it has been close to 100 years now - that the U.S has been the leading destination for researchers, scientists & other ambitious individuals.
before it was Germany - but then nazism took hold. & researchers left starting from 1925/30. Slowly now Germany is recovering their place in science.
such a tragedy - with the dismantling of NIH etc - smart people might say, the U.S made progress without the NIH. The issue is the US was able to invite a lot of immigrants, then even raid those ones with blemished records e.g during Operation Paperclip.
100 years of work, going to waste. It will likely take another 100 years to recover.
The question is about how much permanent damage the administration will have done by 2029. They're obviously trying very hard to kill academia in this country, and the answer is not going to be zero, but I don't understand who else is going to put up the resources to really compete with us. There are midwestern state universities with research budgets that rival those of Cambridge and Oxford.
Here's another example: I regularly read quality publications in my field from researchers at the University of North Texas. In 2024, UNT ranked 170th in the country by R&D expenditure. Until I start seeing excellent work from other countries' 170th-ranked universities, I'm not worried about them poaching a few researchers from us now.
We don't appreciate how good the research ecosystem is in the U.S. The arsonists in power are trying to set fire to the house, and everyone will be poorer for it in the future, but we can still mitigate the damage.
The arsonists in power are trying to set fire to the house
Academia was on fire a long time ago, as evident in the reproducibility crisis.
A core cause is publishing pressure: Journals give peer reviewers almost no time to approve new works, and a professor who fails to approve what he reviews can jeopardize his own ability to publish, turning the process into a frenzied rubber stamp.
Lack of actual peer review means significant errors and even fraud gets published without question.
I've seen the pressure to publish cause a professor to cover up protocol lapses in rat studies. The professor was made aware that the control group had been mishandled, invalidating the findings, but he published anyway because failure to publish something after receiving grant money could harm his career.
Even in harder sciences like chemistry I've seen papers with glaring errors in the equations.
The current state is that the majority of academic output is not reproducible -- you cannot depend upon it for building toward future results. This is a house that needs to burn until the truth matters again.
Until I start seeing excellent work from other countries' 170th-ranked universities, I'm not worried about them poaching a few researchers from us now.
But can you see their work in the usual places you look? Do your favorite science publications include european or chinese research articles?
Their hiring is paid for through a Canadian government investment of more than
> 500 million Canadian dollars (about $364 million) in research fields that are
> strategically important, from global warming to artificial intelligence.
Agree it's not clear from the article, but I'd expect that a lot of that is research funding, not necessarily salary. IOW, this is money that might have been spent on this anyhow, getting access to additional scholars is icing on the cake.
Yes, I think this is correct. The money is for hiring researchers and running a lab, not just the salary for an individual. And I think this might be for a multi-year time frame, and not just a single year.
I have a friend who is participating in this, and at one point he told me the numbers. My recollection is that maybe he said they were offering $2M CDN per year for 5 years? Or maybe it was $1M CDN for each of the next 5 years, with an option to renew for 5 more?
And I think there was something about a hardware budget, but I don't recall if that was included in the numbers are separate. In any case, while they are offering competitive salaries for Canada, the money offered is definitely not all going for the salary of just the recruited academics.
Why would Canada want these modern day American version of nazi professors and researchers at their institutions? Is this similar to the US embracing Werner von Braun and other nazis to capitalize on their intelligence and research in spite of the fact that they were deplorables?
Comments
it has been close to 100 years now - that the U.S has been the leading destination for researchers, scientists & other ambitious individuals.
before it was Germany - but then nazism took hold. & researchers left starting from 1925/30. Slowly now Germany is recovering their place in science.
such a tragedy - with the dismantling of NIH etc - smart people might say, the U.S made progress without the NIH. The issue is the US was able to invite a lot of immigrants, then even raid those ones with blemished records e.g during Operation Paperclip.
100 years of work, going to waste. It will likely take another 100 years to recover.
Germany lost Nobel laureates. Were any of those 48 scholars among the top physicists, chemists, or leading researchers in other important fields?
If those 48 scholars meet the following three criteria, then you should be concerned: Top university && Top researcher && Important field.
The question is about how much permanent damage the administration will have done by 2029. They're obviously trying very hard to kill academia in this country, and the answer is not going to be zero, but I don't understand who else is going to put up the resources to really compete with us. There are midwestern state universities with research budgets that rival those of Cambridge and Oxford.
Here's another example: I regularly read quality publications in my field from researchers at the University of North Texas. In 2024, UNT ranked 170th in the country by R&D expenditure. Until I start seeing excellent work from other countries' 170th-ranked universities, I'm not worried about them poaching a few researchers from us now.
We don't appreciate how good the research ecosystem is in the U.S. The arsonists in power are trying to set fire to the house, and everyone will be poorer for it in the future, but we can still mitigate the damage.
Academia was on fire a long time ago, as evident in the reproducibility crisis.
A core cause is publishing pressure: Journals give peer reviewers almost no time to approve new works, and a professor who fails to approve what he reviews can jeopardize his own ability to publish, turning the process into a frenzied rubber stamp.
Lack of actual peer review means significant errors and even fraud gets published without question.
I've seen the pressure to publish cause a professor to cover up protocol lapses in rat studies. The professor was made aware that the control group had been mishandled, invalidating the findings, but he published anyway because failure to publish something after receiving grant money could harm his career. Even in harder sciences like chemistry I've seen papers with glaring errors in the equations.
The current state is that the majority of academic output is not reproducible -- you cannot depend upon it for building toward future results. This is a house that needs to burn until the truth matters again.
But can you see their work in the usual places you look? Do your favorite science publications include european or chinese research articles?
$500 million in a year for 48 top scholars, huh...
TFH:
Agree it's not clear from the article, but I'd expect that a lot of that is research funding, not necessarily salary. IOW, this is money that might have been spent on this anyhow, getting access to additional scholars is icing on the cake.
Yes, I think this is correct. The money is for hiring researchers and running a lab, not just the salary for an individual. And I think this might be for a multi-year time frame, and not just a single year.
I have a friend who is participating in this, and at one point he told me the numbers. My recollection is that maybe he said they were offering $2M CDN per year for 5 years? Or maybe it was $1M CDN for each of the next 5 years, with an option to renew for 5 more?
And I think there was something about a hardware budget, but I don't recall if that was included in the numbers are separate. In any case, while they are offering competitive salaries for Canada, the money offered is definitely not all going for the salary of just the recruited academics.
https://archive.today/rZnQt
Scholars in what fields?
There is a faction of our government who want a nation of illiterate peasants.
Why would Canada want these modern day American version of nazi professors and researchers at their institutions? Is this similar to the US embracing Werner von Braun and other nazis to capitalize on their intelligence and research in spite of the fact that they were deplorables?