U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

Questions about the numbers and framing

• Commenters note apparent arithmetic/averaging issues in the “11:1 departures-to-hires” claim and confusion around how that ratio was computed across agencies.
• Some criticize the infographic for showing total employed rather than hires, suggesting it was built to support a narrative.
• Several ask for age distribution, historical baselines, and performance data to judge whether this is exceptional or just retirements/normal churn.

Is losing 10,000 STEM PhDs inherently bad?

• One camp argues academia is “broken,” many PhDs produce low‑value work, and a blanket assumption that all STEM PhDs are desirable hires is unwarranted.
• Others respond that at this scale it’s not about a few low performers; you’re losing institutional knowledge and capacity, and there’s no evidence it’s the “bad” scientists who left.
• Multiple comments stress that high performers with options are more likely to leave under hostile or unstable conditions, so the quality distribution of leavers may skew upward.

Public vs private sector science

• Some posters claim this is positive: PhDs can do “more productive” work in industry (fusion startups, rockets, etc.) and contribute more to the tax base.
• Many push back: private firms depend on decades of public research, are bad at long‑horizon basic science, and optimize profit rather than public goods (climate, health, infrastructure).
• Examples raised include NASA/Apollo spinoffs, NIH/NOAA outputs, VA medicine, and the difficulty of monetizing essential but unprofitable services like river gauges or satellite observations.

Anti-intellectualism and authoritarian trends

• A strong thread links the cuts to rising US anti‑science, anti‑academic sentiment, especially in right‑wing politics.
• Departures are often described as voluntary in form but driven by fear of firing, buyouts, censorship, or conflict with politicized “pseudoscience.”
• Some see this as part of a broader authoritarian pattern: delegitimizing experts, empowering security agencies, and shifting funds from research to border/military apparatus.

International shifts and brain drain

• Commenters in Europe and elsewhere report similar funding pressure in the EU but say the US situation is now worse and more politically volatile.
• Multiple posts describe collaborators and students redirecting to Europe, Canada, China, or industry; some conferences are moved out of the US.
• China is repeatedly mentioned as expanding STEM training, funding, and collaborations, with concerns that US cuts simply hand long‑term advantage to a strategic rival.

Roles and value of government scientists

• Several comments list concrete functions of federal PhDs: managing grants at NIH/NSF, basic physics and energy research in DOE labs, weapons and defense R&D at NRL/ARL, clinical and research roles in the VA, regulatory science at FDA/CDC, and environmental and weather services.
• The key worry is not abstract credential loss but degradation of these specific capabilities and the difficulty of rebuilding them once experienced personnel and networks disperse.