Yves here. It’s been bizarre and distressing to see some commenters attempt to depict the Trump gutting of science research funding as if it were a good thing. This post describes the cascading effects of these cutbacks and the damage they will do. The only logic I can fathom is that Trump really does want to turn the clock back to the 1890s.
By C. Brandon Ogbunu, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and the author of Undark’s Selective Pressure column. Originally published at Undark
Today, it is not hyperbolic to think that America’s global advantage in science is coming to an end, the product of a bevy of aggressive attacks from the federal government on its own agencies and other public and private institutions. These attacks will likely thin the American scientific workforce across many subfields in coming years. And they’ve already caused one scientific journal to pause submissions of new studies. This motivates a thought experiment around how a shrunken scientific enterprise in the United States will look.
The challenge of this exercise is that American science is defined by many intertwined actors and incentives, and so the negative effects of less funding can’t be compared to a linear cascade of dominoes falling. Rather, the reality looks much more like a variation on Jenga, whereby perturbations in one part of the structure can send ripple effects through everything all at once. Whatever model we prefer, one thing is clear: A shrunken American science will have negative effects across many corners of the scientific world, from the way we publish to the sorts of science that we conduct.
We’ll start with the most basic elements that start a cascade effect throughout the system: the lack of money available for American laboratories and research programs. The most upbeat take on this overall disaster scenario is one in which the U.S. begins to focus more on computational and theoretical training, which is cheaper than the large-scale experimental empires that live in America’s powerful research institutions. A scenario like this one could lead to a generation of U.S. scientists still equipped to ask questions in today’s complexified data landscape, where AI now underlies all of our scientific expeditions.
But no amount of positivity can mask the overall harm that comes from shrinking funding. The proximal impacts have already played out: Several institutions have cut down their graduate admissions classes. If this trend continues, fewer people will have access to master’s and doctoral degrees in the sciences.
One cynical take is that institutions were already training too many students. In some graduate programs, large classes are the product of copious funding and the need for student workers to churn out data to support the quest for even more funding, rather than the result of a system that intentionally matches class size to specific needs. But even so, an immediate disruption in the pipeline will cause problems in the form of fewer teaching assistants to aid in the education of undergraduates and a smaller pool of postdoctoral associates — the underappreciated engine of scientific progress in laboratories around the world. This will create smaller laboratories, capable of producing fewer discoveries. This, in turn, creates downstream effects that may shape the very sorts of questions that scientists choose to pursue.
Does funding availability influence the nature of the science that we practice? A surplus of resources facilitates the ability to do things that one would not in a scarcity. Smaller research programs cannot take on risky projects, as they must be careful about where every dollar goes. In this scenario, science becomes more — even more — risk averse. Given the prevalence of research practices that, in some opinions, are shoddy and produce results that cannot be replicated, one could say that we should have been more careful about our research questions all along.
The problem with this logic is that “risk averse” should not be mistaken for “careful.” Rather, risk-averse science is more likely to adopt a herd mentality, in that labs pivot to whatever the most popular thing is because it harbors the greatest odds of being funded. This can lead to more imprecision, as we all rush to capture whatever little glory we can. The negative consequences of this are obvious: less high-risk research, more follow-the-leader practice, less disruption. Scientists may love the intrepid process of discovery, but they love feeding their families much more.
One response might be that high-risk research can and should pivot to the private sector. Yes, there are signs of the private sector’s large role in bringing significant discoveries to our smartphones, desktops, and bedsides. Half of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind, which developed AlphaFold, an AI-based algorithm that has revolutionized the study of protein folding. The field, which can inform the design of drugs based on the three-dimensional structure of proteins, has seemingly infinite implications for biology and medicine.
But many of the most provocative industry advancements have an academic origin. And this is especially true with regards to where scientists are trained. Hassabis received a doctorate from the University College of London in cognitive neuroscience, and Jumper from the University of Chicago in theoretical chemistry. With less funding, we’ll have fewer opportunities to train the next generation of visionary leaders.
What else happens when the American scientific workforce shrinks? There will be direct effects to two industries tied to academic research: the laboratory supplies industry and scientific publishing. In the former case, smaller laboratories mean fewer confocal microscopes, nanopore sequencing machines, and other expensive equipment sold. Even more, there will be fewer incentives to develop new DNA and RNA sequencing technologies, as there will be fewer customers. In this sense, the shrinkage in federal funding has the ironic effect of damaging private industries tied to big science.
With regards to the science publishing industry, a workforce stretched for time and resources may bottleneck aspects of the peer-review pipeline: Fewer scientists equals a smaller pool of both submitting authors and available reviewers. Reviewing papers with great care was already a practice that was, at best, weakly incentivized. We can expect the shrinking and disruption of science to negatively affect the aspects of the science that run on goodwill and tradition, and few aspects qualify like peer review.
A decline in quality products will dramatically affect the science publishing business model. When an industry undergoes a crash (and what is happening today in science may qualify), the most vulnerable entities are those that are independent, without the safety net of a large corporate structure. In the case of scientific publications, we can expect the glamour journals — Science, Nature, Cell, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, etc. — to survive. But what about the smaller, not-for-profit scientific societies? They not only publish journals with foundational papers in their fields but also host conferences where trainees can immerse themselves in greater scientific communities. These gatherings serve as hubs for interaction and mentorship, critical parts to training the scientists of today and tomorrow. But because publishing is a major source of revenue for these societies, they may have to scale back their journals and overall operations, or dissolve entirely.
In addition to affecting scientific research and the publication industry, the cascade effects of a shrinking workforce will cause larger cultural changes for society. A smaller scientific infrastructure will train fewer scientists. There will be fewer new curricula to teach students about a rapidly changing world inside and outside of the laboratory. There will be fewer creative educational programs aimed at those who have been denied access to higher education (for example, those who are first-generation students, disabled, or formerly incarcerated). In sum, we will have a country with fewer people raised in the culture of science.
In the legal profession, it is well known that many law school graduates may not practice law but end up working in a number of sectors where legal knowledge is beneficial: not-for-profit organizations, advocacy groups, and think tanks. Similarly, graduate and post-graduate education in science has given us business leaders, secondary school educators, and award-winning science journalists. A smaller science will shrink the scientific footprint on American intellectual life across sectors. Fewer people familiar with the scientific method, fewer people who have ever conducted an experiment, fewer people who know how to interpret or generate a data visualization.
In essence, the status of scientists as the personification of “smart” will diminish, and science will become even more foreign to the everyday American. Yes, our reliance on credentials as a marker of expertise has long been a problem. But without a large population of people formally trained in the sciences, society might be more susceptible to the peddlers of disinformation.
What I’ve outlined constitutes only a sample of the many manifestations of a smaller American science. The good news is that the potential solutions to this conundrum can be just as diverse as the problems that underlie it. But before we use our imaginations towards a set of solutions, the current moment requires us to deal with the uncomfortable truth that the American scientific machine of yesterday is no longer.
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End times fascism (Naomi Klein) on the march. Great run down on the gutting of science. Now on to the Arts. NEA, NEH and Institute of Museum and Library Services. The amount of the budget is tiny, they should take a slice from Defense, but they won’t touch that sacred cow. The funds have instead been funneled into the creation of President Donald Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes, among other projects
The post has good points, but in the end left me puzzled. From my reading a fair amount of articles (including at NC, esp. those of KLG), I sense a discrepancy between what the author describes as the impact of funding cuts and the situation that has been deplored for, well, decades:
1) those people carrying out the essential laboratory work are underpaid assistants, or not-paid-at-all undegraduates already;
2) those teaching and tutoring the next generation of scientists are already a precariat of assistant professors on temporary contracts that barely make ends meet;
3) paper reviewers and authors are not paid anyway, and reviewers rarely acknowledged, while most journals esp. those with the greatest diffusion and recognition extort prohibitive fees from authors or from subscribers;
4) basic, risky science that results in potentially major, but few breakthroughs and publications is already shunned in favour of incremental work that can fill CVs with lists of successful completed projects and papers;
5) those projects are anyway funded for ever shorter durations and a smaller proportion of the total costs (with the researchers enjoined to find the complement by partnering with private firms);
6) the constant announcements about non-replicability, plagiarism, retractions, indicates that the scientific field is increasingly plagued by fraud — which gets funded but is somehow not filtered out, and reluctantly and belatedly dealt with;
7) students in a number of STEM disciplines (biology, computer science) cannot find positions in scientific work, or in their field at all (HB1 woes), and must change professional tracks, and this has been going on for a while;
8) Lack of scientific education amongst politicians and the public at large has been deplored for quite a while.
And all that has been the situation for decades; the Trump/DOGE cuts will sharpen it, but did not engender it.
Which makes me think that the whole edifice of scientific research was already fundamentally rotten, so much so that the cuts will bring it down entirely in short order.
But if all that money that has been sloshing around did not serve to pay adequately lab assistants, teaching assistants, authors and reviewers, to fund long-term, basic research on a solid basis, and to employ STEM graduates — then what has it been actually used for? At this point, I believe we would need some kind of flow-of-funds spreadsheet to understand who is paying for what and who is receiving what in the scientific field; I feel that the “leaks”, or misallocation, or parasitism must be astounding in that sector.
Thank you for your serious response. My answers based on my experience, which I believe is the common one, given the short time I have available this morning.
1. Underpaid is a relative term. When I left my previous position my lab had two Masters-level workers. One was a Research Assistant and one was a Senior Research Technician. They made $52,000 and $48,000 per year in 2007; $50,000 in June 2007 = ~$77,000 in March 2025 (BLS inflation calculator). They would have been making considerably more in industry, but that was their choice. Graduate students at the time were making about $25,000. Enough to live on. They did not pay tuition. This does vary from institution to institution. I was in a mid-level but strong public research university/medical school in flyover country. Students in top-tier institutions were paid more but also had to live in Baltimore, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Only about one-in-ten undergraduate students does much in the lab. Most are there to enhance their resume. Those who joined my lab had to spend the first year washing dishes and running the autoclave, while attending lab meetings and observing how our work was done. If they could endure that, they were given a small project of their own but only if they committed 20 hours a week. Some with major responsibilities were paid about twice minimum wage. It was a small pool, though.
2. Adjunct faculty are indeed a catastrophe. They were unheard of except at the far margin in my early days, which were before the Neoliberal takeover of all institutions.
3. True about unpaid reviewers. This is another problem and the big publishers make a lot of money on publicly funded research and reviewers who work for “free” (real academic credit does accrue, however). But the business of scientific publication has become a sewer dominated by pay-to-publish open access journals. Neoliberal abuse of the system, again. Page and submission charges in other journals can be outrageous. In my former position I was dinged because I refused to pay $2000 to publish a paper in the “preferred” biochemistry journal when the American Chemistry Society journal Biochemistry was free, with color also free if the editor deemed it necessary. My papers tended to the cellular aspects of biochemistry and color was essential. The “preferred” journal would have charged another $1000, in 2007. My lab spent the savings on research.
4. Virtually all biomedical advances are incremental. That is a cardinal sin among grant reviewers, 99% of whom also do incremental research even if they believe otherwise. CV padding, especially with publications from neo-predatory journals is a thing, but institutions are catching on to that, albeit slowly. I would also add that in my living memory review panels met to decide which grants not to fund. Now? With paylines at 5-20% depending on subject and funding agency, grant proposals enter a lottery. Some have even recommended that grants be funded by an explicit lottery to make the system “fair.”
5. The primary mechanism for NIH grants (R01) are, or were before Trump v2.0, generally 5-year awards. NSF grants were also be for 3-5 years. My final NIH grant was for five years. AHA and ACS awards were generally two years in my day, with the option for a no-cost one-year extension. But as I have noted and virtually everyone in my world will agree, these smaller awards are only icing on the cake. I was present at the creation of “partnering with private firms” and some of my work was funded by a large pharmaceutical company, which did make some money later. But overall, it seems the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 only hastened the decline of academic science. A long story covered by many.
6. Scientific misconduct has been exacerbated by the “pressure of often and now” placed on academic scientists. There is no excuse for such misbehavior, but this pressure is not much different from the quarterly outlook of large transnational corporations and their smaller brethren. Both have been malignant.
The replication crisis is mostly imaginary, however. Nevertheless, it does attract a lot of pixels. The experimental models in biomedical science are very large, even if the one in use a single population of cultured cells. Think of a matrix of 1000 nonlinear equations and 1200 variables, some of them unknown. An exact solution is not possible. This makes exact replication from lab to lab, from different cell line to different cell line very difficult. This is not to excuse sloppiness, which is encouraged in the current publish and perish anyway environment, but it is a legitimate explanation for many putative examples. In my previous work I used several different cells. All produced nearly identical results, but my goal was to characterize something that virtually every mammalian cell does. My field could have been considered “cellular architecture,” which is by its nature a smaller model. The control of cell proliferation and metabolism in cancer is much larger. Gene expression much larger. Figuring out how to induce pluripotent stem cells to become the cell of choice has taken a very long time and can be iffy still.
Do some scientists just make stuff up? Yes, scientists are people, too. Do some scientific leaders conflate themselves with science? Regrettably this is true. Every scientist I know was appalled with a former Big Foot identified himself with scientist. Sylvain Lesne and Alzheimer’s disease has been covered here before. It took a while but he is no longer a professor. Andrew Wakefield of the MMR-autism nonsense was struck off the register of physicians in the UK and The Lancet retracted the paper (albeit long after it should have been). Neither will ever work in science again. Compare with the financial masters of the universe who seem to be bulletproof no matter what they do. Or total rich in the aftermath of their “work.”
JPA Ioannidis wrote the paper that began the replication crisis. He “publishes” 45-80 scientific papers a year. Francis Crick published 55 papers in his entire career. An equation in Ionnidis’s founding paper was corrected 17 years after the fact. The error seems to be inconsequential, but by his definition the paper could be considered “false.” This may also imply that nobody actually read the paper carefully before citing it?
7. No argument whatsoever about employment in science, but this is everywhere. People are dispensable.
8. It’s not just scientific education. Ask a random friend to identify Mohammed Mossadegh and explain how his fate in 1953 led inexorably to the Iran of 1979. The last thing the modern neoliberal state needs is a populace that has learned how to identify its bullshit.
The house of science needs renovation, but it is, or was, still very productive. Razing it will only destroy it forever, along with the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people who still view their work as a personally rewarding vocation that also serves the public good. The typical scientist, rather than the Bayh-Dole scientific entrepreneur, persists because the high of discovery, maybe twice a year and no matter how small or large, makes it worthwhile. DOGE cannot recognize this. DOGE and the Trump v2.0 assault on science is not serious, but its consequences are very serious, and I say this as one who has been treated well and shabbily by the current system. In the latter I am in the majority.
KLG
I very much appreciate your article, vao’s response, and your reply. It seems that you and vao mosly agree that science study in the US is already fundamentally broken. In your article you mention only one specific instance of endangered research, which might have “seemingly infinite implications” for future science. But this sounds a bit like hoping for carbon capture, or fusion reactors, or the singularity.
Maybe this will come to pass, but right now it requires low-paid adjuncts, and students running up vast levels of debt, for an uncertain outcome.
Excellent response, and I completely agree. The numbers that I’m familiar with in a different part of STEM are of the same ballpark.
That said, the original post suggests a good topic, what an actual meaningfully positive reform of academia/government/STEM could look like.
It may also be the case that we can’t have good science in an otherwise degenerating socuety. You mention graduate student salaries of 25,000/year. That’s about what I made when I was a graduate student, but at the time I paid 400/month on rent and I could buy a lunch for $7.
Thank you for noting that “The replication crisis is mostly imaginary, however.” I’m curious about this. How much does the so-called “replication crisis” reflect problems with science journalism?
My feeling in that science journalism tends to be highly sensational. It takes isolated individual papers and interprets their usually modest results in extreme ways. Then when the replication studies were done, science journalism did the same, blowing up the idea that science was broken. One day chocolate is curing cancer and signing your name at the top of your driver license reduces traffic accidents, and then the next day all of science is broken because of the replication crisis.
Difficult to express how frustrating this is. Just like many other areas of American decline, there are real problems in American science, but these problems are being used in bad faith or recklessly at best, with the result of creating a “feedback loop” that only further undermines science.
Vao,
Completely agree with your points. Any passing familiarity with the Congress/Clinton slaughter of advanced science research in the 90’s substantiates your observations. Our apparent ignorance of events only 30 years ago is so sad. Does no one read the plethora of books detailing the extent of mathematical innumeracy? Even an hour of Blink summaries is more real that this time limited perspective. Thank you for a more accurate long view.
Other key points regarding “shrinking US science” are made in this short article:
Trump Is Undermining 3 Key US Advantages Over China
This unprecedented politicization of research undermines the entire logic of academic excellence. Trump is not simply attacking institutions; he is undermining the ecosystem that made the United States the global leader in science and technology. In a contest with China, where scientific progress is closely tied to state priorities, the U.S. edge lies in freedom. Trump is jeopardizing that edge, choking the very engine that drives U.S. innovation. If the freedom to ask hard questions and pursue difficult truths is lost, so too is the strategic future of the United States.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/05/trump-is-undermining-3-key-us-advantages-over-china/
I work in the science of astrophysics. I see this defunding and change in thought process on a daily basis. With the added threats of deportation some of the brightest grad students I have worked with are facing choices of IF they even want to continue working in the field. If you only knew how reality is now past the tipping point. We are not headed there we are past the tipping point. When you stop undergrads from coming into the u.s. you stop the field for 10 years. The future looks so bleak I wasn’t even sure I would respond to the article. One Trillion directly to DOD, another .4 Trillion to DOE nuclear weapons, hundreds of millions to DOT, Dept. of Ed, almost every dept. has some DOD filtered funding. We invest in the end not the future.
Landru: reality is now past the tipping point. We are not headed there we are past the tipping point.
Correct, IMO.
And to your point: in your field the funding has always been tough so, even in brighter times like the the 1980s-90s, one encountered highly intelligent people who’d begun, say, with a degree in stellar nuclear physics but then had moved to nuclear physics and employment at places at Sandia or the like, and DOD-funded, weapons-related research.
Now, though, the US will revert to a mentality like the 1950s but with none of that era’s wealth and opportunities. There will be very little, perhaps nothing but such work
If you are teaching and have grad students, therefore, you ought to advise them to leave the US if they can. If you yourself are a grad student, you should leave the US.
Sorry to pound the obvious point. But the world is what it now is.
I work in astrophysics too. I read the proposed budget yesterday with the cover letter by Susan Collins, it was so bleak. Some random items …
Massive cuts to NSF and NASA, also to NIH which doesn’t affect us directly but is bad for the country.
It talks about getting rid of the Mars sample return mission (ok, maybe), but also says that sending a man to Mars before the Chinese is a priority. I can think of few things less interesting.
They want to eliminate the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It’s already built, they just need to launch it. Would be ridiculous.
Losing Roman will be a tragedy. I know it’s not set in stone yet, but I see no reason for optimism about it. Fortunately LSST seems to be moving forward mostly unaffected?
On the hard astrophysics side (as opposed to cosmology), the US 30 meter-class telescope were already deeply troubled. I haven’t heard anything about their status in the current administration, but I assume their prospects have only grown dimmer. Meanwhile, the European ELT seems to be smoothly under construction. Really seems like a total forfeit of America’s chances of leading the field. I assume it’s a similar story in a dozen other fields I don’t know about.
Absolutely true, and this is the kind of point that my shorter-sighted colleagues often fail to see. I’ve seen a number of scientists take the narrow view of just focusing on direct funding to their field, and seem unable to consider that attacking primary/secondary education across the country means the quality of incoming students will rapidly decline. And that’s not even considering your point about shunning foreign students. (And many of these colleagues are already pretty concerned about the rarity of competent and motivated students!)
Always graft a happy ending on a story to sell better?
“The good news is that the potential solutions to this conundrum can be just as diverse as the problems that underlie it.”
It’s not a conundrum, it’s a wrecking ball. The solution is to stop wrecking. Lab supply? Egads, China will absorb all the lab supply manufacturers can. And also the publishing – does the author even notice the global change in
Anyway, yesterday I was notified that NSF will cap all future grants’ indirect costs at 15%. Since most grants are 3 years, the effect will be devastating as they take hold over the next few years – post midterms. 15% IDC is a loss (unless one redefines what indirect costs are). No university or company can do research at that rate (IDC keeps the lights on (ever more costly) and the bookkeeping) – so NSF (and NOAA, and USGS, and NIH, and…) will disappear (along with the vast US economic and competitive benefits)…..
…unless Congress stops the wrecking ball. There is no other solution because that is the nature of a wrecking ball. Once wrecked, it takes generations to recover. But do rent-extracting oligarchs need science? The Bezoses happily allow others to create and add their margin.
The most apt description I have heard of the unfolding process is a US cultural revolution*, i.e., Mao and China, where the baby (expertise) is being tossed with the bathwater (a properly functioning government supporting the economy and public welfare) –
The Surgery was a success! We removed the cancer completely (but the patient died from removing the cancerous organ).
*https://fpif.org/the-trump-musk-cultural-revolution/
In the early 20th century the best science was published in German. I wonder if I’ll see the transition from English to Mandarin in my lifetime.
At least now we have automatic translation apps…
I don’t expect those to work as well for technical documents in fields where the language is sometimes rapidly evolving.
This is plausible, and I’d say it’s directionally correct. But I think this will happen much slower than you’d think. Inertia is quite strong. I imagine an intermediate state being a schism where China (and maybe “developing countries” aligned with China) collaborate in Mandarin, in an ecosystem of Mandarin language journals. But I expect English will remain the lingua franca of science in the Americas, Europe, Japan, Korea for quite a while, even after the total collapse of US scientific leadership.
Maybe the people in the Trump regime think that you can just buy off-the-shelf science for whatever you need. That if the US is short of some necessary if not vital expertise, they can just go out into the market place and simply buy it. And that trained, experienced scientists come by the gross and are just ready to go. From what I can see science is actually grown and nurtured organically and needs time to develop and grow. Perhaps some off-shoots are not really productive but other branches more than make up for them. And that ripping out whole sections of the scientific community by the roots will come back to bite them in the *** big time.
Tesla, Edison, Jenner, Salk, Picasso, Rodin etc. etc.; how did they do it without government grants?
The sad reality is that the overwhelming preponderance of government funded research yields products that kill people. Personally, I would be happy to forego government funding of research if it meant the end of research into the tools of war and oppression. If you support government funding of science you can not deny your complicity in the result.
Thank you. That needed to be said.
Yes but DOD funded research will continue to be very well funded. Therefore we are getting the worst of both worlds…
IIRC Thomas Edison got his money to support his technical research from the sale of his inventions, which were very lucrative. He was a smart man and the time was right. Later he went in with Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford to fund his lab in Fort Myers, where he developed a rubber compound that still bounces almost 100 years later (I’ve seen it). The $50,000 from Firestone and Ford in 1929 is the equivalent of about $1M today. Almost $1.5M in current dollars with Edison’s contribution of $25,000.
We have noted before that chemistry and physics developed in tandem because a lot of money was to be made, without delay. This has never been true of biology and biomedical science. From Wikipedia but sounds about right regarding Tesla: “The money Tesla made from licensing his AC patents made him independently wealthy and gave him the time and funds to pursue his own interests.[94] In 1889, Tesla moved out of the Liberty Street shop Peck and Brown had rented and for the next dozen years worked out of a series of workshop/laboratory spaces in Manhattan. These included a lab at 175 Grand Street (1889–1892), the fourth floor of 33–35 South Fifth Avenue (1892–1895), and sixth and seventh floors of 46 & 48 East Houston Street (1895–1902).[95][96] Tesla and his hired staff conducted some of his most significant work in these workshops.”
The legend is that Edward Jenner used ancient folk medicine/wisdom to develop his smallpox vaccine. This has been disputed, but the early smallpox interventions did work. This has been covered here before (Jenner’s connection here). The eradication of smallpox was a multinational project that involved a lot of public money.
Jonas Salk’s research and development on his killed virus polio vaccine was generously funded by the March of Dimes (then the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) and the (public) University of Pittsburgh. I would imagine that the United States Public Health Service also contributed, since they were doing the same for Ancel Keys at the same time. Jonas Salk famously rejected the very idea that a patent on his vaccine was proper. Imagine that!
I know nothing about the art market and Rodin, although I have been to the Rodin Museum on the Left Bank – highly recommended. Picasso got rich because he was a very good artist, according to critics, and people eventually wanted to pay a lot for his work. And a lot more in the secondary market. But when he was the “starving artist” living in a garret in Paris he was still able to make ends meet. Good for him and for us! But through the years many artists have had patrons whose fortunes were tied up in government. The Medici come to mind, for example.
It is easy to imagine Picasso surviving poverty and thriving later, but the latter still took some good fortune. Difficult to see how Jonas Salk could have done what he did in the same manner in the middle of the 20th century, but that might just be me.
Should be mentioned that Thomas Edison got a lot of money from other people’s work so was very much a capitalist.
“Innovation isn’t billable” – the CEO of the large engineering firm I worked for, to me, about a problem I was working on with a client (a rural town).
I succeeded, winning an award and making the client happy (and billed $90k), but was then fired for “costing” the firm $2M in engineering fees that would have been required to address the client’s problem conventionally. My work also held the construction cost to $600k, vs $20M that the town didn’t have.
“Innovation isn’t billable” should be right there in the rules of neoliberalism with “because markets”.
For those interested in the author’s work, here’s a link to his recent talk at the Santa Fe Institute lecture series titled “What is Lyfe…”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rRNbiYg7fs&list=PL7D69D1FFE63DA81A&index=3
I cannot attribute Trump’s diktats to any coherent ideology or rationale. They seem to spring forth from waves of madness. In gutting Science Trump has savagely and wantonly destroyed a tool Neoliberal Elites coveted and had been molding as a powerful voice of exploitable authority and a source of new products. All that will remain of science after Trump will be a ruin to match the ruins of u.s. business, medical care, and education. Trump may speak of a return to the 1890s, but the u.s. he will leave after his demise will rival the kingdom of dust Ozymandias bequeathed. Trump is become a curse upon the u.s. beyond my worst imaginings. What most mystifies me is the complete lack of effective opposition from the rest of the u.s. Elites. Are the u.s. Elites in agreement with Trump’s actions? If some powerful cabal of u.s. Elites has sided with Trump, what do they believe they can gain? What bargains could they hope to grab up from the wasteland of Trump’s legacy?
I’ve seen this before where I worked. It did not end well.
He is America’s CEO President. He is here to maximize short term profit for the American oligarchs (America’s shareholders).
And I agree, I don’t even know where to begin to figure out the damage being done.
Xi Jinping, from June 2024, notes the importance for China of:
Noting the problem, “original innovation capability is still relatively weak, some key core technologies are controlled by others, and top scientific and technological talents are insufficient,” Xi Jinpin continues (elsewhere in the speech),
The leadership of China has a clear plan for improving science. Obviously, whether it works or not is an empirical question, but I must say, the idea that the government is focused on science, admits there are challenges and problems and has a coherent plan for addressing them is fascinating.
(I got the translation of the remarks from a Substack post, “Xi Jinping is investing in China’s science and technology research as Trump is gutting America’s research foundations.”)
There’s a strong embedded tendency here to see American “preeminence” in the sciences (which even at its peak needed to be qualified more than it was), as being something inherent in Americans as people, rather than as a product of causes and conditions which are themselves constantly in flux.
Even before the Donald, we were moving pretty far down the road in making this country a less preferred destination for both study and post-degree careers. The “brain drain” is now producing less in the way of influx and is showing signs of having outflow change from a trickle to a steady stream.
“Pure research” has been struggling for ages, and the trend does nothing but worsen. This is foolhardy, as many of the most important advances are built on research that would not have been done in the first place if the focus had to be on immediate practical results.
My sense is that a lot of American scientists now find that they are more likely to get funding accompanied by considerable latitude in China than here. And as they report that impression to former colleagues the snowball will just get bigger as it rolls.
I feel this article understates the damage from shrinking science. Science has been the singular US comparative advantage, and a leading US “export” has been scientific education for foreigners who pay for others. US chemical, electronic, software, internet, and other industries have been powered by their proximity to science and science graduates. Though the article does ultimately get to the final loss: a dumber society–which means everything in a complex world is lost. Government funds basic research which is fundamental. Corporate research has largely dried up too.
Another point would be the grad student pipeline. It was broadly (though tacitly) felt when I was studying (1990s) that US graduates weren’t of the same caliber as foreign graduates. There were exceptions, and there was certainly no lack of intelligence among US grads, but generally speaking US schools were thought to focus more on breadth than depth, spend more time covering material that would have been taught earlier in school in other countries, and generally produce grads who were somewhat behind international ones educationally on average.
The graduate programs, by contrast, were the envy of the world (at the time) but domestic students were only a minority of their intake, and they relied heavily on bringing in foreign graduates from around the world – many of whom then went on to become permanent residents or citizens and settle in the US.
I don’t know how much this still holds true. A lot of the best grad students and faculty when I was there were Chinese. China has been catching up quickly in terms of research, and given the current political environment I can’t help thinking that Chinese students might be nervous about studying in the US. Students from other countries might not have the same quality of domestic grad programs, but they also have choices other than the US these days. There is also a lot of FUD around treatment of foreigners in the US, which I think is probably somewhat in advance of reality, but with Trump in charge, who knows? If you can be deported for speaking sympathetically of Palestinians, you could conceivably be deported for pretty much anything, and a graduate education is a serious investment for that kind of risk.
If the US were no longer the destination of choice for grad students worldwide, but just one of the pack (or even a less preferred option) I think the result for research in the US would be transformative, and not in a good way. Maybe this is happening to some extent already, I don’t know.
Wellie … considering the Christification/Christendom agenda during Bush Jr years is anyone surprised about how this is all playing out. Trumps affiliation in his first term with the most extreme religious wing nuts that made packet off looting their flocks. Endless material and moral support for the Zionist agenda, most corrupt nation in its region and ideologically feral Banderites Ukraine.
Not to mention suffering is a good thing in these peoples minds, hardens up the flock Calvin style, and the wealthy are shoulder tapped by the creator for being the right sorts. In some of these minds everyone else is a slave, free range or by subscription model.
Meanwhile the two nations, Russia/China, have thousands of years of civilization, good and bad, yet had periods of great innovation and discovery predating most of what we call the West today. Now that they are no longer interested in the Marxist[tm] experiment but not keen on globalization via neoliberalism for all … sovereignty above all … the West is devolving in real time but they keep advancing in Science/Social cohesion at a advanced pace …
At sometime I could see America just pull the rock over the cave whilst the EU disintegrates slowly. Seems the natural boundaries that once enabled America refuge from what was happening in the rest of the world has a use by date. Especially after it has dictated to the rest of the world post WWII and now attempting create buffer zones geopolitically as much of the rest of the world is hooking up with the East.
Seems Bernays sauce will only get you so far, when conditions lend too it, then its blow back time.