'm sorry that scientific projects are being cut but are we supposed to keep funding everything ad infinitum regardless of how our economy and our future is going to be crippled by debt?
EVERYONE is going to be crying about their projects being cut and there's no good way to do it where everyone is going to be happy. Some people are going to lose their jobs, and that sucks but there is no other way except having the courage to cut funding. We have to cut everything and then reorganize at a lower budget number and the reallocate funds to the most important projects.
We can't keep funding everything. You may not care about our debt but I certainly do and there's more than enough of us around that care. Our descendants are going to be fucked and that's not fair. I'm sorry you're losing your job but soon over half our budget is going to be used to pay off interest on our debt. Just the interest and not the principal. This is an economic crisis.
Funny, because while science and research funding is being cut…the debt is still rising faster than ever, because I still see taxpayer money flying towards useless things more than ever.
social security and medicare?
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It's an economic crisis where they cut taxes and start wars though
Starting wars was stupid and dumb and I hope the next administration cuts military just as severely but cutting spending severely isn't wrong.
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Some of the science spending was to help us prevent catastrophe and save our descendants.
The GOP cut a measly $60 million per year for scientific monitoring instruments in the ocean, yet are increasing spending by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on things like military spending, White House security, and deporting good people they call “illegals”.
They haven’t cut the national debt because they cut taxes on the rich. Taxing the rich could pay for all the science and gradually pay down the debt. But it’s in the GOP interest to cut science to dumb down the population. Climate change is “fake” they say, meanwhile Fox acquired Roku (100+ million households), Paramount (MAGA) acquiring Warner Brothers, CBS, CNN, etc. Oligarchs taking over TikTok and their disinformation machine strengthens.
raise taxes on the rich, cut pentagon funding by 90% and you solved society
Cutting military should be done, yes. But everything needs to get cut.
Maybe you should complain about the other leeches on your economy, like, eg, the military.
Science funding is a minuscule part of the US budget
How much money has Trump just quite literally blown up in an idiotic, pointless war that has served no purpose other than granting Iran Billions in reparations?
What was that new number they were throwing around, 1.4 Trillion dollar budget?
But sure, let's worry about cutting funding to research institutes which were sucking the US dry with their budgets in the millions.
> She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become.
At least it's a good thing that we're able to a) observe and b) talk about and c) acknowledge openly(ish) that academic, mainstream, practicing "science" (including as visible to microscopists and all that entails) is currently a "mess".
This allows us to, eventually, address those issues (or die trying!).
Science used to move at a pace of one lifetime after another (pearl clutching 'til the end and confirmation bias and careers built on saving face and economic entrenchments all that).
But I hypothesize that with AI, we can point to "a thing that is not a person with all that is bundled up with that" and say "look, maybe this other train of thought is worth entertaining". Not to say the AI is right. Ideas will stand or fall on their own merit. Just that an AI is not a person outside the field. Normally, an outsider says something, nobody listens. But, if an anonymous AI says something (of course, cleaned up for voice and concision and validated by a human as a first pass), the worst you can say is "ok prove it" or "here is where that is wrong". Instead of: deafening silence.
In other words, I hope AI augments our ability to have those hard conversations that need to be had. Without people losing their jobs due to their prior (understandable) errors, and within the spirit of always using the best available information.
I shared this optimistic indirect use-case for AI with (less technical) friends recently, and they literally were speechless and finally one person said "you're the only one who thinks that".
Am I right, though? There's a there there, isn't there?
There are less than zero theres there. This comment is negative there. It's not even here. It's nowhere.
No. AI is not doing science. And also no, science is not being held back by "pearl clutching" and "unwillingness to let brilliant non-science geniuses in."
While there are a lot of problems with how the journal model of publication has evolved over time, and AI has actually made that problem far worse, not better, the real threat and "mess" that science is in currently in the US is from the administration.
Science in the US used to be one of the world's best funded science communities, and also one with the most independence. That is currently being reversed at a startling pace, both in funding and independence. This is the mess science is in, and it's a great loss for the world. While US science leadership may not have been without issue, it was still a huge positive for humanity. It's not about AI.
Points taken and appreciated. Thanks.
It disheartens me a great deal to see how the US (in particular, but they are not alone) has turned its back on good science, largely, but not exclusively, on the back of populist politics.
Science has had waves, and people have over pushed its advances (for profit) and hidden some of its shortcomings (we can point to a lot of problems) and is going through a massive reckoning where its influence is being curtailed.
Probably (IMO) the biggest problem science has, is that people don't realise that the key to its strength isn't that it finds all these advances/truths, but that it's comfortable with the idea that we really don't know anything.
Fundamentally science says - this is the best understanding we have of the given data, AND, reiterating that this is what people miss, science absolutely accepts that a better understanding or fresh data can at any moment in time change things.
That confuses most people, they like their understanding of the world to be concrete.
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honestly my friend, i did not understand your comment.
I appreciate the feedback.
> We are moving out of the country at the end of August.
Is the assertion there are no places for her to enjoy doing what she's great at, without leaving the country, in private industry?
Genuinely curious.
The US is still dominant for research spending and high impact scientific publications and medicine. I too would be interested in where they think it would be better. Israel and South Korea are the only two that might provide more opportunities depending on the area of interest.
Nobody cares about what kind of microscope your wife is operating or for what. I don't get the point of another anecdote on the exact topic that has already been discussed at length in the article.