The Continuing Crisis, Part IX: Inside the NIH Now

Impact on US Science and Technology

• Many see the NIH/NSF crisis as an existential threat to US technological leadership, with predicted fallout in 10–20 years: brain drain, loss of high-paying tech/biotech jobs, and long-lasting damage even if policies were reversed now.
• Some argue this could leave the US with only military strength, which itself depends on economic and scientific capacity and would eventually erode.

What Individuals Can Do

• Suggested actions: contact Congress, join or organize mass protests and non-violent civil disobedience, support local school boards and city councils, and engage with grassroots organizing.
• Others express exhaustion with constant outrage and want concrete, effective actions rather than “rage cycles.”
• There is emphasis on a deep trust gap in institutions and the difficulty of “winning an information war” when misinformation spreads faster than nuanced explanations.

Motivations for Attacking NIH, NSF, and Universities

• Common view: this is part of the culture war—punishing universities and scientists perceived as “woke,” anti-Trump, or politically hostile.
• Funding cuts and overhead changes are seen as a way to hurt research universities while framing it as “efficiency.”
• Others tie it to a desire to free up money for tax cuts and to consolidate power by weakening independent knowledge institutions.
• A minority argue universities “took sides” politically and now face backlash; DEI requirements in grants are cited as evidence of politicization.

How Science Funding Should Work

• One camp stresses that basic research is inherently unpredictable; like VC, you fund many projects expecting most to fail, and rigorous peer review already exists.
• Skeptics question whether current processes really ensure value, argue some “science” is low-utility, and ask for clearer criteria and evidence of returns.
• Disagreement centers on whether oversight is already too heavy or still not sufficiently focused on societal benefit.

China, Competition, and Cooperation

• Some frame investment in US biotech as necessary to remain competitive with a rapidly advancing China.
• Others find the “compete with China” narrative manipulative, preferring international cooperation and rejecting a zero-sum view of scientific progress.
• Counterarguments note that geopolitical and territorial conflicts constrain pure economic cooperation.

Democracy, Polarization, and HN Itself

• Several comments link attacks on science to broader anti-intellectual and authoritarian trends, comparing them to historical purges of intellectuals.
• There is debate over whether this “could happen here” in an “advanced Western democracy,” with some arguing the US has long been socially backward in key ways.
• Meta-discussion: HN is seen by some as increasingly dominated by political rage, driving away people who came for technical discussion; others say this simply reflects that science and academia are now directly under political attack and can’t be separated from politics.

Quality of Life and US Status

• Side debate over whether the US actually has a “higher standard of living”: high salaries and purchasing power versus poor healthcare access and middling rankings on human-development and freedom indices.
• Tension between data-driven indices and people’s subjective sense that life is getting worse.

Miscellaneous

• One long Alzheimer’s “success story” involving a specific program is widely read as spam/advertising rather than a substantive contribution.