The U.S. sorely needs a coordinated national research strategy, says Marcia McNutt, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
  • blobjim [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    71·
    3 months ago

    “U.S. science is perceived to be—and is—losing the race for global STEM leadership,” McNutt said. A country’s strength in science, she argued, shapes its defense capacities as well as its ability to spread its values abroad.

    lol even the science foundation people have to justify stuff by saying it’ll be good for imperialism

    • someone [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      3 months ago

      lol even the science foundation people have to justify stuff by saying it’ll be good for imperialism

      One of my favourite figures in science was the American chemist Harrison Brown. Not only was he a very good chemist, but he had a knack for basically scamming the US military into funding important research that he privately knew could never be applied to weapons. And he didn’t just do that scamming for his own projects, but he applied those scamming skills to help his colleagues get funding for theirs. He was a one-man reverse-military-industrial-complex.

      Brown was also the PhD advisor for Claire Patterson, the man who figured out how old Earth is by comparing isotopes of uranium and lead. During that research he developed the world’s first proper cleanroom protocols for chemists. He later spearheaded the fight against the use of lead in consumer products (paint, toys, solder, gasoline, etc) after discovering how prevalent it was during his experiments to figure out the age of Earth. He personally travelled the entire world to gather samples to prove that lead pollution was a relatively recent phenomenon cause by industrial activity, and not something naturally-occuring as the oil companies and their hired guns were arguing.

  • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    55·
    3 months ago

    As it turns out, a system where your best and brightest get paid jack shit after going insanely in debt to be there only to end up working for some underfunded research lab that’s going to sell all their work to private capital to be gouged for profit or locked in a vault for all eternity isn’t one that entices people to join it.

    Who would’ve thunk?

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      3 months ago

      STEM people usually get paid to do their doctorates. It’s just that it is far too tempting for most of them to stop at a bachelors and make money than pursue the higher education necessary to actually advance the field, particularly for engineers. However, the real thing is that China just has way the fuck more people, so even if there were, by percentage, statistically less people pursuing higher level education, the actual amount of people doing this research in China is staggering.

      • Hexboare [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        32·
        3 months ago

        STEM people usually get paid to do their doctorates

        Stipends are usually very low and criminally low when you compare to what someone would make if they didn’t do a doctorate

        To say nothing of the debt from their undergrad and grad degrees

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          18·
          3 months ago

          True, still better than state of the humanities.

          The real tragedy is once they get their doctorate there is more economic value for companies in paying them really well to do nearly nothing, something I have heard about happening all too frequently.

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        15·
        3 months ago

        However, the real thing is that China just has way the fuck more people, so even if there were, by percentage, statistically less people pursuing higher level education, the actual amount of people doing this research in China is staggering.

        Maybe it also has something to do with what the research labour goes into. The best and brightest in the west end up doing things like: Market research. Figure out how to sell more soda. Figure out how to make new variant of peanut butter. HR (protecting the company from any responsibility). Endless redundant work that is only done due to patents, copyright and IP laws. Figure out how to make iPhone thinner. Figure out how to bake more ads into the OS. Lawyerstuff most of which is also just handling bloat and redundancy.

        When you look at what you can do with your degree (make money, be dissatisfied with your job) it’s no wonder more and more people decide to look elsewhere. If all you can do is this, then you might as well choose a profession with a lower barrier of entry and (oftentimes) an equal or higher wage.

        Like most anthropologists end up in marketing or HR. Same goes for sociologists. How many people aren’t just spending their days making perfume? Make up? Paper work? There’s exceedingly few options for doing things that “feel” like they matter, and if you get one, then the wage will probably be terrible.

        Contrasted with China, which also has bloat and redundancy and pointless jobs, but it at least seems to also have avenues available for those that wish to use their education for something “important”. That vibe will probably get more people into academia, which in turn will get more people into scientific research.
        Not to mention that China actually invests in the infrastructure needed to have a robust foundation for research.

      • newmou [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        15·
        3 months ago

        And in a capitalist system like the US, that blob of way the fuck more people would then get the wildly antiproductive backhand of free market dynamics and make the entire field unsustainable for everyone, leading to the same systemic issues and undercutting actual scientific research

    • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      3 months ago

      I was at a crossroads in my grad school career. I was getting my MSc paid for and studying something important in STEM, but the future to go PhD looked like shit, as you say. literally, my only compelling rationale to get a PhD in the US was it would make–emigrating out of the US on a path to citizenship elsewhere–more feasible.

      but I knew the US was failing a decade ago when I saw how aggressively China was courting young, English speaking academics on campuses to do their research and scholarship in China. I was in the middle of my own program, but considered doing it when I finished.

      then I saw articles about how many young academics were leaving to do research in China on like NPR and next thing you know, the US government threatens to withhold any DoD grants from any research university that allows the organization hosting those recruitment opportunities on campus. and overnight those doors all shut with perfunctory apologies from university administration for terminating exchange programs.

      I knew we were falling way behind before, but once the US schools shut their doors because the US threatened the DoD money laundering bag, I knew we were completely fucked.

      • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        9·
        3 months ago

        You can still leave tho, I have a family friend who has a PhD. They have little to no issue getting around and getting visas. Getting out of the country is still feasible. I would get an engineering PhD or material science PhD and see if I can book it to China.

        • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          8·
          3 months ago

          yeah, the ability to leave easier wasn’t worth the 5 more years in the shitty academy making poverty wages and being a serf for some careerist.

          I chose to finish my MSc and work in environmental outreach and later government service, where the wage isn’t sexy, but it pencils out for a simple life. I do not regret it, because now I have some formal education, broad experience and a few bucks in my pocket if I want to leave. cash in hand creates emigration opportunities too.

    • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      29·
      3 months ago

      There was a Portuguese epidemiologist during Covid that said something similar when she was asked why they still don’t have a vaccine.

      She basically said ask Ronaldo to make the vaccine since you want to pay him millions.

  • VernetheJules [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    3 months ago

    aren’t we also doing a red scare pt 2 towards Chinese researchers in the US though? So like one side is demonizing them but then another side is like “no wait stop fleeing back there and surpassing us”

  • Chronicon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    28·
    3 months ago

    I may have never had the organizational skills for it after all but I can tell you, the idea of having tons of student debt hanging over my head just to compete for middling compensation, likely worse than private industry, just so the research can be used to invent new ways for capitalism to screw everyone over, all really dissuaded me from higher study and academia in the US. I was a good enough student, strong interest in a few areas, had some professors say I should go for a higher degree but ultimately there was just no way it made sense.

    I’m sure there’s millions of people smarter than me that went the same way or worse. Under educated because of the perverse incentives and huge inequality of capitalism. Let alone the topic of research funding

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    22·
    3 months ago

    I feel like any westerner hanging around academia and paying attention over the past 10-20 years already knew this in their hearts. To summarise my feelings about the shittiness of western academia I came to just say “the fall of the west will start in academia and it already started a while ago”. Accurate or not, I feel there’s enough truth to it, and by how much it startled people, it seems to have gotten the point across.