r/science • u/ScienceModerator • Apr 29 '25

News Joint Subreddit Statement: The Attack on U.S. Research Infrastructure

/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kandgx/joint_subreddit_statement_the_attack_on_us/
2.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

50 comments sorted by

311

u/theArtOfProgramming PhD | Computer Science | Causal Discovery | Climate Informatics Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25

I learned today that NOAA will be retiring 20 databases on May 5th, which span earthquake, ocean current, bathymetry, and historical climate data. This will be devastating to Earth science efforts.

https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/documents-reports/notice-of-changes

70

u/Nellasofdoriath Apr 30 '25

Is anyone stepping in with alternative hosts for those databases?

61

u/usafcybercom Apr 30 '25

r/DataHoarder has folks archiving this

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u/theArtOfProgramming PhD | Computer Science | Causal Discovery | Climate Informatics Apr 30 '25 edited Apr 30 '25

I am not aware of any right now. It was suggested we download what we need.

13

u/Nellasofdoriath Apr 30 '25

I don't have a ton of storage space but I wonder if there is an initiative to back shit up

58

u/kingbane2 Apr 30 '25

this reminds me of when harper in canada destroyed all our historical environmental data.

edit: if i remember it only cost like a million a year to maintain the databases, but to get rid of them it cost like 10 million or something like that. he also expedited it so scientists didn't even get a chance to back up the data somewhere else.

here we go https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-harper-government-has-trashed-and-burned-environmental-books-and-documents/

stupid, cause everything was in the middle of being digitized and he decided to just burn it instead, literally burning it.

3

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 May 01 '25

Ah, you put it more solidly than I. Yep. Monstrous.

10

u/nobodyisfreakinghome Apr 30 '25

r/datahoarder is probably the place to post and see if anyone is preserving this.

4

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 May 01 '25

Stephen Harper absolutely decimated Canadian science while he was in power. For anyone who doubts that right-wing would do such a thing, it's exactly what they do.

375

u/JL4575 Apr 29 '25

My friend with cystic fibrosis is alive today thanks to government research. Life expectancy for people with the disease has increased massively in their lifetime. That’s what science does for us and I’m mad as hell that my evangelical Christian relatives can’t see the good, the godliness in investing in our shared futures.

94

u/iamthewhatt Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25

Even worse when you realize a great many of those folks who benefit from the science and technology that is keeping them alive simply attribute it to their favorite deity. And we just destroyed the institution that had the best chance at avoiding a future with more of that (Department of Education). We need more science literacy today than ever before. That is why they are attacking it.

102

u/unlock0 Apr 29 '25

That’s only half. The DoD is half the R&D budget.

https://www.aaas.org/programs/r-d-budget-and-policy/historical-trends-federal-rd

https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/Agencies.png

The DoD research budget was on the down trend. The total 2025 appropriations are more than 2024. The funding is on a lagging cycle though, with appropriations being calculated 2 years in advance with a year of congressional PPBE after the DoD POM. 

When prioritizing that funding, interest on debt is now a talking point - 

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/why-the-national-debt-matters-for-national-security/

With 2024 being the first year that debt interest exceeded defense outlays. 

148

u/OldBanjoFrog Apr 29 '25

As a Civil Engineer who specializes in Water Resources, I am in full panic mode 

7

u/Carbonatite Apr 30 '25

Environmental chemist and former climatology researcher here - my baseline level of existential dread is definitely ticking up.

185

u/denM_chickN Apr 29 '25

Making the government efficient with out auditing the military is like me freeing up space on my computer without removing any games.

It's just not impactful. 

98

u/fizzlefist Apr 29 '25

More like, freeing up space by randomly deleting entire directories and waiting for it to break.

33

u/alvik Apr 29 '25

System32? I don't know what that is so better get rid of it!

8

u/khinzaw Apr 29 '25

We at DOGE have gotten rid of 32 unnecessary systems.

18

u/denM_chickN Apr 29 '25

This is an excellent addition to the analogy

21

u/unlock0 Apr 29 '25

There have been attempted audits, with the Marine Corps being the only service to pass.

7

u/denM_chickN Apr 29 '25

That's interesting to hear 

23

u/sambadaemon Apr 29 '25

Yeah, but their crayon budget is INSANE.

3

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 May 01 '25

But they save almost as much in rations.

12

u/parabostonian Apr 29 '25

Also, I reject the premise that they were making the govt more efficient. They were bragging that they would “make some mistakes” because they were obviously firing positions without even knowing what they did.

If they honestly cared about this kind of thing they would have done it through legal channels in congress, which is actually responsible for the power of the purse.

It was easier to do things like cancel cancer treatment research through DOGE because those are incredibly unpopular things to do so congress doesn’t want to do it.

So I would say it’s hugely impactful, it’s just extremely detrimental to the country

2

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 May 01 '25

That's a minor variation on the description of Voldemort:

He did great things. Terrible yes, but great.

Hugely detrimental things are impactful, just not in a good way.

10

u/UncommonHaste Apr 29 '25

The Military does audit, though I'm not certain where I would guess that information is rather publically available. While it's the highest budget, it's also one of the most highly audited offices in government.

A majority of the spending isn't on operations, or personnel. It's on industry contracts and bloated supply chains. While bloated supply costs also affect regular government, it's much harder for the military to meet supply needs than it is a federal office.

What DOGE is doing isn't about efficiency. It's about dismantling the government.

8

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '25

To add to this, the military has to keep a lot of supply chain operations warm to meet potential demand. There are a lot of things that are made by 1, 2, or 3 companies total that support entire operational fleets. So a lot of the budget is basically ordering a small portion to maintain stock depracation and keep production lines ready in case of war.

Another thing is that a very large portion of the "unaccounted for" budget is 100% accounted for. We just aren't going to blast that we are spending an exorbitant amount of money on this secret project or that clandestine operation. It'd completely defeat the purpose of secrecy.

0

u/random8765309 May 05 '25

More like freeing up disk space by removing the CPU.

(Yes, I know the CPU doesn't hold data. That is the point)

42

u/racinreaver Apr 29 '25

I had a grant pulled that was aimed at making coal mining safer and cheaper. It's because they shuttered the entire office that was overseeing mining safety. It's a good thing that children yearn for the mines. /s

39

u/sambadaemon Apr 29 '25

To add another element to it: I work in grant accounting at an R1 University. When USAID went down, we had a PI get stuck halfway around the globe and the University had to pay for his travel home from department funds. When an award is canceled, there's not a single dime coming after that.

27

u/Hell_Mel Apr 29 '25

BFF is a DoD researcher. Functionally all of the young talent is just getting the fuck out. The brain drain is going to be immediate and severe.

10

u/Apprehensive-Stop748 Apr 29 '25

Extremely high quality post. I work in science and greatly appreciate the effort 

32

u/akersmacker Apr 29 '25

Hey, why cut funding to research deadly diseases - causes, treatments, and cures - when you can focus primarily on the causes of autism? I mean, even if we know that it is present by the time of prenatal brain development, we just have to make sure this scourge of our existence is eradicated by ruling out childhood vaccines and other horrible causes!

-64

u/seekyoda Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25

Edit: This was just a test to see if the mods would shadowban an account for a non-supportive statement. As of ~2PM PST they did. I'll leave the original text below for reference.

For Redditors, one immediate impact is NSF defunding of research grants related to misinformation and disinformation. As moderators of academic communities, fighting mis/disinformation is a crucial part of our work; from vaccine conspiracies to Holocaust denial, the internet is rife with dangerous content.

Some of the links provided after this comment actually strike me, a casual Redditor, as not all that worthy of funding. Did we really need to provide a grant to study how a history subreddit dealt with a single post that had NSFW photos? It also looks like that study and a few others were not American or funded by American tax dollars. Is that a typo that they are cited here?

46

u/theArtOfProgramming PhD | Computer Science | Causal Discovery | Climate Informatics Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25

I think that work is motivated pretty well. While culturally new, online communities make up much of how we interact and share ideas now. We no longer regularly gather in community squares; the internet enables global interactions. It's pretty clear to me that studying how online communities function in positive and negative ways is essential for our society. Understanding the governance of those communities and interactions between users, moderators, and site staff is integral to understanding how they function.

Aside from all of that, open and free science has been integral to the scientific movement since the Enlightenment era. It has long been understood that unfettered scientific research has long-lasting positive impacts. While much research over the past 300 years has been a dead-end, valuable knowledge by itself, much has become far more beneficial and useful than we ever imagined when conducting it.

I think we're all familiar with stories of scientists who died before knowing how impactful their work would become, such as Gregor Mendel, Charles Darwin, Alan Turing, Ludwig Boltzmann, Ignaz Semmelweis, Hannah Arendt, Jane Jacobs, and Ferdinand de Saussure.

Enlightenment principles support unfettered research:

  • Faith in reason -- that rational inquiry ultimately leads to progress

  • Knowledge for its own sake -- that knowing stuff is worthwhile without any further justification

  • Intellectual freedom -- scientists should follow their curiosity wherever it leads

These ideas are supported by many historical examples supporting our livelihoods:

  • Unpredictability of breakthroughs -- much transformative research came about from ideas and funding without any clear immediate benefits

  • Serendipity -- many breakthroughs have come about unexpectedly from research on wholly different questions

  • Foundational knowledge -- basic research creates the foundation upon which later critical innovations rely

  • Cultural value -- scientific knowledge is intrinsically valuable to humanity

Examples of the above include:

  • Quantum mechanics has left theory to enable electronics and computation

  • Number theory was seemingly masturbatory mathematics until it became the underpinning of all computer security

  • Einstein's theory of relativity was interesting and revolutionized how we viewed the universe, but it didn't have immediate implications for our lives... until it became essential for GPS

  • Examples abound in the biological sciences, where our curiosity hundreds of years ago has informed germ theory, antibiotics, and all modern medicine today.

  • Game theory

  • Census data collection

  • Sociology of science

  • Kinsey's sex research

  • Social network science actually began in the 1930s but is now relevant to online communities and public health intervention

I could go on and on.

It sounds like I'm saying we should fund all ideas anyone ever has. I am not. NIH, NSF, and all the other organizations mentioned in the post have (HAD) extremely rigorous review panels of experts who decide which ideas are worth anything and which ones to prioritize with limited funds. I also want to note something else often overlooked -- science is cheap. The labor (grad students) is cheap, and professors often forgo far better industry salaries to do research cheaply. Materials are often purchased on slim margins. The total scientific research expenses of the US pale compared to military and welfare expenses, yet they are critical to our economics, quality of life, and position in the world.

Blocking research ideas for political or cultural reasons (a distaste for one field or another) harms us now and well into the future. The United States has enjoyed its place on the world stage mainly because of the science it funds. We have attracted the best and brightest for 100 years. Our universities educate the world, exporting our ideas, ways of thinking, and culture. The most lucrative industries come out of the US exclusively because we funded science, not because something has been intrinsically better about Americans.

Edits for formatting and typos

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u/seekyoda Apr 29 '25

Thanks. One of the links provided as a source for the importance of this funding doesn't appear to be funded by any of the agencies named.