Bill, you wrote: " ... . Our government is at war with the country’s leading universities and science is under attack, meddling with their internal operations and withholding billions of dollars in research funding. America’s crown jewels of science, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, are being gutted. The effects of these mistakes will be long lasting. Scientific research is not something you can just turn on and off ... " You are usually so complete thorough in your thinking, I am pleased to call you colleague & friend. However, the above is biased left wing political tripe and you need to be called out for its lack of even handedness. You are quite intelligent, but I am not sure you are match for the likes of Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya who now run the top governmental science/medical institutions. Their previous work has been first rate science & certainly they will protect the necessary, scuttle nonsense, and deal with universities, etc not following governmental obligations. As you must know, a multitude of ridiculous and wasted studies have been done, repeatedly funded by the government, and it is time to stop that nonsense-they will. You are acting without any knowledge of what exactly is being done--how unscientific. You should join these remarkable physicians & not criticize their even handed efforts. HRS, MD, FACC
I have written for four years about the ways our medical scientific community is not measuring up. I write about the ways we need to change what we are are doing and I said in this article our system is far from perfect. If taxpayers pay for research they should expect it to serve them. Our entire political system has supported science in the past and now science is being politicized and leading universities are being forced to toe a political line. I am working in my own mind to step back and pull the political lens off of the way that I call balls and strikes. Are you? Look at what they are doing, not their reputation and rhetoric.
As one that has seen the research machine built in the United States from the inside and the outside, I must take umbrage at the comments detracting from Dr Besterman’s position. Certainly there is bad science, but the biomedical research institutions built by the US government were considered the best in the world, and have underwritten multiple major manufacturing concerns (like Pharma) for the last forty years. It really seems like the essence of folly to throw out the baby with the bathwater when there is no hope of reconstructing same once it is destroyed. Ask yourself this question: What would replace the auto industry if the government decided that we really didn’t need it any more. That is the current circumstance…scientists are leaving academia, well established and productive research teams, years in the making, are being disassembled. And I couldn’t care less who is running the NIH, they have no experience dealing with the implications of the dissolution of the crown jewel of biomedical research. They are basing their decisions on political issues rather than science, they are relieving the United States of one of its most important industries, biomedical research. The facts are clear, people are already voting with their feet, and many of the folks that we are being relieved of are Nobel Prize winners.
Bill’s assessment may not be perfect but it strikes me that his thoughtful analysis is pretty close to the truth.
No one is suggesting that all NIH grants be stopped: that implicatio is an insult to intelligence. Grants & research will be looked at far more carefull]y so that coked up gerbils running on treadmills & much of the stupid medical studies where an active agent is ONLY compared to placebo rather than relevant congeners, ...
Well... considering the vast majority of studies came be reproduced I don't hold much value in China have more published studies. I'm thinking the new heads will again fund research but first they have to stop the nonsense you've heard of. Studying mating calls of South American cockroaches is nonsense. Someone needs to use ai to stop the overlap in funding that seems to occur.
A friend sells into the research field so of course sales are down awaiting funding outcomes. But in one instance the new phd person trying to set up a new lab in fairly big univ applied for a grant to study something they already studied during under grad yrs. It's nonsense that this is allowed.
The other thing I have a huge gripe about is that we fund so much of this research yet we can't see but a tiny synopsis of the results. Unless you fork out lots of money. That should all be transparent to the public... including the specific names of what was used in their methods.
Other than that I agree with you🙂 DOGE found the waste but has no authority to block it. Hopefully Jay, Markary and rfk can get on it fast so fund can flow where most useful. I would think grok et al could quickly tell them which proposals are too close to past studies to be worthwhile or if the answer was already addressed 50 yrs ago.
This has some excellent advice about the overlap of funding for research. I also agree that some research is just plain nonsense and how that gets funded is astounding to me. And yes, publicly funded studies should absolutely be freely available to the public who paid for it, all these pay to read shit that taxes paid for is just wrong.
Surely if they can track everything we do with our money they can track funding, right? Lolol... I'm so naive when it comes to criminals and their motivations
Studying the mating calls of South American cockroaches is not a frivolous endeavor, but a legitimate area of research with the potential to advance our understanding of insect biology, ecology, and behavior, and potentially contribute to practical solutions in pest management and other fields.
Bill, you wrote: " ... . Our government is at war with the country’s leading universities and science is under attack, meddling with their internal operations and withholding billions of dollars in research funding. America’s crown jewels of science, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, are being gutted. The effects of these mistakes will be long lasting. Scientific research is not something you can just turn on and off ... " You are usually so complete thorough in your thinking, I am pleased to call you colleague & friend. However, the above is biased left wing political tripe and you need to be called out for its lack of even handedness. You are quite intelligent, but I am not sure you are match for the likes of Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya who now run the top governmental science/medical institutions. Their previous work has been first rate science & certainly they will protect the necessary, scuttle nonsense, and deal with universities, etc not following governmental obligations. As you must know, a multitude of ridiculous and wasted studies have been done, repeatedly funded by the government, and it is time to stop that nonsense-they will. You are acting without any knowledge of what exactly is being done--how unscientific. You should join these remarkable physicians & not criticize their even handed efforts. HRS, MD, FACC
I have written for four years about the ways our medical scientific community is not measuring up. I write about the ways we need to change what we are are doing and I said in this article our system is far from perfect. If taxpayers pay for research they should expect it to serve them. Our entire political system has supported science in the past and now science is being politicized and leading universities are being forced to toe a political line. I am working in my own mind to step back and pull the political lens off of the way that I call balls and strikes. Are you? Look at what they are doing, not their reputation and rhetoric.
They are doing the necessary
Doing the necessary what?
surgery
lol. Surgery with a chainsaw. Surgery is precision and accuracy. Not this hack job.
As one that has seen the research machine built in the United States from the inside and the outside, I must take umbrage at the comments detracting from Dr Besterman’s position. Certainly there is bad science, but the biomedical research institutions built by the US government were considered the best in the world, and have underwritten multiple major manufacturing concerns (like Pharma) for the last forty years. It really seems like the essence of folly to throw out the baby with the bathwater when there is no hope of reconstructing same once it is destroyed. Ask yourself this question: What would replace the auto industry if the government decided that we really didn’t need it any more. That is the current circumstance…scientists are leaving academia, well established and productive research teams, years in the making, are being disassembled. And I couldn’t care less who is running the NIH, they have no experience dealing with the implications of the dissolution of the crown jewel of biomedical research. They are basing their decisions on political issues rather than science, they are relieving the United States of one of its most important industries, biomedical research. The facts are clear, people are already voting with their feet, and many of the folks that we are being relieved of are Nobel Prize winners.
Bill’s assessment may not be perfect but it strikes me that his thoughtful analysis is pretty close to the truth.
Rae Brown, M.D.
No one is suggesting that all NIH grants be stopped: that implicatio is an insult to intelligence. Grants & research will be looked at far more carefull]y so that coked up gerbils running on treadmills & much of the stupid medical studies where an active agent is ONLY compared to placebo rather than relevant congeners, ...
HOGWASH
Well... considering the vast majority of studies came be reproduced I don't hold much value in China have more published studies. I'm thinking the new heads will again fund research but first they have to stop the nonsense you've heard of. Studying mating calls of South American cockroaches is nonsense. Someone needs to use ai to stop the overlap in funding that seems to occur.
A friend sells into the research field so of course sales are down awaiting funding outcomes. But in one instance the new phd person trying to set up a new lab in fairly big univ applied for a grant to study something they already studied during under grad yrs. It's nonsense that this is allowed.
The other thing I have a huge gripe about is that we fund so much of this research yet we can't see but a tiny synopsis of the results. Unless you fork out lots of money. That should all be transparent to the public... including the specific names of what was used in their methods.
Other than that I agree with you🙂 DOGE found the waste but has no authority to block it. Hopefully Jay, Markary and rfk can get on it fast so fund can flow where most useful. I would think grok et al could quickly tell them which proposals are too close to past studies to be worthwhile or if the answer was already addressed 50 yrs ago.
This has some excellent advice about the overlap of funding for research. I also agree that some research is just plain nonsense and how that gets funded is astounding to me. And yes, publicly funded studies should absolutely be freely available to the public who paid for it, all these pay to read shit that taxes paid for is just wrong.
Surely if they can track everything we do with our money they can track funding, right? Lolol... I'm so naive when it comes to criminals and their motivations
Studying the mating calls of South American cockroaches is not a frivolous endeavor, but a legitimate area of research with the potential to advance our understanding of insect biology, ecology, and behavior, and potentially contribute to practical solutions in pest management and other fields.
And that belongs to the scientists in SA, not the US.
They are doing the necessary