If an executive order can put grants under political control, they were already under political control. We just didn't know it.
That is the case with so much of what is happening now. If these things are possible, the system was already broken.
jjav · 1h ago
In software terms, there has been a vulnerability in the constitution all along, it just had not been exploited until now.
The three branches of government are supposed to be checks and balances against each other. But turns out two of the three don't have any actual power to enforce their mandates. This has worked as long as the three branches grudgingly respected each others role. But now that the executive branch simply decided to ignore the other two whenever convenient, turns out there is no recourse.
mmustapic · 1h ago
You can’t make an unbreakable system, or, at least, it’s very difficult.
The problem is that a big percentage of the population is ok with this, and in that case it doesn’t matter if it’s illegal or not. There is a reason why, even if allowed, governments didn’t do these kind of things: population didn’t want it.
CalRobert · 2h ago
If European leadership has even half a brain cell this could be the catalyst for enormous growth in European science. But they’d need to act fast.
It is easier for politicians to do nothing, safer and ensures future election win. If someone would say anything serious about inviting those scientists, then his opponents would immediately capitalize on this by shouting from every paid tiktok shill, how he is taking European's jobs and inviting bad immigrants.
nixass · 2h ago
Not until decision makers in Germany exchange ideas through fax machines first
CalRobert · 2h ago
Well it’s an upgrade on chiseling out woodcuts at least.
nikanj · 2h ago
EU will not act on this unless the bill also includes provisions to support hobby horse manufacturing in eastern romania
jimt1234 · 2h ago
China enters the chat.
CalRobert · 2h ago
True, they won’t pay PhD’s €28,000 a year either.
seanmcdirmid · 2h ago
China is a pretty good place to be a scientists in certain fields. The pay is very competitive.
CalRobert · 1h ago
Yeah, I think what’s concerning is that it wasn’t obvious I meant 28k is obscenely low.
v5v3 · 1h ago
Then why are all the Chinese origin AI Devs working in USA?
CalRobert · 59m ago
Because you can make insane amounts of money?
v5v3 · 54m ago
DeepSeek and Qwen would pay as much wouldn't they? With the blessings of the state as AI is strategic
i34ubt4q2 · 1h ago
So in your mind, science = AI devs? Not even close, sis.
v5v3 · 1h ago
You joined this website 3 minutes ago just to post that?
i34ubt4q2 · 1h ago
Yep. What's the problem with that? I cannot bear your anti-intellectualism.
v5v3 · 1h ago
Welcome. And have a lovely day my friend.
ocschwar · 4h ago
This ends science in the United States.
You can't really enroll graduate students for a 5 year PHD project if their funding can be pulled at a moment's notice like this.
Yizahi · 35m ago
This ends USA, full stop. Not this particular executive order, but his orders in general. It's been half a year and that orange turd has completely overtaken USA legislative branch with this "economic emergency", while bobbleheads in the Congress just signed it away voluntarily. And now he is taking preliminary shots at the judicial branch, trying to eradicate judges who aren't bending the knee. All the while testing through his minions if it would be possible to tear down constitution too and remain in power permanently.
FredPret · 54m ago
To play devil's advocate:
- science funding is controlled by the state (and thus politics) in many leading countries, especially China. Doesn't seem to hold them back
- the US pays people vastly more than other countries, and will continue to have the ability to fund expensive research more than others. Maybe it will regain the political will to do so in coming years
You're right that uncertainty is deadly to investment, and signing up for 5 years of a PhD is certainly an investment. But it's hard to see this turn into an actual brain drain, if only for lack of a better place to go.
WillPostForFood · 2h ago
This ends science in the United States.
Probably not. Grants were always under political control, right? This is just shifting political control from one part of a government agency to another part of the government agency.
noelwelsh · 2h ago
The key phrase in the article is "political appointee". Previously, approval was by government employees who had expertise in the given field.
jjk166 · 1h ago
> Individual grants will also require clearance from a political appointee and "must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities."
> The order also instructs agencies to formalize the ability to cancel previously awarded grants at any time if they're considered to "no longer advance agency priorities."
russellbeattie · 3h ago
This year is definitely the beginning of the end for American scientific leadership. The damage being done is incalculable.
The best and brightest simply aren't going to want to come to the U.S. for an uncertain future where they'll be harassed at the airport every trip and then defunded or deported at any time for "political" reasons (a.k.a. racism, bigotry, religion, ignorance and anti-intellectualism).
Amazingly, we're only 200 days into this administration.
We have 3 years, 5 months and 12 days left, assuming we still have free and fair elections in 2028.
For the next several years, the administration is going to continue to dismantle our country's foundations brick by brick, enabled by Congress and SCOTUS. The attack on immigrants is in full swing, but the total takeover of science, public education, universities and mass media is actually just beginning.
msgodel · 52m ago
Whether it's real or just poor communication a lot of the country felt like the scientific institutions had been weaponized against them. Maybe the constituents of those institutions even believed either making themselves an enemy of the public or creating PR indicating they were was moral but the practical reality of public institutions is that they must have the trust of the public or they will come to an end.
Hopefully people remember this for next time.
watwut · 10m ago
> Whether it's real or just poor communication
Nah, there was nothing "poor communication" about it. It was very well done bad faith communication from bad actors. It was intentional lies. This was not a fault of communication of these institutions. They can not match the lies machine from well founded and motivated political groups. And that is about it.
themafia · 2h ago
I genuinely don't understand this. This is due to my lack of experience in University since I never went, and my experience with laboratories, since I've only ever been in one, much to the annoyance of my best friends girlfriend at the time, who was studying Chinook and their spawning behavior.
My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education. Is there not another way to fund these projects? Is there not a better way to engage students into these projects? I don't recall most students having a wide array of choices when it comes to taking on these opportunities.
Is this not a chance to improve a rather ancient and clumsy system?
pyrale · 2h ago
> Is this not a chance to improve a rather ancient and clumsy system?
I seriously doubt that there is any will to improve the system.
> My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education.
Grants cover a much larger part of the work at labs. Basically, a grant could be paying anything except tenured salaries and administrative costs.
noelwelsh · 2h ago
Grants are usually for projects. Projects may include a portion for postgraduate students, but also pay a lot of other things such as running costs for a lab, travel, conference fees, etc. The costs of running, say, a biology lab are very high (lots of equipment, need to employ technicians as well).
panarchy · 4h ago
There's a reason the Americans discovered how to make atomic weapons first and it's because their researchers were living under a less oppressive state that wasn't motivated by anti-intellectualism and dumb ideology.
Jimmc414 · 4h ago
While I agree in spirit on the concern about political interference in science, the Manhattan Project was actually one of the most secretive, tightly controlled government programs in US history.
In addition many scientists involved (like Oppenheimer) later faced political persecution during the McCarthy era.
American atomic research succeeded despite, or perhaps because of, intense state control and funding
HelloNurse · 1h ago
The "raw material" of the Manhattan Project was a flourishing community of researchers, including many European exiles; "secretive, tightly controlled" management is simply the only reasonable way to run such a military program.
Consider that at the same time the Third Reich also had a nuclear weapons research program, and it went nowhere.
m4rtink · 38m ago
Well, many of the researchers would have been killed if they stayed in Germany. It kinda helps being alive when researching how to build a nuclear bomb.
seanmcdirmid · 2h ago
You can’t just look at the Manhattan project without looking at the research output that led up to it.
panarchy · 3h ago
Yeah it probably isn't the best project to highlight the sentiment, but it was well known one and immediately came to mind in a period that had the contrasting factor.
I don't particularly think that the secrecy or control of a single group really reflects on the overall culture however. We wouldn't call phreakers authoritarian just because they weren't publishing their exploits in the newspaper or letting any new person fully into their circle.
Also the prosecution and harassment of communists/leftists and minorities in the US during that era is why I stipulated less oppressive rather than unoppressive.
thisislife2 · 4h ago
And it was an international project - the British were involved too, before the Americans suddenly cut them off.
thrown-0825 · 29m ago
This is propaganda.
The Manhattan project succeeded because it was consuming a significant portion of the US GDP at the time, the scientists were forced to live on site with their families and every word they said was monitored.
pokstad · 4h ago
But the Soviets made them second…
epistasis · 4h ago
Not because they trusted their scientists to be able to do it though. They used the plans stolen form the US instead.
defrost · 2h ago
It's somewhat more complicated given that much of the significant work passed on by Klaus Fuchs to the Soviets that they acknowledge was responsible for the first Soviet fission bomb was Fuchs own work .. he shared with the British, the Americans, the Canadians, and the Soviets .. who were all ostensibly allies at the time.
Adding to @eastbound's comment the Soviets were also responsible for the first remote operated "robot" on the moon.
pokstad · 2h ago
Well then maybe it is easier to let someone else do the heavy lifting first
igor47 · 1h ago
This is complete moral bankruptcy. You're saying it would be better, rather than developing excellency, to instead become a parasite. I understand that in a world where winning is all that matters, this might be a viable strategy... For a while, until everyone adopts it or you otherwise kill your host. But this is not what being a human is about. I wouldn't want you near anything I care about
eastbound · 3h ago
The Soviets had the first flying object in space, the first animal in space, the first human in space, first spacewalk, first woman, first space station. I doubt those plans were all in the US, and if they were, the US didn’t use them.
wolfgangK · 2h ago
> The Soviets had the […]first woman,[…]
That is quite the claim !
cheaprentalyeti · 1h ago
Claim? It's a matter of history. Her name is Valentina Tereshkova, and she's still alive. [0]
Woosh! It's clearly a joke. "first woman" vs "first woman in space".
defrost · 4h ago
But they didn't.
An Australian nuclear scientist working for the UK Rutherford (New Zealander) labs | Tube Alloys | MAUD program told them how to.
It took a while to convince the US scientists who were mainly interested in making big hot piles for power.
The actual building of atomic weapons (Trinity, Fat Man and Little Boy) took place under a fully authoritarian ultra secret State directed militarily controlled program that cost a significant chunk of national GDP.
The example you chose appears to be both incorrect and the very opposite of whatever point you wanted to make.
The jingoist dream of America is falling apart. It must seem, to some who are very dependent on it existing, as if the sky actually is falling. Perhaps it's just a good opportunity for them to study history that has been untouched by North American propaganda.
Anyways, we have the Internet, I'm not sure it matters _where_ innovations are created anymore. It certainly does not seem to be stopping China on any level.
America is going to have to give up the "World Police" (a.k.a. The Military Industrial Complex) badge and move into it's relative political middle age with a little more care and aplomb than the last 6 decades have allowed for. The haze of WW2 is far behind us now.
panarchy · 3h ago
Interesting. How about we replace the USA (I mostly highlighted the US because that's where this site and the population that use it is based) with the Allies. And being authoritarian isn't about having secretive or highly controlled group (which makes sense given what they were working on and the stakes), but rather the general cultural interpretation of freedom perceived by those who are likely to be doing research. And while you can argue that the USA had authoritarian overtones then as well, the key point is that they weren't as overt as having to greet everyone with good tidings for your supreme leader and keep all your opinions strictly in line with the party's. Notes released from the German scientists (I think Heisenberg comes to mind?) revealed they weren't highly motivated by the regime's philosophy despite supporting it outwardly while those who were the most invested into the Nazi ideology never published much of note.
joules77 · 4h ago
Go deeper - why does anti-intellectualism emerge?
toomuchtodo · 4h ago
Nationalist populism sacrifices academics and intellectuals to create a divide between “the people” and the presumed said “elite,” which is then weaponized for political gain by the actual “elite” (political, economical, etc). These movements rely on emotional resonance and simplified narratives, as opposed to educated, informed discourse.
My crude take on the underlying root cause is resentment, discontent, and similar feelings. Happiness is reality minus expectations, and a whole lot of folks are unhappy life did not turn out how they thought it would.
It also does this so that when intellectuals call out their bullshit they can more easily dismiss it as hysteria.
toomuchtodo · 3h ago
Indeed, but that’s why humiliating them is so effective as a response (think South Park’s latest season). Their outlet for the humiliation and resentment they feel is anger and attempts at grasping power, and when that doesn’t lead to the desired outcome, they have no way to cope with the consequences of not reaching the expected status outcome. They demand respect and control, and to deny them that is to deny them their validation and belief of their value. A bully or authoritarian without control is like a dethroned monarch; still convinced of their right to rule, but forced to live in a world that no longer bends to their demands.
whotheywut1 · 3h ago
This is circumlocution. Who is they? Them? What? You're just reciting words. What dialectic is this? Ok let me try in random generalization speak...
Nothing in physics requires us to buy into the political documents; if the average person isn't owed anything under the rules, no one is.
Either we're science driven where only politics makes someone special and we should then moderate that because in reality, they are not special, just a button pusher, just a signature. Or we're a bunch of idiots living in a trailer park.
Seems you subscribe to the whole "everything is a mystery to politics" when it's just biology self-selecting and we should fucking moderate that. With violence if necessary. Because fuck them. They aren't owed anything either, they're just manipulating politics.
eastbound · 2h ago
> My crude take on the underlying root cause is resentment, discontent, and similar feelings.
It probably is both ways. Research has also been used by the opposite party in harmful ways, and this is the story of life.
I doesn’t help that chapters of Mein Kampf were successfully approved as research papers after replacing “jews” by “white men”, and that none of the other scientific fields called out social sciences for it.
The History could have gone the other way:
- “Social sciences being called out by physics, chemistry, IT, economics researchers as social engineering”
or:
- Social sciences being defended by other science bodies, reaching the apogee of credibility of science, resulting in Trump removing funding.
The parties involved had plenty of time to position themselves.
whotheywut1 · 3h ago
I say we launch the nukes and tell everyone who leaned into willful ignorance "aw how sad it didn't go the way you wanted."
dehrmann · 3h ago
Headlines like this don't help.
"Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' analysis finds"
Do you really think WWII America was a less oppressive state? Do you know much harder it was to get porn back then? Or be a trans? Japanese internment? Food ration cards? Office of Censorship? Smith Act? The draft? Curfews and blackouts?
jonny_eh · 2h ago
All that stuff was bad, especially Japanese internment, but this feels like a whole different category. It's a full-blown ceding control of the country to one man.
bee_rider · 2h ago
They meant less oppressive in comparison to Nazi Germany.
msgodel · 1h ago
Lol what? At the time that was done we were drafting people to fight in foreign wars, taxes were extraordinarily high (after having zero income tax just recently) and those weapons were built specifically to support that.
NicoJuicy · 2h ago
But JD Vance using the military so he can have high water while Kayaking for his birthday is ok
The replies to his tweet are a cesspool. Why do people still use Twitter?
v5v3 · 1h ago
Because it has an enormous userbase including active daily postings from many of the most prominent minds.
ojbyrne · 3h ago
You have to be logged in to see the comments. So…
ewoodrich · 2h ago
Just swap x.com with xcancel.com, I used a Chrome extension to set up a redirect rule so it's automatic.
mindslight · 4h ago
.
intermerda · 3h ago
Paul Graham? Pretty sure he was anti-Trump before the last election.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s one of those “enlightened centrists.”
mindslight · 3h ago
Maybe I've unfairly judged him. Last I remember seeing was some pearl clutching about how Trump/Musk needed to "be careful" with what DOGE cut or something. I took that assumption of good faith as an indication of being in the reality distortion field, like too many other VCs are.
watwut · 4m ago
That would be "enlightened centrists". You know having that thing where you do not condone apparent nonsense, but you will really really go far out of your way to sane wash and give absurd benefits of the doubt - but only to "the side you totally are not supporting no".
The opponents of "the side you totally are not supporting no" wont get any benefits of doubt, will have words super scrutinized and instead sanewashed will be exaggerated.
antonvs · 2h ago
Money makes them vulnerable.
They didn’t get to where they are without playing a conformance game. That limits the degree to which they can object to anything.
wat10000 · 1h ago
Money should make them less vulnerable. They can lose their job, be blacklisted, whatever, and still be fine. Not like the ordinary person where this would mean homelessness.
If they’re vulnerable, it’s the psychological need to keep adding to their pile of money that does it.
antonvs · 1h ago
That’s not quite right. An administration like Trump’s can destroy people and companies if they really want to, and that’s the threat they’re using to get their way. Openly defying that is taking a big risk - for the targets, it’s not about “adding to their pile of money”, it’s about not losing much of what they have.
Keep in mind that “money” is not some sort of concrete thing like a pile of gold - it’s dependent on factors like the value of companies. The wealthier someone in the US is, the more their wealth depends on their ultimate cooperation with the prevailing powers.
shrubble · 2h ago
All bureaucrats do this sort of thing: shut down something innocent to serve as a rallying cry.
UCLA has $8 billion in endowments and the state universities in total have $30 billion in endowment funds. How many years could they fund Tao and his institute if they really wanted to?
noelwelsh · 2h ago
The govt has frozen about $584 million in grants to UCLA. The endowment won't last very long if they spent it to replace that. Furthermore, endowment money often has conditions that prevent it being spent freely + it is used for other things.
oaiey · 4h ago
Every day I wake up and see the United States drifting deeper into the totalitarian playbook. It scares the shit out of me.
leptons · 1h ago
The Republicans want it to collapse. They want to burn it down so they can rule over the ashes.
esafak · 3h ago
"You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you."
SubiculumCode · 3h ago
This is extremely disappointing, and worrisome. Science is hard enough without this bull
dyauspitr · 2h ago
I have no respect for republicans. Very hysterical people.
yoyohello13 · 2h ago
I truly cannot understand the people that support this administration. I know I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to defund education and healthcare while simultaneously running up the national dept to pay for a private police force loyal only to the president. I used to think there was some way to bridge the divide, but I just have no patience or respect for the other side anymore.
hinkley · 3h ago
How much of this shit is even legal?
stouset · 3h ago
What does “legal” even matter when you ignore lower courts, stop them from being able to issue injunctions, and have the Supreme Court in your pocket?
This last election was the end of American democracy.
63 · 3h ago
We shall see. Undoubtedly much of this order will be challenged by some pretty powerful institutions and lawyers. Unfortunately, my confidence in the supreme court to uphold the fairest or least destructive interpretation of the law is at an all time low.
wat10000 · 1h ago
I know someone who lost their job in the recent cuts. They worked for a nonprofit funded by the government, and the funding was eliminated. It was challenged in court, and the government lost. They were ordered to restore funding. The person in charge of the funding just... didn’t pay. Legal or not, the money remained in the government’s accounts rather than the nonprofit’s, and the nonprofit shut down.
Until we have actual penalties for the people in charge, it doesn’t even matter whether the courts uphold this stuff or not.
spencerflem · 1h ago
I believed this too but the last few months we’ve seen powerful institution after institution just kinda give up or not even try
bananapub · 1h ago
it truly is astonishing how idiotic or malicious so many of the posters on HN are in the face of this.
yes, actually, it is bad if a bunch of racist lunatics are personally in charge of things, and increase their personal power to make arbitrary decisions based on their stupid hobby horses or deeply dumb opinions.
yes, actually, this is different to when Biden or Obama or Bush presided over a functioning government, that had people you may or may not disagree with having some influence on things, this Trump Reign system is personalised autocracy.
yes, actually, it is bad if the government's sole agenda is "implement dumb ideas from dumb people" and "fuck the left/non-whites/immigrants/scientists".
it's especially dumb to be so unaware of why the world is so good now. it's not luck, it's centuries of hard work by our ancestors. why don't 50% of children simply die? because of medical research, healthcare, food subsidies, etc etc etc. why does the internet exist? because the US government funded a dumb thing for a while then a lot of other people and countries spent a lot of money and effort to make it this.
antonvs · 1h ago
Ah, so a party official must approve the grants?
Trump has been learning from Winnie the Pooh. How very Communist of him.
pfannkuchen · 4h ago
I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy. It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science. Sure private donors have interest driven motives too but it would be diffuse across many areas not concentrated like a political party’s interests.
827a · 4h ago
The biggest reason is because we have a strategic multinational interest in remaining a leader in science. China (and other countries) will fund science. We have to as well, or we fall behind. Its national security.
We also have a strategic interest in draining intelligent individuals from other countries and nationalizing them in ours, which science funding plays a major part in doing.
One of the reasons why its complicated, however, is that the University environment has changed significantly in the US. What used to be academically-motivated institutions dedicated to the pursuit of education are now, essentially, just boring businesses, with more middle managers than educators. As one example, UCLA has a $9.8B endowment. Their athletics programs brought in $120M last year (though, they spent more, and the university itself had to provide gap funding of $30M. yup.) IPAM was receiving $5M/year in NSF funding (DMS-1925919). One obviously extreme way of looking at this: UCLA could have funded Terrance Tao's mathematics research group for six years with the money they used to save a hundred million dollar athletics program that's somehow still losing money.
This is a priorities issue for universities, through and through. But, Universities have slowly evolved their priorities to bloat their managerial class, which has forced them into impossible financial situations where the only way out is to bias investment into revenue generating verticals like maximizing the size of the student body at any cost on the backs of no-default student loans, international students, and athletics programs. Research takes a back seat.
I am all for public funding of science, but even many university researchers would argue, as a part of the system, that its broken (for reasons which extend even beyond those I've brought up). That's why I struggle to take a solid side on this issue; I want science, but what I want more is a University system that actually takes education and research seriously.
derbOac · 3h ago
The current system is broken but nothing about this administration is aimed at helping fix its problems.
With most actions, there's nothing being remedied, just an assertion of control. The action isn't tied to an improvement goal or a remedy with rationale.
As Tao noted, in cases where a remedy for a wrong is mentioned, the remedies being proposed by the administration do far more harm to any ostensible victims than the original asserted wrongs.
Nothing about their actions is in good faith in terms of improving academics in the US, nor do they even try in most cases to pretend to be trying to improve academics at all.
mnky9800n · 2h ago
It’s also that most r1 university budgets single largest contributor is grant overhead which is the approximate 50% of the grant you win is given to the university. But the people who write and win these grants have little say over how this money is spent. Also because universities are impervious to reorganising there is a lot of extra weight within departments as well.
AdieuToLogic · 4h ago
> I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy.
Two reasons.
First, private philanthropy is neither sustainable nor sufficient in scope.
Second, because government funded science is free from having to produce immediate results in order to satisfy the whims of a specific patron such that funding is continued.
> It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science.
Yes, relying on private entities to fund scientific research does seem like an obvious channel for corruption.
derbOac · 3h ago
> Second, because government funded science is free from having to produce immediate results in order to satisfy the whims of a specific patron such that funding is continued.
I agree with you but there's irony (and a possible lesson about motives) in the current situation.
rjbwork · 3h ago
Well, hundreds of elected representatives and a handful of judges have had to entirely abdicate their responsibility and power for us to arrive at this point. It's not just one guy.
derbOac · 3h ago
Sadly true and the real mystery for me.
The problem and paradox is that it's hundreds of elected representatives and a handful of judges entirely abdicating their responsibility to make it just one guy.
energy123 · 3h ago
Neoclassical economics has an answer!
The market can't provide public goods like basic research since it's non-excludable. This is a market failure, causing inefficient allocation of resources.
Therefore, the government has to provide it. This can improve efficiency of resource distribution, if done well.
Whether it's done well is not a foregone conclusion. That's why we need effective and technocratic state capacity, free from corruption and independent of political influence.
mnky9800n · 2h ago
I don’t feel like what you said provided an answer.
ajkjk · 4h ago
"why would the government pay for things that benefit the people that they govern and which those people elected them do?" what do you want a government to do?
esseph · 8m ago
Because not all science that needs to be done is profitable.
Companies and their shareholders only do things that are profitable.
dotancohen · 3h ago
> I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy.
The two are not orthodontal, it is not "instead". Why does the government fund science? To keep the nation ahead of its rivals. Why doesn't philanthropy fund science? Actually, it does. How much more philanthropy would you like? And from whom?
jghn · 4h ago
Because basic science is the sort of thing that no one funds, yet winds up being very useful at the applied science phase that people do fund. So it's useful as a community to fund basic science as it leads to really cool applied science where people can start turning profits
jjk166 · 2h ago
The same reason bridges and aircraft carriers and public schools aren't funded by private philanthropy. Why am I paying taxes if not to fund things done for the public interest?
kevinventullo · 4h ago
Is anything stopping private philanthropy from funding science today? Generally speaking it is in the government’s interest to support fundamental scientific research.
pfannkuchen · 4h ago
I’m not aware of anything stopping it except for perhaps how the system is set up.
Like if I want to fund a pet study that I’m interested in, can I just call up Harvard and offer the lab $1M to work on it? I’ve never heard of anyone doing that, but I’m not really sure why it doesn’t exist (which is why I’m asking if anyone else knows).
ekr____ · 4h ago
More or less. Corporations fund research all the time. Just to pick a random example, check out the acknowledgements on this paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/132
"This work was funded in part by NSF Award CNS-2054869 and gifts from Apple, Capital One, Facebook, Google, and Mozilla."
That said, private grant funding is just of a completely different scale than government grant funding. For example, NIH's annual budget is 48 billion and most of that goes to research (https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/organization/budget).
porcoda · 4h ago
That does happen: foundations will fund specific research and universities apply and get it. What is often different is that foundations rarely put out open calls outside the areas the foundation is specifically interested in. That is where government funding tends to be better: covers many more areas than foundations tend to be interested in. There’s nothing stopping foundations from doing that, but I haven’t seen it very often other than a couple calls here and there. I’ve been a researcher chasing money for decades: I’d love it if foundations would fill this role, but alas, they don’t so far. Plus, the scale doesn’t match: if you added up all the private funding that is available, it’s tiny compared to the federal science budgets.
jghn · 3h ago
> That does happen: foundations will fund specific research and universities apply and get it
For instance, the Chan Zuckerberg Institute before Zuck decided he had to appear to hate science in order to curry favor with the current regime.
ckemere · 4h ago
If there’s a specific researcher you want to fund, you can absolutely call them up. There will be paperwork around IP, independence, etc.
If you want them to do a specific experiment you’ll likely first need to convince them that it’s a good use of their time.
Harvard itself plays approximately zero role in the decision to do a study or not. (There are ethical oversight committees, etc.)
$1M total cost ($600-800k direct cost depending on terms) will buy you a postdoc’s time and effort for 5 years. Unfortunately most labs aren’t set up for a time/money tradeoff, so 5 postdocs for 1 year would be unlikely absent a really exciting project.
It definitely happens quite a bit!
warkdarrior · 4h ago
Give Harvard's Office for Sponsored Programs a call and tell them you are ready to award $1M. It really helps if you already have a lab or PI in mind.
Office for Sponsored Programs
1033 Massachusetts Avenue
5th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
617-495-5501
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dragonwriter · 4h ago
Yes, the interests of private donors. Private philanthropy mostly feeds what private donors are interests in (weighted, of course, by having money to give, so for all intents and purposes, it goes where the interests of the superwealthy are.)
And those tend to be: things that are perceived by the donor as having high immediate returns, things that are perceived by the public as having high immediate returns and thus are good for buying status, and things that provide a convenient channel for the donor to exercise power via the donation, making it away to enjoy wealth while also getting a tax break for it.
Basic science doesn't tend to fit any of those, which is why science funded by private philanthropy is small compared either to government funding of basic science or total private philanthropy.
How many private philanthropy orgs do you need to be able to pay for 700 billions reaserach funding each year?
teaearlgraycold · 4h ago
Private philanthropy doesn't feel like it's free from corruption.
dotancohen · 2h ago
Recent events related to the Qatari funding make this poignant.
panarchy · 4h ago
What biased incentives does a government have that isn't even worse than a corporation or an individual who has large sway in corporation? How exactly would Dow Chemical funding research for understanding cancer effects on chemicals they produce not be extremely biased? Why would other rich people who are friends of the CEO of Dow fund that research? How exactly would a private donor fund something like the Apollo missions? Why would they bother when they could just reinvest their money to make more money? These billionaires could be donating billions right now and in large they aren't.
ulfw · 2h ago
Because imagine just for the sake of discussion (I am well aware this is not possible. Just trying to make an extreme point. You could pick HIV or MS or Parking's or any other incurable disease) there was a magic pill that could cure cancer. You take it once a day for a week and any cancer is gone. Doesn't matter which cancer. All of them, gone for good. Magical!
Would would ANY private enterprise (i.e. pharmaceutical company) want to fund research that would enable that?
The immense money (the US spends over $200B a year in cancer 'treatments') that these companies would not be making anymore would deter any such research.
Same goes for many other scientific discoveries. Some are for the greater humanitarian good, not for private enterprise profit maximisation.
FredPret · 1h ago
All companies are not one giant entity. Even when they illegally collude, they're holding onto their knives and keeping a keen eye on one another's backs.
Of course any company would take this deal and make a boatload of money (though less than the $200B / year).
Undercutting all its competitors would be a bonus, not a deterrent.
This has happened so many times throughout history. New tech comes in, does the same thing cheaper and better, old companies die out kicking and screaming.
That is the case with so much of what is happening now. If these things are possible, the system was already broken.
The three branches of government are supposed to be checks and balances against each other. But turns out two of the three don't have any actual power to enforce their mandates. This has worked as long as the three branches grudgingly respected each others role. But now that the executive branch simply decided to ignore the other two whenever convenient, turns out there is no recourse.
The problem is that a big percentage of the population is ok with this, and in that case it doesn’t matter if it’s illegal or not. There is a reason why, even if allowed, governments didn’t do these kind of things: population didn’t want it.
https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs#european-funding-initiati...
You can't really enroll graduate students for a 5 year PHD project if their funding can be pulled at a moment's notice like this.
- science funding is controlled by the state (and thus politics) in many leading countries, especially China. Doesn't seem to hold them back
- the US pays people vastly more than other countries, and will continue to have the ability to fund expensive research more than others. Maybe it will regain the political will to do so in coming years
You're right that uncertainty is deadly to investment, and signing up for 5 years of a PhD is certainly an investment. But it's hard to see this turn into an actual brain drain, if only for lack of a better place to go.
Probably not. Grants were always under political control, right? This is just shifting political control from one part of a government agency to another part of the government agency.
> The order also instructs agencies to formalize the ability to cancel previously awarded grants at any time if they're considered to "no longer advance agency priorities."
The best and brightest simply aren't going to want to come to the U.S. for an uncertain future where they'll be harassed at the airport every trip and then defunded or deported at any time for "political" reasons (a.k.a. racism, bigotry, religion, ignorance and anti-intellectualism).
Amazingly, we're only 200 days into this administration.
We have 3 years, 5 months and 12 days left, assuming we still have free and fair elections in 2028.
For the next several years, the administration is going to continue to dismantle our country's foundations brick by brick, enabled by Congress and SCOTUS. The attack on immigrants is in full swing, but the total takeover of science, public education, universities and mass media is actually just beginning.
Hopefully people remember this for next time.
Nah, there was nothing "poor communication" about it. It was very well done bad faith communication from bad actors. It was intentional lies. This was not a fault of communication of these institutions. They can not match the lies machine from well founded and motivated political groups. And that is about it.
My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education. Is there not another way to fund these projects? Is there not a better way to engage students into these projects? I don't recall most students having a wide array of choices when it comes to taking on these opportunities.
Is this not a chance to improve a rather ancient and clumsy system?
I seriously doubt that there is any will to improve the system.
> My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education.
Grants cover a much larger part of the work at labs. Basically, a grant could be paying anything except tenured salaries and administrative costs.
In addition many scientists involved (like Oppenheimer) later faced political persecution during the McCarthy era.
American atomic research succeeded despite, or perhaps because of, intense state control and funding
Consider that at the same time the Third Reich also had a nuclear weapons research program, and it went nowhere.
I don't particularly think that the secrecy or control of a single group really reflects on the overall culture however. We wouldn't call phreakers authoritarian just because they weren't publishing their exploits in the newspaper or letting any new person fully into their circle.
Also the prosecution and harassment of communists/leftists and minorities in the US during that era is why I stipulated less oppressive rather than unoppressive.
The Manhattan project succeeded because it was consuming a significant portion of the US GDP at the time, the scientists were forced to live on site with their families and every word they said was monitored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs
Adding to @eastbound's comment the Soviets were also responsible for the first remote operated "robot" on the moon.
That is quite the claim !
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Tereshkova
An Australian nuclear scientist working for the UK Rutherford (New Zealander) labs | Tube Alloys | MAUD program told them how to.
It took a while to convince the US scientists who were mainly interested in making big hot piles for power.
The actual building of atomic weapons (Trinity, Fat Man and Little Boy) took place under a fully authoritarian ultra secret State directed militarily controlled program that cost a significant chunk of national GDP.
The example you chose appears to be both incorrect and the very opposite of whatever point you wanted to make.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Alloys
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Oliphant
Anyways, we have the Internet, I'm not sure it matters _where_ innovations are created anymore. It certainly does not seem to be stopping China on any level.
America is going to have to give up the "World Police" (a.k.a. The Military Industrial Complex) badge and move into it's relative political middle age with a little more care and aplomb than the last 6 decades have allowed for. The haze of WW2 is far behind us now.
My crude take on the underlying root cause is resentment, discontent, and similar feelings. Happiness is reality minus expectations, and a whole lot of folks are unhappy life did not turn out how they thought it would.
https://warwick.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/researchers_point_t...
https://academic.oup.com/isagsq/article/1/1/ksab002/6185295
Nothing in physics requires us to buy into the political documents; if the average person isn't owed anything under the rules, no one is.
Either we're science driven where only politics makes someone special and we should then moderate that because in reality, they are not special, just a button pusher, just a signature. Or we're a bunch of idiots living in a trailer park.
Seems you subscribe to the whole "everything is a mystery to politics" when it's just biology self-selecting and we should fucking moderate that. With violence if necessary. Because fuck them. They aren't owed anything either, they're just manipulating politics.
It probably is both ways. Research has also been used by the opposite party in harmful ways, and this is the story of life.
I doesn’t help that chapters of Mein Kampf were successfully approved as research papers after replacing “jews” by “white men”, and that none of the other scientific fields called out social sciences for it.
The History could have gone the other way:
- “Social sciences being called out by physics, chemistry, IT, economics researchers as social engineering”
or:
- Social sciences being defended by other science bodies, reaching the apogee of credibility of science, resulting in Trump removing funding.
The parties involved had plenty of time to position themselves.
"Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' analysis finds"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44796526
Wtf US
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/06/jd-vance-ohi...
"The Trump administration has suspended the funding of Terence Tao and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA."
But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s one of those “enlightened centrists.”
The opponents of "the side you totally are not supporting no" wont get any benefits of doubt, will have words super scrutinized and instead sanewashed will be exaggerated.
They didn’t get to where they are without playing a conformance game. That limits the degree to which they can object to anything.
If they’re vulnerable, it’s the psychological need to keep adding to their pile of money that does it.
Keep in mind that “money” is not some sort of concrete thing like a pile of gold - it’s dependent on factors like the value of companies. The wealthier someone in the US is, the more their wealth depends on their ultimate cooperation with the prevailing powers.
UCLA has $8 billion in endowments and the state universities in total have $30 billion in endowment funds. How many years could they fund Tao and his institute if they really wanted to?
This last election was the end of American democracy.
Until we have actual penalties for the people in charge, it doesn’t even matter whether the courts uphold this stuff or not.
yes, actually, it is bad if a bunch of racist lunatics are personally in charge of things, and increase their personal power to make arbitrary decisions based on their stupid hobby horses or deeply dumb opinions.
yes, actually, this is different to when Biden or Obama or Bush presided over a functioning government, that had people you may or may not disagree with having some influence on things, this Trump Reign system is personalised autocracy.
yes, actually, it is bad if the government's sole agenda is "implement dumb ideas from dumb people" and "fuck the left/non-whites/immigrants/scientists".
it's especially dumb to be so unaware of why the world is so good now. it's not luck, it's centuries of hard work by our ancestors. why don't 50% of children simply die? because of medical research, healthcare, food subsidies, etc etc etc. why does the internet exist? because the US government funded a dumb thing for a while then a lot of other people and countries spent a lot of money and effort to make it this.
Trump has been learning from Winnie the Pooh. How very Communist of him.
We also have a strategic interest in draining intelligent individuals from other countries and nationalizing them in ours, which science funding plays a major part in doing.
One of the reasons why its complicated, however, is that the University environment has changed significantly in the US. What used to be academically-motivated institutions dedicated to the pursuit of education are now, essentially, just boring businesses, with more middle managers than educators. As one example, UCLA has a $9.8B endowment. Their athletics programs brought in $120M last year (though, they spent more, and the university itself had to provide gap funding of $30M. yup.) IPAM was receiving $5M/year in NSF funding (DMS-1925919). One obviously extreme way of looking at this: UCLA could have funded Terrance Tao's mathematics research group for six years with the money they used to save a hundred million dollar athletics program that's somehow still losing money.
This is a priorities issue for universities, through and through. But, Universities have slowly evolved their priorities to bloat their managerial class, which has forced them into impossible financial situations where the only way out is to bias investment into revenue generating verticals like maximizing the size of the student body at any cost on the backs of no-default student loans, international students, and athletics programs. Research takes a back seat.
I am all for public funding of science, but even many university researchers would argue, as a part of the system, that its broken (for reasons which extend even beyond those I've brought up). That's why I struggle to take a solid side on this issue; I want science, but what I want more is a University system that actually takes education and research seriously.
With most actions, there's nothing being remedied, just an assertion of control. The action isn't tied to an improvement goal or a remedy with rationale.
As Tao noted, in cases where a remedy for a wrong is mentioned, the remedies being proposed by the administration do far more harm to any ostensible victims than the original asserted wrongs.
Nothing about their actions is in good faith in terms of improving academics in the US, nor do they even try in most cases to pretend to be trying to improve academics at all.
Two reasons.
First, private philanthropy is neither sustainable nor sufficient in scope.
Second, because government funded science is free from having to produce immediate results in order to satisfy the whims of a specific patron such that funding is continued.
> It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science.
Yes, relying on private entities to fund scientific research does seem like an obvious channel for corruption.
I agree with you but there's irony (and a possible lesson about motives) in the current situation.
The problem and paradox is that it's hundreds of elected representatives and a handful of judges entirely abdicating their responsibility to make it just one guy.
The market can't provide public goods like basic research since it's non-excludable. This is a market failure, causing inefficient allocation of resources.
Therefore, the government has to provide it. This can improve efficiency of resource distribution, if done well.
Whether it's done well is not a foregone conclusion. That's why we need effective and technocratic state capacity, free from corruption and independent of political influence.
Companies and their shareholders only do things that are profitable.
Like if I want to fund a pet study that I’m interested in, can I just call up Harvard and offer the lab $1M to work on it? I’ve never heard of anyone doing that, but I’m not really sure why it doesn’t exist (which is why I’m asking if anyone else knows).
"This work was funded in part by NSF Award CNS-2054869 and gifts from Apple, Capital One, Facebook, Google, and Mozilla."
That said, private grant funding is just of a completely different scale than government grant funding. For example, NIH's annual budget is 48 billion and most of that goes to research (https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/organization/budget).
For instance, the Chan Zuckerberg Institute before Zuck decided he had to appear to hate science in order to curry favor with the current regime.
If you want them to do a specific experiment you’ll likely first need to convince them that it’s a good use of their time.
Harvard itself plays approximately zero role in the decision to do a study or not. (There are ethical oversight committees, etc.)
$1M total cost ($600-800k direct cost depending on terms) will buy you a postdoc’s time and effort for 5 years. Unfortunately most labs aren’t set up for a time/money tradeoff, so 5 postdocs for 1 year would be unlikely absent a really exciting project.
It definitely happens quite a bit!
And those tend to be: things that are perceived by the donor as having high immediate returns, things that are perceived by the public as having high immediate returns and thus are good for buying status, and things that provide a convenient channel for the donor to exercise power via the donation, making it away to enjoy wealth while also getting a tax break for it.
Basic science doesn't tend to fit any of those, which is why science funded by private philanthropy is small compared either to government funding of basic science or total private philanthropy.
Would would ANY private enterprise (i.e. pharmaceutical company) want to fund research that would enable that?
The immense money (the US spends over $200B a year in cancer 'treatments') that these companies would not be making anymore would deter any such research.
Same goes for many other scientific discoveries. Some are for the greater humanitarian good, not for private enterprise profit maximisation.
Of course any company would take this deal and make a boatload of money (though less than the $200B / year).
Undercutting all its competitors would be a bonus, not a deterrent.
This has happened so many times throughout history. New tech comes in, does the same thing cheaper and better, old companies die out kicking and screaming.