Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Is Trump Destroying Science or Saving It?
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | April 17, 2025 | John Staddon

Posted on 04/17/2025 6:18:07 AM PDT by karpov

Apparently, some 75 percent of U.S. scientists are planning to emigrate to Canada and Europe “in light of President Donald Trump’s sweeping changes to federal science policy.” Is this a joke or just a bad poll? According to my omniscient AI “Copilot,” the U.S. spends 3.4 percent of GDP on science and Canada only 1.8 percent. Is Canada really a better deal for scientists?

Of course, we need to know more details. What kind of science do these two nations favor? Who are those scientists who are threatening to leave? How bad for science are the Trump policies?

How bad? Well, “National Institutes of Health has terminated scores of research grants that ‘no longer effectuate agency priorities’,” according to the letters researchers have received. The agency also deemed some of the grants “antithetical to the scientific inquiry.”

Is that legitimate? Perhaps a third of federal funding seems to go not to actual science but to projects that are frankly political. A couple of years ago, for example, two ladies at Duke University got a $9.9-million grant entitled (in part) “A Collective Impact Approach to Broadening Participation in Computing,” basically an effort to get more women into computer science. This was part of a much larger NSF program along similar lines. The awarded amount could have funded a dozen or more of the typical single-investigator research grants for which NSF was once famous and for which the hit rate now hovers at around 15 percent.

I was puzzled when I saw that news. Why are more women needed in CS? Is there currently discrimination against women in science? This seems unlikely, given that women dominate most of the major scientific societies. See, for example the American Institute of Biological Sciences or even the National Academy of Sciences.

(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 04/17/2025 6:18:07 AM PDT by karpov
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: karpov

“75 percent of U.S. scientists are planning to emigrate to Canada and Europe”

LOL...and 0.075 percent will follow through on their lame threat. These people sure blow it out their arseholes all the time.


2 posted on 04/17/2025 6:21:37 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (All we want is the same deportation policy that Martha's Vineyard has. That's it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: karpov

“...some 75 percent of U.S. scientists are planning to emigrate to Canada and Europe....”

_______________________________________________________

Oh no! Scientific advancement is gonna stop! Nooooooo!


3 posted on 04/17/2025 6:21:47 AM PDT by Bishop_Malachi (Liberal Socialism - A philosophy which advocates spreading a low standard of living equally.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Bishop_Malachi

Fake Science funded by the US gov’t has become the norm.


4 posted on 04/17/2025 6:32:23 AM PDT by Paladin2 ( )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: karpov

Good. They can sucker other countries for big $’s and little results.


5 posted on 04/17/2025 6:33:15 AM PDT by Mlheureux
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: karpov

This is a double edge sword, Yes we need legitimate ongoing scientific research into any number of fields, but NO we don’t need lackluster, mediocre panhandlers who just belly up to the money bucket and sit around and mentally masturbate over their eight page thesis on why wheels are round.


6 posted on 04/17/2025 6:36:22 AM PDT by The Louiswu (USA FIRST...USA FOREVER)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Paladin2

And it has to stop now.


7 posted on 04/17/2025 6:43:53 AM PDT by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: karpov

If indeed Trump is able to recover manufacturing back onto US soil, it will attract engineering and research in the hard sciences.

The science of Dr Fouchy and his homies is best sent to China and Cuba.


8 posted on 04/17/2025 6:45:36 AM PDT by lurk (u)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: karpov

Is Trump destroying American Lysenkoism? YES!

Lysenkoism was a mid-20th century Soviet political campaign and pseudoscientific concept that rejected genetics and science-based agriculture. It was led by Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976) and supported by Communist Party elites, including Stalin.


9 posted on 04/17/2025 6:47:24 AM PDT by hardspunned (Look for the“Putin Stooge” libel, news from Ukraine you’ve gradually grown to trust over 36 months)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: The Louiswu

Research happened before the US government funded it.

It still will. Grad students need to publish—just not at my expense.


10 posted on 04/17/2025 6:50:12 AM PDT by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Paladin2
Fake Science funded by the US gov’t has become the norm.

Of course it is.

Whenever government money becomes the dominant purchaser of anything that thing becomes political.

After government started paying for non-defense research politics started deciding what research got funded.

Without government funding of research we would not have the Global Warming scam.

11 posted on 04/17/2025 6:51:12 AM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: The Louiswu

Scientists think they are royalty.

The only way to convince them they are not is to fire them.


12 posted on 04/17/2025 6:52:55 AM PDT by cgbg (It was not us. It was them--all along.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: karpov

As Eric Weinstein says, “Science is dead.” It died the moment it became politicized.

You can’t seek evidence for a predetermined belief and claim to be seeking truth. The former is deliberate confirmation bias; the latter is science.


13 posted on 04/17/2025 6:55:33 AM PDT by RoosterRedux (A person who seeks the truth with a bias will never find it. He will only confirm his bias.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: cgbg

“Scientists think they are royalty.

The only way to convince them they are not is to fire them.”

Th3n who will develope the supercomputers?

“Supercomputers will create new branches of mathematics that virtually no human will understand but will lead to real technological breakthroughs.”


14 posted on 04/17/2025 6:55:59 AM PDT by TexasGator (/'~~'111./.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: TexasGator

My post was twenty five years old—I think we have (or will soon have) the supercomputers now even though they call it AGI these days.

Lol.


15 posted on 04/17/2025 7:00:27 AM PDT by cgbg (It was not us. It was them--all along.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: karpov

The taxpayers have been funding idiot projects like shrimp on treadmills for years. In recent years, money has been doled out for any “research” that has the right woke spin. It used to be “ climate change” was the ticket to grant money, now anything to do with gender bending is the new key to federal research dollars. I also blame academia for giving such bogus research credibility in supposedly peer reviewed published journal articles. There used to be standards for actual scholarship, but those are long gone.


16 posted on 04/17/2025 7:34:25 AM PDT by The Great RJ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: karpov
This seems unlikely, given that women dominate most of the major scientific societies.>

That explains a lot.

17 posted on 04/17/2025 7:40:06 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1 Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: karpov

Let the phony junk science fools migrate to Canada. They can add to the confusion there.


18 posted on 04/17/2025 8:15:40 AM PDT by ABStrauss (I miss Rush!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: karpov; All
Thank you for referencing that article karpov.

"Apparently, some 75 percent of U.S. scientists are planning to emigrate to Canada and Europe “in light of President Donald Trump’s sweeping changes to federal science funding policy .”"


There! Fixed it.

Scientific support for military readiness aside, follow the money scientists evidently didn't learn in grade school that the states have never expressly constitutionally given the unconstitutionally big federal government the specific power to tax and spend in the name of scientific research.

Scientists should consider supporting putting a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes by putting a stop to Congress's abuse of its 16th Amendment powers (direct taxes) by repealing that amendment so that the states can find new revenues to hire them to run their science projects.

The 16th Amendment is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for organized crime and needs to be repealed along with the 17th Amendment, popular voting for federal senators.

We'll call the repeal amendment Trump's Boston Tea Party II Amendment.

19 posted on 04/17/2025 8:50:58 AM PDT by Amendment10
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson