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.