Surprisingly good!

Headline:
The end of science’s peacetime.

The headline of this article sounds like just another standard defense of the vicious science-deepstate axis. Fortunately I took time to read the article. Like Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs, the author is pointing out WHY science is vulnerable to threats like Trump. He hits all the points correctly!

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1. Sadly, science is full of other practices — college and graduate admissions, the science publishing cartel, hiring and promotion, professional hierarchy, institutional prestige, and classroom education — dictated by weird religion. All are riddled with cultural baggage that, I might add, have nothing to do with DEI. The baggage undermines merit and stifles scientific progress. And many of its rules are unwritten and informal, which has made it challenging to tackle head on.

2. Because the government has gone so far as to delete CDC websites, remove data, and order the withdrawal of manuscripts, the scientific community needs to rapidly reconsider how it shares information and data. For example, the importance of preprint servers and the relevance of data democracy are no longer intellectual debates. We need more instruments to communicate and evaluate scientific findings in a manner that is transparent and encourages us to do our work with replicability in mind (rather than for clicks or citations).

3. In some university jobs, scientists’ basic livelihood is tied to their ability to secure government money (so-called “soft money” jobs), with their associated institution receiving a share of the bread. Smart scientists sign up to study the natural world and end up professional fundraisers for higher-education. To call it a scam might not be accurate, but it looks, walks, and quacks like one. Many scholars have studied and criticized the funding model of biomedical research. The system is indefensible as it stands, and yet, hardly a dent has been made in its core components.

Conclusion:

The changes we make ourselves will be healthier than the ones our adversaries demand.

For what might be coming, we’ll need the best version of our army to defend a science that has given us so much. But as we reflect on its practice in an age of conflict, we must admit that we can do much better.

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Every word is ON THE FUCKING DOT. Lots of people have been vainly and futilely trying to point out these problems for a LONG time. My father told me about the problems in 1959**, and I’ve been following in his footsteps ever since. Until now, nothing changed. With a REAL ECONOMIC THREAT to the structure of the deepstate-science axis, maybe the needed reforms will finally be considered.

I’m not holding my breath, because the axis in science is much older and deeper than Canada’s total dependence on US. Canada had a healthy degree of economic and cultural independence until NAFTA made it unnecessary and unwise. Science has been an integral part and loyal servant of CIA/NSA since 1946.

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** And my father wasn’t alone, to put it mildly. EISENHOWER was warning about the same problem at the same time, in an industrial context. Academia and industrial research were falling into the same trap, relying on competitive federal grants and soft money. Previously both had relied on internal money from tuition or profit. When you rely on a natural feedback loop with your own students and customers, you SOLVE real problems. When you rely on federal grants you obey politicians and bureaucrats, whose sole purpose is CREATING problems.