Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Ike smiles
On January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower delivered his farewell address to our nation, in which he issued a couple of prescient warnings. One, regarding the dangers of the then-already burgeoning “military-industrial complex,” is well known. The other, barely. Here it is (bolding mine):
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
What a spectacle! As the Trump administration reclaims the reins of power, the scientific elite are reacting with utter dismay to policies that prioritize accountability, budgetary discipline, and a reevaluation of priorities. Judging by the tone of despair emanating from recent articles, you’d think the very foundation of science had crumbled underfoot. But make no mistake—this isn’t the death of science; it’s the birth of overdue reform.
Both Nature and Science magazine lament the “unprecedented” decisions to halt NIH grant-review meetings, travel, and non-emergency communications. A chorus of voices within the research community describes these measures as “devastating,” “unfair,” and even a “cataclysm.” What’s actually happening? The Trump administration is simply pressing the pause button to evaluate how $47 billion of taxpayer money is being spent by the NIH.
…
At its core, the uproar over these changes reveals an entrenched resistance to reform. Instead of introspection, the scientific community has opted for indignation. The reality is that hard-nosed accountability is long overdue. Taxpayers deserve transparency, measurable outcomes, and funding decisions rooted in merit—not ideological favoritism or bureaucratic inertia. For those panicking about their travel plans or pet projects, the message is clear: adapt or step aside.
Science is not under attack; it’s being rescued—from itself.
I’d like to think that President Eisenhower is smiling. Wistfully, no doubt, given how long it has taken for our nation to begin to heed his warnings. But still, …
Smile, President Eisenhower. The reckoning has, at long last, begun.
Published in Science and Technology
Until I read a book about Ike’s heart attacks (he had quite a few), and also one about Pop Warner (who had coached the football team Jim Thorpe was on; this team played Army and Eisenhower injured himself trying to tackle Thorpe), I never knew much about Ike’s career outside WWII and the White House. Well, one thing he did was be a university president. From such scant information as I picked up, I got the idea this phase of his life was not a particularly successful or celebrated one. He was not popular at Columbia. Indeed, he was hardly there at Columbia. And yet I bet he understood far more than he let on!
There was no DoEd, so no specific threat of an Education Industrial Complex. The competition for Worst Department is tough. They used to say If you can’t do, you can still teach. While that’s no longer true, what’s really true is that if you can’t be bothered to do you become a politician. Who have willfully stopped educating children.
Any school board member or school superintendent that has been involved in the procurement of textbooks knows there very much is an Education Industrial Complex. New York and LA, etc, set the standards the textbooks must meet and then the screws are turned by state and federal actors and the textbook makers on county systems in decent counties to accept the trash they mandated. And there is mandated miseducation by Common Core, and a whole catalog of learning materials chasing that dumpster fire. And there are the teacher unions.
Perhaps a little insight is in order.
I’d be sympathetic if there wasn’t a substantial body of evidence demonstrating wide spread, decades long, academic malfeasance in the form of falsifying research and plagiarizing the work of others. Worst in the so-called social sciences, but commonplace in hard sciences as well. You leave out the varied and complex legal arrangements in place controlling the rights to research and the financial incentives to the PI’s and their academic institutions. It’s not just an academic exercise and the search for new knowledge. It’s the payoff after.
The Second Dark Age is ending and new golden age is beginning.
I’d be more sympathetic if University faculty were not paid so much for doing so little. How many people can demand a quarter-million/year job for a spouse for doing part-time work? Universities are a trillion dollar/year racket mostly paid for by tax-payers.
I work with science / medicine faculty all the time. I have no idea who makes that quarter million part-time job, but its not where I work. Most of the PIs are crazy busy – often with grant applications.
Fortunately Texas is something of a counterweight there, and Florida some as well.
Ike was active at Columbia. My favorite story about his tenure there is the sidewalk. There was a big time-wasting debate on where to put a long sidewalk on the campus. Eisenhower summarily tabled the discussion, and by the next semester, the best route for the sidewalk was clearly demarked by the path worn in the grass by students. It didn’t take the “boots on the ground” long to figure out the most efficient route.
And I agree, Ike would be smiling. He knew all about shock and awe.
They are indeed, at least in biochemistry. And much or most of a biochemistry lab’s budget is salary. For lab techs and postdocs; for grad students like me, the institution itself might field that, in the form of teaching assistantships, just as it paid the professor/PI’s own wages. At least back in my day, which was decades ago, a grant might also pay for things like travel to symposia, but those were not junkets, and as for other at-home lab expenses, those weren’t frivolous either. Ammonium sulfate doesn’t grow on trees, and neither does dry ice or 3:1 chloroform/methanol! Now, such grants might also cover large pieces of equipment…but I think those too were usually picked up by the institution.
It is of note, to me, that the “Fast forward to” link in the OP is to Wattsupwiththat, a site usually and valiantly devoted to climatology and its discontents, but the actual article isn’t about that or those. It’s about health-related research and its main Federal underwriter, the NIH. The NSF might fund other sciences, which might have their own businesslike and far-from-quaint customs. Or indeed have too long enjoyed their own cozy shenanigans. That’s possible, but I just wouldn’t know.
Although I am on general principles in favor of shake-ups anywhere in academia, I have to wonder if this initiative is as silly as hiring an extra 87,000 IRS agents to do…something. It sounds more like virtuous vigilance. People rightly despise waste, and fraud too, but little that is naughty is really going on, or would elude detection if it was. Just as tax evasion is probably quite rare, I never saw any featherbedding in any lab. But then, neither I nor Ike ever saw DIE in action! Maybe that’s the real fear being addressed here: grants for medical research going to “scientists” whose main “qualification” isn’t evident on their CVs, unless CVs now include photographs.