This is not good news. The Trump administration wants to radically change how science is done in this country.
On Tuesday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a report entitled “Science: A New Golden Age,” in which it lays out how it has viewed science, found it lacking, and believes the Trump administration is in the perfect position to fix things. It’s a bit unexpected coming from an administration that has been proposing crippling funding cuts to research and trying to enable political appointees to terminate grants awarded based on scientific merit.
The report presents itself as the spiritual successor of “Science, the Endless Frontier,” a policy document that laid out the case for government-funded science in the wake of World War II. The New Golden Age (SNGA) says that, while the concepts promoted by the original remain vital, the circumstances have changed such that we need major revisions to how the government is implementing things.
The result is an odd mix. It completely ignores or glosses over many things that the administration is doing to harm scientific progress. In some cases, it identifies issues that have already been discussed as problems within the scientific community. Elsewhere, it’s a mixture of political grievances, ideas without a solid intellectual foundation, and an injection of Silicon Valley’s perspective on innovation (Michael Kratsios, the director of the OSTP, formerly worked with Peter Thiel). As a result, it’s unlikely to have anything like the impact of “Science, the Endless Frontier.”
“Gold standard”? So he wants to buy some cheap crap from Home Depot, spray paint it gold, and call it science?
Jesus, but he made the oval office kitschy and cheap, and now he’s going to give science the same treatment.
do i get a prize for mentioning lysenkoism first?
Yes, Bébé, you get the highest prize like no one’s ever seen! I’s a bigly gold painted plaster star glued to your forehead by the magat-in-chief himself! (sarcasimus maximus)
Here’s where we all shout in unison: E.T.T.D.
ah yiss… who gets to be the golden boy of politicized junk science this time history repeats? rfk? jordan peterson? joe rogan?
Here’s Trumpian “science”:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/autism.html
Can we add Dr. Ozzzz to the list? He’s such a cheerleader for sciencey medical stuff. Unregulated, unapproved peptides anyone!
oh thiel how could i miss that it’s dracula thiel
We all know what this means.
Everything Trump touches, dies!!!
It isn’t the least bit complicated.
Actually they have and long ago at that.
This whole what causes autism is so mid 20th century.
We’ve known for decades what causes autism.
It is a lot of polygenic medical conditions with a high genetic component interacting with less well understood environmental factors. A few seconds with Google will answer that question.
The Trump regime has already done a huge amount of damage to US science.
It would take decades to recover and it probably won’t anyway.
My friend was a climate scientist in a nationally known department.
They all got their funding cut a year ago and have been scrambling to try and support their graduate students and postdocs long enough to finish their current projects.
She is probably going to drop out of science in mid career.
Her plans for next year are to teach a few classes and that is it. No money = No research.
This is happening everywhere.
Another scientist I know who got hit hard works for the EPA.
So far he is lucky. They haven’ tried to transfer him to Wyoming and hope he quits instead, which they did to some of the people he works with.
Science isn’t just an after thought. It is the main driver of our economic progress and our civilization.
By attacking science, the Trump loons are also attacking…the USA.
Not exactly Versailles, is it?
The US – Nightmareland.
“By adopting new social and material technologies, we can again accelerate
the pace of discovery. It falls to us, as it fell to our predecessors, to imagine new
machines capable of exploring the endless frontier.” – Apparently, he believes that a technology that swallows trillions and yet can’t build up the number of synapses in the brain (and can’t do basic maths) is more cost-effective than mathematicians.
I now installed a stock market ticker where I can watch the tech bros go down in real time.
“At its core, our challenge is that scientific research involves private information that funders cannot directly observe.” That’s putting it very bluntly, actually.
The document appears to be somewhat self-contradictory, as it simultaneously demands that politicians AND researchers should gain more control over grants. There are entire chapters in contradiction with each other.
I’m getting the point of protecting technology though: I wouldn’t want any more of mine end up in the hands of your country (no offence).
Well, your president is certain not to read the document (or this comment) anyway…
Science to be Marigolded and turned from a vibrant living thing into a statue made of gold eh? Seems legit for this president.
Maybe some of your researchers and students can hibernate over here in Europe until the Trump glaciation is over?
With a bit of luck, inertia will slow the project down until the midterms. At that point the Vandal tribe will get other things to think about
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
The morons are on the march.
For you, echo of an echo, serversky: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/22/there-are-no-marching-morons/
(@ ^ Morales
Remember a few days ago you were claiming ableist language was “deprecated” back in the day? Lol.
From your link the day was certainly not 2013. X-D )
Good thing Science is NOT getting Trump’s “Platinum” treatment then maybe? Or perhaps all Trump’s treatments of science should be called Osmium treatments because they stink?
Tragic thing that Science isn’t getting the Kamala Harris / Democratic party treatment which is to respect scientists and properly fund good science especially climatology and immunology, epidemiology, biology esp gender studies, etc.. .
Of course, we all know who is responsible for that & so very many more consequences of the failure to elect the more left wing party of the two options and their female, POC nominee for POTUS don’t we?
(Answer obvs all those who did NOT vote for and support Kamala Harris and instead undermined and failed to unite behind her when it mattered thereby helping Trump’s Fascist White Supremacist party instead.)
Speer said that one of Hitler’s science advisors told him that should ignore Relativity because it was ‘Jewish physics’. I suppose Natural Selection will be seen as ‘Atheist Biology’.
@ ^ submoron : Global Overheating, the gender spectrum rather than binary and so many more scientifically established realities already are so .. yeah. You’re right.
Hey, I remember that!.
I enjoyed Kornbluth’s work and the Kornbluth/Pohl collaborations. They were entertaining stories in the fine old tradition of “what if” sci-fi, But PZ’s criticism’s were valid. Morons are not a clearly-defined biological group and both the noun and the adjective are used as insults not scientific observations.
That said, there seems to be a widespread cultural phenomenon of skepticism or suspicion or downright hostility towards any kind of authority however legitimate, My impression is it’s that attitude which underlies the various forms of “denialism”, the Mencken quote and the election of Trump who projected himself successfully as an anti-establishment figure. There are hopeful signs his influence is waning and the midterms are going to be a crucial test of how far he’s fallen. If the Republicans lose control of the House and Senate I wonder how long he’ll stay.
@ ^ seversky : I wonder how much longer he’ll live.
But it’s already been far too long.
Far too much damage already donr. To allf us globally.
Then we’ll’ have Vance.
Plus whatever tyrant suceededs Vance in the Christianist White Supremacist rotting corpse of what used to be the USoA.
I do try not to falli nto despair and give up .. but .. (infinite stream of expletives..)
The Non-Kamala voter USAites sure have fucked us all species and planet-wide & in the worst possible way and that’s the understatement of all understatements.
Fix : Far too much damage already done. To all us globally.
If only that could be actually fixed in reality.
Here is what science magazine, the main US general interest journal has to say about the latest Trump regime atrocity.
This is the summary.
The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands.
This is their plan.
1. Wreck academic science by taking away their funding.
2. Steal that money and give it to themselves and their friends.
If you read their long winded nonsense, they talk a lot about bypassing the universities and allocating that money directly to “individuals.”
Those individuals will all be right wingnuts and their research will be just made up stuff like RFK jr. does.
Vaccines cause autism, the germ theory of disease is fake, global warming doesn’t exist, Covid-19 virus doesn’t exist either and is also a Democratic Chinese commie plot, and so on.
@ ^ raven : Then like the nazis and Stalinists thy lose.
So.very badly.
Becoz reality don’t go away even when they tell and wish and petend it will as if that will work & make reality what they wish rather than what it is..
It is easy to destroy US science and the Trump regime has with no real thought or competence, discovered how.
All you have to know is that science runs on money.
It takes money to pay the scientists to stay alive and you need equipment, supplies, and utilities to run a lab.
The most successful project I ever worked on cost $300 million. This was back in the era when $300 million was actually a lot of money and it was hard to get that much together.
We were congratulated for making it to the end without going over the budget too much.
Our project ended up making all that back and more in the first year.
No money = No science.
It takes absolutely no intelligence or effort to destroy US science. All you need is the power to control the funding of dollars, how much and where they go.
@ ^ raven :, Yup. the Trump-Shadow POTUS Miller tyranny know this and have done this now.
Now the predictable consequences play out.
To the detriment and suffering and loss of so very many.
@ ^ All o fus really globally.
Especially when you think about what might’ve been had more rational and better people been in charge and had the power to act better, sooner on global issues that affect us all. Beforeit was / wiullbe too late.
(Endless inadequate string of expletives.)
I reckon the anti-Kamala Bothersiderists / Only Unicornists /.Third Party Spoiiler cultists / No insults sufficent counter-productive, corrosive, toxic mob of fuckwits have doomed us all.
Every human on this planet. Pretty much every lifeform on this planet.
Tardigrades and maybe roaches aside.
Stuffed (understatement) because of them.
I hope that isn’t true.
I wish that wasn’t true.
But that’s true..
Isn’t it?
But, hey, they made Biden and Kamala and the Democratic party sad (Oh and Netanyahu, Ben Gvir & Smotrich orgasm)so ..Worth it?
No.
No it ( no words suffice) is not.
Climate consequences alone..
21.seversky
“ Morons are not a clearly-defined biological group and both the noun and the adjective are used as insults not scientific observations.”
True, but historically
“Historical IQ and Mental Age Tiers
Idiot:
IQ score: Below 25
Mental age: Equal to or less than a normal 2-year-old child [1, 2]
Imbecile:
IQ score: 25 to 50
Mental age: Equal to a normal 3- to 7-year-old child [1, 2, 3, 4]
Moron:
IQ score: 51 to 70 (or 75)
Mental age: Equal to a normal 8- to 12-year-old child [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Modern Status
Obsolescence: Scientific and medical fields abandoned these labels because they were imprecise and heavily tied to harmful eugenics movements. [1, 2]
Social perception: Using these words to describe human intelligence or medical conditions is now widely recognized as an archaic and offensive slur. [1, 2]
@18, 22, 28, 29, 30
You done with your moronic tantrum yet, StevoR?
It’s rare to find someone who is this tenaciously obsessed with one or two U.S. politicians, yet is so hopelessly out of touch with U.S. politics that they can be immediately identified as a foreign agent.
You want to know why 100% of voters didn’t line up behind Harris like good little automata? It’s because she was a terrible politician without a shred of authenticity who ran a terrible campaign. It is always the candidate’s responsibility to appeal to voters, not the voters’ responsibility to hold up a failing candidate.
beholder @32: It’s the voter’s responsibility to be informed about the candidates, you clueless twit. If any voter thought Trump was better qualified than, or less harmful than, or even just as bad as Harris, they were horribly, obviously misinformed and misled. And that’s down to Fox News and voters’ gullibility far more than Harris’ supposed incompetence.
To say you disgust me is a massive understatement.
Beholder, you might want to consider being a bit less of a wank stain. The political system in the US is completely broken, and utterly locked in to the two party system. Unless and until sweeping systemic reform is brought in (which is never going to happen whilst the two parties that benefit from the system remain in power), you can either waste your vote or use it for one of the two parties that always win, so your only rational choice is to vote for the one you hate least from the options of Far Right and Further Right. Literally anything else effectively benefits the one of those you hate most.
It isn’t pretty, but even in less broken systems there won’t be a politician standing that you agree with on all issues. Within the system you have, a vote for a third party (with few and very localised exceptions) is literally wasted. Even in the UK, which does have a few more viable choices, the First Past The Post system means tactical voting to keep the worst party out makes more sense than voting for the candidate who best represents your views but doesn’t have a chance of winning in your constituency.
Put simply, in America, you hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil and then spend the rest of your time and energy hoping to change the system through other means. We’re not a real democracy, so voting won’t accomplish much.