Comment by spwa4
9 hours ago
... who are unfortunately backed by a large part of the US population who have elected them on exactly that promise, for various reasons. From fear of vaccines to having various other nations freeride on US research.
That so many people think like this is the underlying problem.
The public overwhelmingly supports NIH-funded research. https://www.aacr.org/about-the-aacr/newsroom/news-releases/n...
The issue, I think, is a large number of people don't realize the NIH or NIS exists or know what they do.
I think most people support them once the realize exactly what they are doing. How could you not when "They research treatments for diseases" is basically all they do.
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> The Great Cause diverts all the money to itself.
Be very specific about exactly what you mean here, with links to reputable sources. You're making extraordinarily strong accusations; vagueness does not suffice to convince.
Dignity is the fundamental problem that they're bemoaning. When scientists and other intellectual positions are funded beyond scraps and subsistence wages, they use some of the breathing room to start to asking questions about societal power structures. When they're afforded political voices, they start applying their critiques to how their own institutions are run - rather than keeping their heads down as "efficient" worker bees for the business vectoralists. And critiques/conclusions where they've gone cloyingly overboard then serve as convenient straw men that demonstrate how "out of touch" they are from "the real world".
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