Tech elites are enriching themselves by plundering STEM institutions—and offering researchers scraps.
  • tristynalxander@mander.xyz
    3·
    13 days ago

    I’m a scientist, and these people don’t care about science. You don’t try to wipe out something you care about. They’ve not put a wit of thought into how to make a better system or asked the people involved what should be changed given the same total budget.

    Like, science (and healthcare) obviously does have too much bureaucracy, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead of defunding science, why don’t they advocate for limiting overhead costs based on the ratio of scientists and teachers vs administrators and salary distributions? Why don’t they cap the number of people each university can have applying for grants to decrease competition enough to maintain stable careers? Why don’t we create a system where labs can put 5% of their grants into endowments that fund stabilize lab funding then regulate those endowments to keep admin low and make sure they get redistributed to other labs within the department after career milestones when senior scientists retire? I have a long, long list of ways to try to improve scientific institutions, but no where on that list is defund science. There are legitimate ways to criticizes scientific institutions and encourage efficiency, but this nonsense isn’t it.

    Also, why is it always Billionaire Nazi Peter Thiel ruining everything? I mean Marc Andreessen sounds like a moron too, but seriously what’s Thiel’s problem?

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      13 days ago

      limiting overhead costs based on the ratio of scientists and teachers vs administrators and salary distributions? Why don’t they cap the number of people each university can have applying for grants to decrease competition enough to maintain stable careers?

      Germany does this. They hire a set number of people at C1, C2, C3, C4 and fund them. They don’t make research an open competition that really encourages fraud.

      • tristynalxander@mander.xyzEnglish
        1·
        13 days ago

        I haven’t read enough about the German system, but I’ve heard something along the lines of more reliable funding later in their careers too. Not sure if it’s quite the endowment system I imagine or some other mechanism. Definitely something I should read more into.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    1·
    12 days ago

    So in other words, typical conservative behavior.

    They received free money to start their company, and now that they got rich, fuck everyone else, nobody should get what they got, the government needs to send all their money to them instead

    I climbed the ladder, let me helpfull kick it away

    Conservatism is a sign of mental illness

  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish
    11·
    13 days ago

    Scientists are exploited in all industry. A big part of the problem is that they let themselves be exploited.