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Hacker News Hacker NewsIf you are politically connected, or stay in an narrow lane of approved work, you get your grant. But if you stray from the politically approved path, or appear disloyal to our First Citizen and the Party, then your grant will be canceled.
The remaining supporters of the incumbent party like to claim that they aren't actually doing anything worse than in the past, and if anything they are just cracking down on things that they see as subjectively bad, so it's fine. And there's an element of truth in that: so much of American policy for a long time has been subject to agency interpretation and judicial review, and there was always room for political maneuvering and corruption in the system. Where the truth becomes a lie is the omission that this is the systematic ramping up from something that happens occasionally in a mostly-functioning system, to something that happens constantly and is systematically designed to facilitate corruption and politicization.
I don't think any practicing scientist of any political persuasion will think these are good for science.
Science progresses by sharing knowledge openly and publicly, so others can evaluate it, criticize it, and build on it. These severe restrictions on collaboration, publication, and public communication will damage science's naturally open, merit-based culture.
We will all suffer due to lost discoveries--maybe not today, but over years and decades.
Hope china can step up and fill the gap.
The amount of capability that America is burning is impressive. I suspect that people outside of academia are not as alarmed, since its not part of daily life.
However it matters the same way that a drug discovery today is life saving 10 years down the line, after its gone through all the processes to go to market.
Reply by Ben Franklin, when asked about what kind of govt the newly independent United States should have. The words seem particularly fitting in current times.
How can anyone realistically plan resources, staff, whatever, if they have no idea it’ll be funded for a month or 20 years? They really want to destroy American ingenuity, science, all of it.
Just a bunch of white nationalist drones existing to keep the engine going is what they want.
Science and Educational purposes are valid 501(c)(3) purposes. A donation to a 501(c)(3) that funds open-source scientific software, public STEM education, basic research, science grants, or public-interest tech research can be deductible.
Up to 60% of Adjusted Gross Income can be tax-deductible as charitable contributions to a qualified 501(c)(3) with itemization, depending on the contribution type.
This would create a non-partisan defined/dedicated non-profit funding layer with serious governance that will benefit all sides. Might be possible to go global.
This would need serious structure: independent board, conflict-of-interest rules, grant review, public reporting, no private benefit, and probably fiscal sponsorship first.
Maybe this deserves a separate Ask HN to avoid derailing this thread: would people here actually support or help design a 501(c)(3)-style vehicle for public-benefit science and technology funding?
This is not just picking which ideas the government supports. This sounds like it’s taking all the “fun” out of having grant funding.
Sure, that’s a flip remark, but doesn’t this have a similar sense of arguments against other government funded programs?
~SNAP food assistance is raising food prices~ [1] or ~SNAP food assistance is my tax dollars going towards anyone who says they’re hungry.~ [2]
And don’t forget to mention the replication crisis.
~Public funded grants let scientists go to parties and publish junk science.~
The cynical would argue it’s proof the scientific community is filled with charlatans milking a system that can’t police itself.
You could argue peer review has become a mechanism to encourage incrementalism. That it doesn’t reward big leaps. And the public isn’t getting ROI on science funding compared to 50 years ago.
Peer review is a closed system of expertise that doesn’t let you challenge the core tenants - some might say theology - of the field. It’s basically a cartel for keeping a field of study alive, regardless of its value. True innovation happens when people collaborate outside their fields.
Steelman aside, there probably are better ways to solve this problem systematically than just let a politically appointee have final say. If we were serious about this problem, smart people thinking about scientific policy probably have some great ideas that are not being listened to.
(Unless you're doing science for military development. Then the funding spigot is open.)
And to those who say "oh, it's the same as it was before, just different ideologies" -- no, it is not at all the same. Not even comparable.
it will take longer than this decade, maybe even next, to restore the brain loss and faith in secure jobs for research
basically this country will just become a highway of non-stop warehouses, alternating ICE prisons vs "AI" datacenters
science, medicine, all research and development just gone to other countries
They want to turn this place into a the real life version of idiocracy? So be it. The lay voter needs to see what voting badly does. They need to see consequences. The cure for cancer could be there in this research. WHO knows what could become of real mRNA research. But no. We just want to believe the world is 6k years old and some donor is gonna tell some begging scientists they get their funding or not.
What's Happening to Science in America
With this, I guess the US will end up as a third rate country much quicker.
Among other things this proposal attempts to prevent:
1. prevention of DEI related grants
2. prevention of grants promoting anti-american ideologies
3. prevention of gain-of-function research (think covid-19)
4. prevention of ai-powered social media censorship research
5. prevention of FEMA dollars going to help undocumented immigrants
6. prevention of foreign aid dollars being spent in africa on gender ideology
It would but restrictions directly into the grant awards give strong tools to the USG to suspend the grant and prevent the money being dispersed via a subrecipient.
From a naive perspective, this sounds a lot like the breeding ground for Lysenkoism (Stalin-approved). In that example, aligning science to the party line led to a couple of famines. I say naive because there were other factors at play (e.g. it was forbidden to criticize Lysenko's theories).
Science should be guided by science, not ideology.
So they’ll be sued. The theories will be tested and we’ll see exactly where the line is (eventually). And probably somewhere uncomfortable, given SCOTUS.
There are legitimate ways agency political appointees can set funding priorities. Like this year we’ll focus on Alzheimer’s. But of course, we should take the least charitable reading of this - that it’ll likely be used for shenanigans. Punish enemies. Award cronies. Go after junk science, etc.
Example: "They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats."
Cancel Haitian grants. And also round them up in deportation holding facilities.
I can only say Bravo to Americans who think this constant fighting is somehow going to help the country.
My question is now: Which company is gonna buy the IRS now?
It is all fascinating to me.
What is this, North Korea?
Having incentive to produce useful outcomes seems like it would be something folks would be in support of, but it appears many here think this is the end of the world just because it's Trump doing it. At least there's consistency in that regard. Le sigh.
This is far scarier than any single rule about research grants, and I'm not sure why nobody's talking about this.
The OMB writes the budget to enact federal policy. And critically, no federal regulation can exist with the OMB approving it. By making this appointment explicitly political, they have carte blanche to completely rewrite all federal regulations to be exclusively conservative ones. This would have been crazy to attempt before, but with Trump 2.0, this is the new norm.
One of the things they are doing right now (it's been approved and the rules are now active and legal, so it is now happening) is converting 50,000 civil servant jobs into political appointments. This means having a job in government no longer serves the whole nation, it's now an ideological function to serve a single political party. Literally weaponizes the federal government to punish opposing political views and enforce one view on everyone (there's no other point to political appointment). And if the party in charge ever changes, it now means everyone will be laid off and replaced. Every few years. So nothing will ever get done in government now, except for extreme short-term pushes for radical political agendas, because nobody will stay long enough to know how the government works to do anything else. Move fast and break things with the largest economy in the world, radical political agendas, and 380M people.
The OMB also can review and block all proposed legislation going to Congress, vet all official congressional testimony, and block any agency from publicly disagreeing with the President. Military generals, health officials, science experts, ecologists, intelligence directors... they can block all of them from giving any testimony to Congress. That's an actual power the OMB has.
They can also block money Congress has already allocated, meaning that your representatives in government are now completely useless, because whatever party is in the Executive can nerf anything your reps have passed. The Supreme Court could do something about it, but won't, because it's now a Conservative Supermajority. There is no reason for them to disagree because they already ideologically agree.
Finally, the OMB can issue a rule that every agency that wasn't officially under the Executive before, has to submit all its rules for Executive approval. Meaning the Executive would control all government agencies.
In any other context, in any other country, this would be called a single-party authoritarian coup. When they create rules that outlaw other political parties (that's what authoritarian governments do to retain single party control) - and assuming the democrats don't just give up - it will be the official start of civil war. Coming to you Fall 2028.
Sounds terrible, but is it? It incentivises high-impact research (otherwise politicians can't boast about it), and less research into trivialities that common sense says aren't worth the public funding.
Federal grants have always been subject to politics.
Sure, of course.
But to even ask the question presumes that politics isn’t already overriding science within the academy, just from a different direction.
If you want to be independent of the government, don't take money from the government. If you are mad because you don't agree with how the government is making decisions, say so. But don't pretend it has anything to do with "government overreach"