It is worth mentioning that China is heavily investing in biotechnology and they are getting genuinely good at the more commodified parts of the industry. This blog post [1] is long and aimed at a biotech expert audience, but one summary line that stands out is that "the drug industry is having its own DeepSeek Moment" [2].
To that end, I believe that this is the time to invest in the US biotechnology ecosystem so that we remain competitive with China. The ongoing crisis at the NIH is antithetical to this goal, as Derek Lowe's blog posts describe.
Honestly it's odd and out-of-touch to be motivated by being "competitive with China". Who cares? If you are a normal US resident, you care about improving the lives of you and your community, not competing against some far-away nebulous group of people whom you have never met and will never interact with. All while big brother is telling you that those far-away strangers are somehow your enemies. It makes sense as a rhetorical way to motivate action, but it's rather simple, short-sighted, manipulative, and divorced from reality for 99% of people.
I also reject the notion that progress is a zero-sum game, that we have to "compete" at all, that there needs to be a winner and a loser here. We could just as well work with others to improve the lives of us and our communities. Why isn't the notion "cooperate with China to uplift all"? Perhaps releasing your models under a MIT license is actually the right move here that is in everyone's best interest, perhaps the US should be following their lead?
How does the "competition is good" crowd around here come to the conclusion that spurring a competitive mindset is wrong when it comes to international affairs?
Is it a slippery slope argument with apocalypse war at the end of it? Or something else?
Sounds good, but in the end possession of sovereign territory is a zero-sum game. Perhaps you could convince the Chinese Communist Party to stop trying to seize it from our allies? Because allowing China to dominate the Indo-Pacific Region certainly won't benefit normal US residents in the long run.
The problem is what can be done? The usual arrangement of letter writing or donating and voting is just more of the same cycle.
I'm not by any means in favor of what's going on, but some steam has to be let out of the system. And the real problem is trust in our institutions. What can be done about that?
My thoughts exactly. I certainly have throes of people on Facebook complaining about this, but what shall I, the individual, do about this?
I have my causes to which I devote great time and personal effort, but if I stopped my life for every minor disaster I would spend my life shaking my fist at my computer.
I quite like my life and I don’t intend to spend it getting rage baited by never-ending news cycles.
Give me an action to take, not an emotion to feel.
The institutions have lost trust by sneaking political decisions through under the guise of science. Science can tell you what will happen if you make a certain decision, but it can't tell you what decision to make because that is a fundamentally non scientific question. They can regain trust by acting in a trustworthy manner.
Chain yourself to a Tesla dealership. I'm serious. Getting Elon Musk to cry about how unfair he's being treated on TV amidst the damage he's doing will do more to hasten his departure than any letter or check you can write.
I've noticed on HN that any post involving less wholesome takes on the US admin and/or doge leadership become brigaded quite heavily with more lower quality discourse than the normal fare.
It's a really interesting phenomenon. And I'm kind of surprised the community allows it.
TBH, politics is and should be taken elsewhere because it is much more important than most of what we discuss here and therefore could easily crowd out everything else.
If things go for much longer it'll be too late. In many ways it already is. Scientists I know are changing careers. Thinking of moving. Other countries are thinking about how they can take advantage of the brain drain. Even if things turn around today so much damage has been done already that it'll be felt for a long time.
The only hope we have is that Trump is a true circus ring master. He cancels the previous admin things and reinstates them with his name and a republican spin.
>If you want to see the US rapidly lose its place in the tech world over the next decade, this is a great way to go about it.
Too late, unless DOGE is stopped now and Trump is impeached, the US will lose its lead in tech and health (pharma) and many other industries. Pure and simple. Already the smartest of the smart are leaving the US for Europe and probably China.
If this is allowed to continue, in 6 months to a year, the US will be isolated and a third rate economy. All it will have is a first class war machine, which will not bode well for the world.
And that won't last for much longer after losing those other sectors, either, as military dominance is a function of economic and technological superiority.
This whole topic has been done to death on HN, and this post doesn't contribute much that hasn't already been discussed extensively. Science underpins technology, but we've had 2-3 DOGE-related topics pinned to the front page at a time nonstop since the inauguration and the subject is bleeding incessantly into every other submission on the site.
Rest assured you'll have another 500+ comment rage fest in the near future, probably this week. This one just doesn't have enough going to feed the rage spiral—it's pretty blase compared to the dosage we've worked ourselves up to.
The post war scientific edifice is being shattered in a monumental act of vandalism.
It’s not just defunding childhood cancer research, but also dismantling the very idea of agency in the broader society. Science and basic research are worth pursuing. And the cost is a pittance.
This reminds me of something Alan Kay (of Xerox PARC and Apple fame) wrote when talked about how those who profited from the results of research have not “paid it forward” through funding future research:
“As I pointed out in a previous email, Engelbart couldn't get funding from the very people who made fortunes from his inventions.
“It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact.
“It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process.”
No, this isn't about oligarchs. This is about sadists some of whom happen to be oligarchs whose singular goal is to make the non-MAGA sad. It is working.
How do we know what projects are worth funding? Anything that labels itself science? Is sociology science and basic research? Do we fund people instead of projects? How do you get in the group?
These grants are competitively reviewed by experts in their fields, and are quite hard to get. Even twenty years ago getting an NIH R01 was considered an important career accomplishment.
Now, as to the topics being funded, the broad strokes are set by Congress, which is why much of the funding goes to medical research since pretty much everyone likes the idea of better treatments for things like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. If there was an entire field they considered unnecessary, the legal process would be working with Congress to either remove it entirely or put in restrictions. They aren’t doing that, of course, because that would force people to actually go on the record voting for something specific and that usually exposes that “junk science” claims are deceptive.
I can’t read between the lines you’re drawing. Are you trying to say that unless we can make perfectly efficient funding decisions, we should fund nothing?
> The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals, the need to find new ways to generate domestic capital, rising enthusiasm about the potential results mass mobilization might produce
Because, many autocrats do this, a recent example is the Cultural Revolution in China. It took 50 years and a lot of hard work for China to recover from that.
Destroying the educational system allows these people to consolidate and maintain power.
1. It’s about the culture wars and also “evening the score” against opponents of Trump and MAGA. The Trump administration seems to be hellbent on “sticking it” to people, groups, institutions, and even nations that opposed him. Scientists and academics in general are on his hit list. There has always been an anti-intellectual bent on American society, but never have I seen it weaponized like this. Moreover, it’s unlikely that such policies will face blowback among Trump’s voting base. There are conservative scientists and academics whose careers have been upended by these moves, but they are a minority, and there aren’t enough of them to significantly erode the GOP’s electability.
2. It’s also about power and control. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” and Trump and his administration are reveling in their abilities to withhold federal dollars (paid for with the tax monies from all American taxpayers, Trump- and non-Trump voter alike) from targeted agencies and institutions unless they meet whatever diktats they demand.
It’s a scary time for science in America now. Science is already dealing with the “publish-or-perish” culture of academia, the fact that academics are pressured to raise recurrent streams of grant money in order to earn tenure, and the fact that industrial labs are increasingly driven by short-term business pursuits instead of longer-term, more speculative projects. These disruptive freezes of NIH and NSF funds, as well as the targeted attacks on universities such as Columbia and UPenn over culture war matters, are reckless and destructive. If this does not stop soon, this could set back American science and research for decades.
The universities took sides in the culture war instead of remaining neutral educational institutions like they are supposed to be. I have little sympathy for them now that the other side is firing back. I don't want to see valuable research at these universities cut back either, but they need to take their share of the blame and remove the political cancer eating them alive. It's not the physics department that's drawing fire from the Trump administration.
The biggest motivation IMO is just punishing universities. The first move cutting overhead costs made this pretty clear to me. It was a shrewd move: if you squint, and use no critical thinking, you could be convinced they’ll still fund science all the same but are forcing university bureaucracies to be more “efficient”. In practice it’s just a massive cut to research universities, cause they’re viewed as enemies of the current ascendant right.
The other thing, IMO, is that it’s admitting we have no longer have any aspiration to technical innovation. If the tech oligarchs actually depended on hiring “the best and brightest,” they’ve be fighting this tooth and nail. Instead, they’re perfectly happy to destroy the education pipeline because they no longer need to make good products. They’ve attained monopoly status: all they need are lobbyists and a good legal team, the quality of their product is irrelevant. (The only spot where they still seem to be competing is “AI”).
I think your first paragraph is closer to the truth. Going after the "commanding heights" of progressivism is the goal. That's also why the federal bureaucracy is being targeted.
The two broad things I see are that academia has for years been claimed to be an extreme-left wing indoctrination complex, increasingly broadly targeted as things like climate change denial became Republican loyalty tests, and medicine became a special focus as anti-vaccination became a core belief. This works as a political ad telling people that they’re really hurting their enemies.
The other big goal is probably financial: they really want to give rich people tax cuts, and there’s no way to do that without cutting social programs like Medicaid which even their voters want left untouched. They appear to be continuing to claim that there is so much waste and fraud that they’ll be able to pay for it by cutting that, and hoping that people will be distracted until it’s too late. Based on the 2017 version, I’m expecting some kind of time-delay where the tax cuts kick in immediately but cuts aren’t forced until after some very “optimistic” growth predictions fail to materialize.
My LO has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's officially for 5 years. Memory was lost, didn't remember his mother, or past life, acted like a 12 yr old. he was 75, He had some terrible night as he kept asking to go to the bathroom and get up at night. The doctor prescribed a sleeping pill (zolpidem), but it had a very bad side effect on him (delusions and hallucinations) and we decided not to give it any more and went for the Neuro X program that was introduced to us by his primary care doctor, he was on the Neuro X program for Alzheimer’s disease from Uine Health Centre for 6 months. The treatment relieved symptoms significantly, After the treatment he’s all of a sudden back active again, almost all his symptoms are gone, no signs of agitations, his sleeps pattern are back to normal. His memory loss has greatly improved and he tells stories about his past life, we got the Neuro X program from uinehealthcentre. com. I want to clarify that my comment is not a paid promotion or any form of advertisement. I am absolutely confident that this program offers a viable solution and hope someone find it helpful.
Readit News
To that end, I believe that this is the time to invest in the US biotechnology ecosystem so that we remain competitive with China. The ongoing crisis at the NIH is antithetical to this goal, as Derek Lowe's blog posts describe.
[1] https://centuryofbio.com/p/commoditization [2] https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/the-drug-industry-is-havin...
I also reject the notion that progress is a zero-sum game, that we have to "compete" at all, that there needs to be a winner and a loser here. We could just as well work with others to improve the lives of us and our communities. Why isn't the notion "cooperate with China to uplift all"? Perhaps releasing your models under a MIT license is actually the right move here that is in everyone's best interest, perhaps the US should be following their lead?
Is it a slippery slope argument with apocalypse war at the end of it? Or something else?
Science underpins technology, people.
If you want to see the US rapidly lose its place in the tech world over the next decade, this is a great way to go about it.
The problem is what can be done? The usual arrangement of letter writing or donating and voting is just more of the same cycle.
I'm not by any means in favor of what's going on, but some steam has to be let out of the system. And the real problem is trust in our institutions. What can be done about that?
I have my causes to which I devote great time and personal effort, but if I stopped my life for every minor disaster I would spend my life shaking my fist at my computer.
I quite like my life and I don’t intend to spend it getting rage baited by never-ending news cycles.
Give me an action to take, not an emotion to feel.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
It's a really interesting phenomenon. And I'm kind of surprised the community allows it.
Too late, unless DOGE is stopped now and Trump is impeached, the US will lose its lead in tech and health (pharma) and many other industries. Pure and simple. Already the smartest of the smart are leaving the US for Europe and probably China.
If this is allowed to continue, in 6 months to a year, the US will be isolated and a third rate economy. All it will have is a first class war machine, which will not bode well for the world.
And that won't last for much longer after losing those other sectors, either, as military dominance is a function of economic and technological superiority.
This whole topic has been done to death on HN, and this post doesn't contribute much that hasn't already been discussed extensively. Science underpins technology, but we've had 2-3 DOGE-related topics pinned to the front page at a time nonstop since the inauguration and the subject is bleeding incessantly into every other submission on the site.
Rest assured you'll have another 500+ comment rage fest in the near future, probably this week. This one just doesn't have enough going to feed the rage spiral—it's pretty blase compared to the dosage we've worked ourselves up to.
Dead Comment
It’s not just defunding childhood cancer research, but also dismantling the very idea of agency in the broader society. Science and basic research are worth pursuing. And the cost is a pittance.
https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/
“As I pointed out in a previous email, Engelbart couldn't get funding from the very people who made fortunes from his inventions.
“It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact.
“It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process.”
Now, as to the topics being funded, the broad strokes are set by Congress, which is why much of the funding goes to medical research since pretty much everyone likes the idea of better treatments for things like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. If there was an entire field they considered unnecessary, the legal process would be working with Congress to either remove it entirely or put in restrictions. They aren’t doing that, of course, because that would force people to actually go on the record voting for something specific and that usually exposes that “junk science” claims are deceptive.
Why would anyone just destroy scientific research in their own country?
What do they hope to gain from this?
> The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals, the need to find new ways to generate domestic capital, rising enthusiasm about the potential results mass mobilization might produce
I thought that only happened in socially backward, ideology-riddled, far-off places like Cambodia or China. Not advanced Western democracies.
In MAGA land, educational institutions are coded as woke and DEI infested.
Destroying the educational system allows these people to consolidate and maintain power.
2. It’s also about power and control. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” and Trump and his administration are reveling in their abilities to withhold federal dollars (paid for with the tax monies from all American taxpayers, Trump- and non-Trump voter alike) from targeted agencies and institutions unless they meet whatever diktats they demand.
It’s a scary time for science in America now. Science is already dealing with the “publish-or-perish” culture of academia, the fact that academics are pressured to raise recurrent streams of grant money in order to earn tenure, and the fact that industrial labs are increasingly driven by short-term business pursuits instead of longer-term, more speculative projects. These disruptive freezes of NIH and NSF funds, as well as the targeted attacks on universities such as Columbia and UPenn over culture war matters, are reckless and destructive. If this does not stop soon, this could set back American science and research for decades.
The other thing, IMO, is that it’s admitting we have no longer have any aspiration to technical innovation. If the tech oligarchs actually depended on hiring “the best and brightest,” they’ve be fighting this tooth and nail. Instead, they’re perfectly happy to destroy the education pipeline because they no longer need to make good products. They’ve attained monopoly status: all they need are lobbyists and a good legal team, the quality of their product is irrelevant. (The only spot where they still seem to be competing is “AI”).
The other big goal is probably financial: they really want to give rich people tax cuts, and there’s no way to do that without cutting social programs like Medicaid which even their voters want left untouched. They appear to be continuing to claim that there is so much waste and fraud that they’ll be able to pay for it by cutting that, and hoping that people will be distracted until it’s too late. Based on the 2017 version, I’m expecting some kind of time-delay where the tax cuts kick in immediately but cuts aren’t forced until after some very “optimistic” growth predictions fail to materialize.
Dead Comment