A prescient document that I have come back to many times in my own scientific career. It is striking how little those in power now seem to actually understand what was so clear in 1945:
"To create more jobs we must make new and better and cheaper products. We want plenty of new, vigorous enterprises. But new products and processes are not born full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions which in turn result from basic scientific research. Basic scientific research is scientific capital. Moreover, we cannot any longer depend upon Europe as a major source of this scientific capital. Clearly, more and better scientific research is one essential to the achievement of our goal of full employment.
How do we increase this scientific capital? First, we must have plenty of men
and women trained in science, for upon them depends both the creation of new
knowledge and its application to practical purposes. Second, we must strength-
en the centers of basic research which are principally the colleges, universities, and research institutes. These institutions provide the environment which is most conducive to the creation of new scientific knowledge and least under pressure for immediate, tangible results. With some notable exceptions, most research in industry and in Government involves application of existing scientific knowledge to practical problems. It is only the colleges, universities, and a few research institutes that devote most of their research efforts to expanding the frontiers of knowledge."
and
"Science Is a Proper Concern of Government
It has been basic United States policy that Government should foster the opening of new frontiers. It opened the seas to clipper ships and furnished land for pioneers. Although these frontiers have more or less disappeared, the frontier of science remains. It is in keeping with the American tradition—one which has made the United States great—that new frontiers shall be made accessible for development by all American citizens.
Moreover, since health, well-being, and security are proper concerns of Government, scientific progress is, and must be, of vital interest to Government. Without scientific progress the national health would deteriorate; without scientific progress we could not hope for improvement in our standard of living or for an increased number of jobs for our citizens; and without scientific progress we could not have maintained our liberties against tyranny."
and
"Freedom of Inquiry Must Be Preserved
The publicly and privately supported colleges, universities, and research institutes are the centers of basic research. They are the wellsprings of knowledge and understanding. As long as they are vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere."
Actually overheads for many universities were sometimes higher in the late 1990s (and there were some minor scandals associated with this). And remind me again, what fraction of our GDP is indirect costs to universities? (< 0.1%). And what are the benefits? Well, indirect costs are how the U.S. government builds up a distributed network of scientific and technical infrastructure and capacity. This capacity serves the national interest.
If you think you're going to help debt by cutting indirect costs and crippling university research permanently, may I introduce you to the foundational notions of a knowledge economy and how fundamental advances feed into technology developments that increase productivity and thus GDP. Permanently reducing growth is another way of making debt servicing worse.
In light of all of their actions, I really, genuinely do not understand what DOGE team members' mental model of the world is and what they view their purpose as. None of these actions align with any publicly stated goals, or even the privately reported ones. All I see is a destruction of state capacity that has already left America significantly weakened and less capable of responding to threats.
“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” they wrote. “We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”
“‘Move fast and break things’ may be acceptable to someone who owns a business and owns the risk. And if things don’t go well, the damage is compartmentalized. But when you break things in government, you’re breaking things that belong to people who didn’t sign up for that,” said Cordell Schachter, who until last month was the chief information officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
When? The Twitter files were the most that Republicans could dredge up and that showed that Twitter was enforcing their terms of service and didn’t single out right-wing content for that.
The worst part is that it is immediate and retroactive to ongoing grants. This will immediately cause every single academic and medical research center to have an unsustainable deficit. It will simply cost too much to actually have researchers do the grants. They might return money to NIH and lay off faculty annd grad students.
I anm almost certain this will get a TRO from a federal judge while it’s litigated given how insane this is.
For any new grant issued, and for all existing grants to IHEs retroactive to the date of issuance of this Supplemental Guidance, award recipients are subject to a 15 percent indirect cost rate. This rate will allow grant recipients a reasonable and realistic recovery of indirect costs while helping NIH ensure that grant funds are, to the maximum extent possible, spent on furthering its mission. This policy shall be applied to all current grants for go forward expenses from February 10, 2025 forward as well as for all new grants issued. We will not be applying this cap retroactively back to the initial date of issuance of current grants to IHEs, although we believe we would have the authority to do so under 45 CFR 75.414(c).
Are you familiar with how organizations have annual budgets? Doing it with zero notice in the middle of a fiscal year will be chaos. This is purely an attack.
Notice how no one is going after the F&A (indirect) rates for DOD R&D contractors…
This is truly unconscionable and completely indefensible. All the Musk defenders have to realize that mass firing and zero base budgeting is fine and well for a private company like Twitter. But not for governments. Even if you don't believe in foreign aid, it is completely immoral and unethical to abandon all these people who are participating in clinical trials. You do it in an orderly way, allowing ongoing trials to finish the phase they are in.
This is a great entrepreneurial story too. Colin began this company out of his PhD research at Stanford a decade ago. A long, steady grind and finally out to production. Kudos to him and his team - a very rare accomplishment, and inspiring to see.
Worth remembering that ~2/3 of U.S. students in college are in public colleges and universities, not private ones like Vanderbilt. Prices have gone up there too (especially since state governments subsidize their public universities significantly less than they used to), but they are still pretty good deals given U.S. GDP per capita. In many states they can also be practically free depending on income level and typically provide excellent educations and career opportunities for most students.
I’m really not sure why this got flagged. It seemed like a well sourced and technology-focused article. Independent of this particular conflict, such automated decision making has long been viewed as inevitable. If even a small fraction of what is being reported is accurate it is extraordinarily disturbing.
I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732. If you take a look at that and the links there, and still have a question that isn't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
"To create more jobs we must make new and better and cheaper products. We want plenty of new, vigorous enterprises. But new products and processes are not born full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions which in turn result from basic scientific research. Basic scientific research is scientific capital. Moreover, we cannot any longer depend upon Europe as a major source of this scientific capital. Clearly, more and better scientific research is one essential to the achievement of our goal of full employment.
How do we increase this scientific capital? First, we must have plenty of men and women trained in science, for upon them depends both the creation of new knowledge and its application to practical purposes. Second, we must strength- en the centers of basic research which are principally the colleges, universities, and research institutes. These institutions provide the environment which is most conducive to the creation of new scientific knowledge and least under pressure for immediate, tangible results. With some notable exceptions, most research in industry and in Government involves application of existing scientific knowledge to practical problems. It is only the colleges, universities, and a few research institutes that devote most of their research efforts to expanding the frontiers of knowledge."
and
"Science Is a Proper Concern of Government
It has been basic United States policy that Government should foster the opening of new frontiers. It opened the seas to clipper ships and furnished land for pioneers. Although these frontiers have more or less disappeared, the frontier of science remains. It is in keeping with the American tradition—one which has made the United States great—that new frontiers shall be made accessible for development by all American citizens.
Moreover, since health, well-being, and security are proper concerns of Government, scientific progress is, and must be, of vital interest to Government. Without scientific progress the national health would deteriorate; without scientific progress we could not hope for improvement in our standard of living or for an increased number of jobs for our citizens; and without scientific progress we could not have maintained our liberties against tyranny."
and
"Freedom of Inquiry Must Be Preserved
The publicly and privately supported colleges, universities, and research institutes are the centers of basic research. They are the wellsprings of knowledge and understanding. As long as they are vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere."