Don’t worry, it will be settled soon enough.

Venture Capitalists only want to fund “winners” and lefties hate anything to do with hydrocarbons, so we need to put engineers into the funding loop who will actually say yes to their own kind.

Its primary function is to dole out tax dollars to their friends and colleagues and anyone with political connections. There’s no accountability that the money isn’t being wasted, let alone well spent.

We have an organization similar to the NSF here in Canada, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

Like in the U. S., it seems that one can’t get a faculty position without government funding. I know of at least one grad school colleague who got a tenure-track university position after receiving an NSERC grant.

That time period included several U. S. Presidents and a number of different “Science” editors. For most of it, the atmosphere was one of cordiality and respect, regardless of whatever political decisions were made or which policies were in effect.

But, then, Trump did the unexpected and was elected in 2016. That’s when things started falling apart and the editorial page of “Science” became an outlet for vitriolic attacks. As doc mentioned earlier, Abelson would not have been pleased.

“LBJ took the IRT,
Down to 4th Street USA.
When he got there,
What did he see?
The youth of America on LSD…”

Later on I worked on very big project that was to be funded by the NSF. Our director was always frustrated dealing with management over there. He called it the National Anti Science Foundation.

I’m thoroughly disgusted by what our national science leadership (at both NSF and NIH) and science journals have become, particularly in the last 25 years. Even in the hard sciences (or, ‘actual sciences’) the damage is deep and stunning. NSF and NIH leadership must bear a significant amount of the blame.

As nearly everyone here has noted, “Science” got more and more woke and left wing, eventually becoming both unreadable and irrelevant (there was still good, actual science there, but the editorial slant and selection bias was overwhelmingly left). I resigned in 2005 after being an AAAS member for nearly 40 years. I could no longer stand, or support, the credulous promotion of nonsense like ‘climate science’, warming, or the idiotic inability to do basic math. Phil Abelson would have been appalled.

The same is true at nearly every other society and professional association, including the honoraries like Sigma Xi.

Trump has it right. Time to clean out the stables.

No one can rhyme for anything (save Etrigan)

Even graffiti isn’t as good.

More my style
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkQtdiIAU8I

Ho, ho
Hey, hey
How Many people
Did you fire today?

And there is no more needy bureaucracy than the United States government that can benefit from his service.

True leadership, as chaotic as it may seem and be at times is so unfamiliar to the system and those who inhabit it must resist it because it represents a real threat to their fiefdoms.

And that is how true change and progress is made, that is AMERICA!

All the Founders geniuses all knew and experienced it, every mold breaker seat of the pants leader knows it, and we all benefit from it.

This is OUR system; this is OUR process.

NO APOLOGIES!

But it turns out that the First World has found its own way of corrupting its elite science institutions, too. Consider this example, uncovered by Christopher Rufo last year: “The National Science Foundation is spending $1.5 million on “Black Feminist Epistemologies: Building a Sisterhood in Computing.” That went to Florida State University and it’s still active. It also seems to be impossible to determine how any of that grant is being spent. And if you think this grant was the only such thing of this sort that the NSF has been handing out, well……

Is the NSF yet another elite credentialed institution that’s been hollowed out, ideologically colonized and worn like a skinsuit? Well, I think it might be telling to look not just at the kinds of things it funds, but who runs it. The majority of the 24 NSF members are administrators or emeritus faculty. (This includes the vice provost of the university I graduated from and worked for, by the way — he is cited making an angry denunciation of this move in the article.) How many are currently doing hard, meaningful science research right now? It was not always so.

I have my doubts that the Trump Administration can remake the NSF into an institution capable of fulfilling its original charter once again. What I doubt even more is that the leadership just sacked had any chance of doing so.

I’m sure that all 24 members of the National Science Board will find meaningful, productive positions in the private, results oriented sector.

PS – Do I really need to put the /s?

https://x.com/i/status/2048520330876956760

The reason for my decision was simple. The AAAS had progressively become woke to the point that “Science” had become unreadable. Starting with Trump’s elections, its editorials were nothing but diatribes against him and nothing he did was ever right or acceptable.

I joined the AAAS because it was a top-tier scientific organization and I was proud to do so. By the time I let my membership lapse, it had become a clown show.