Aug 6, 2025 07:54 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 6, 2025 08:09 PM by C C.)
Trump’s science reform veers off course
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trumps-scien..._permalink
Some takeaways from the opinion piece:
Much to the [potential] dismay of conservatives, DEI has not been eliminated from the National Science Foundation -- only significantly defunded (like much of everything else). But the door may have at least closed for non-scientific factors in general being allowed to receive grants, as well those no longer being add-on conditions for approving otherwise legit science projects:
". . . the 2026 budget would almost zero out a category of grants known as 'Broadening Participation'. These grants reflect Congress’s decades long mania for imposing nonscientific goals onto the foundation. In 2010 Congress forbade the NSF from evaluating grants solely on scientific merit. Instead, scientists have to justify their research according to its “broader impacts,” and vital scientific projects have been rejected for failure to state a sufficiently attractive 'broader impact'.
That former humanities incursion on scientific endeavor, though, has been replaced by a "what practical technological value does this research have?" filter. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge has taken a hit via the cuts to biology, mathematics, and the physical sciences.
"It is a mistake to reorient the NSF toward research perceived to be economically useful. The private sector is already charging ahead on high-tech research and applications. It has less incentive to fund curiosity-driven research into the laws of the universe. [...] The White House has started a long overdue overhaul of science and academia, unleashing end-of-times prophesying from those intertwined establishments. But federal science funding shouldn’t go to social or economic goals, “equity” or any other ideology. Rather, its aim should be to unleash human genius in its confrontation with natural mystery. "
COMMENT: Anomalies like positive discrimination ideology still hanging around, and a bias in favor of studies that justify themselves as having industrial usefulness, should not be that surprising. Because Trump is neither a conservative nor a classic GOP member, but a populist. Or equivalent to an opportunistic independent who romances and weaves together various mismatched factions in order to achieve a voting advantage. ("Strange bedfellows" that neither Republicans nor Democrats would normally bother to deliberately attract.) The current situation might just as much flip another two years from now, since Trump is a maze of unpredictable adjustments responding to "goodness knows what" events and circumstances according to how they are interpreted by his presuppositional mindset.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trumps-scien..._permalink
Some takeaways from the opinion piece:
Much to the [potential] dismay of conservatives, DEI has not been eliminated from the National Science Foundation -- only significantly defunded (like much of everything else). But the door may have at least closed for non-scientific factors in general being allowed to receive grants, as well those no longer being add-on conditions for approving otherwise legit science projects:
". . . the 2026 budget would almost zero out a category of grants known as 'Broadening Participation'. These grants reflect Congress’s decades long mania for imposing nonscientific goals onto the foundation. In 2010 Congress forbade the NSF from evaluating grants solely on scientific merit. Instead, scientists have to justify their research according to its “broader impacts,” and vital scientific projects have been rejected for failure to state a sufficiently attractive 'broader impact'.
That former humanities incursion on scientific endeavor, though, has been replaced by a "what practical technological value does this research have?" filter. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge has taken a hit via the cuts to biology, mathematics, and the physical sciences.
"It is a mistake to reorient the NSF toward research perceived to be economically useful. The private sector is already charging ahead on high-tech research and applications. It has less incentive to fund curiosity-driven research into the laws of the universe. [...] The White House has started a long overdue overhaul of science and academia, unleashing end-of-times prophesying from those intertwined establishments. But federal science funding shouldn’t go to social or economic goals, “equity” or any other ideology. Rather, its aim should be to unleash human genius in its confrontation with natural mystery. "
COMMENT: Anomalies like positive discrimination ideology still hanging around, and a bias in favor of studies that justify themselves as having industrial usefulness, should not be that surprising. Because Trump is neither a conservative nor a classic GOP member, but a populist. Or equivalent to an opportunistic independent who romances and weaves together various mismatched factions in order to achieve a voting advantage. ("Strange bedfellows" that neither Republicans nor Democrats would normally bother to deliberately attract.) The current situation might just as much flip another two years from now, since Trump is a maze of unpredictable adjustments responding to "goodness knows what" events and circumstances according to how they are interpreted by his presuppositional mindset.