The brain drain is going to devastate science in the US for generations. Totally squandered in a matter of a couple years.
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
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Trump is obviously a Russian asset. EVERYTHING HE HAS DONE HAS BENEFITTED PUTIN.
What researchers? A lot of them just up and left when Trump started his shit.
The ones without the resources to just up and leave.
And as we all know, all researchers are equally as capable.
If you’re good at what you do money isn’t an issue.
Hey, what about those of us who are old and mediocre (but capable!) at what we do?!?
We get a convoy going.
Europe too.
As a non-US resident that doesn't much read the news, is there any particular reason for the comparison of 'now' vs '6 months ago'? Has there been a particular change in policy or some other big event in the US that's motivated the sudden change in attitude?
US federal budgeting this year have pushed hard to gut science. I've heard talking points regurgitated by college educated folks that businesses will pay for it instead, but when pressed for examples or how it would work they are only able to point to engineering projects, they can't differentiate between basic scientific research producing testable, accurate models and the products and services built using this models.
Businesses will pay for studies that help businesses or had a profit incentive. When you hear the govt spent a large sum of money studying how ocelots react to opium or somelike that, people usually say that's a waste of money, rather than finding out why.
Like there was one Republican complaint about studying soybeans. Beans! Useless!
Yeah well guess what one of the biggest crops in the US is. We used to export soy to Asia.
yeah, Trump.
Not that things weren't kind of shitty before, he just accelerated the problems by defunding science and preventing foreigners from coming here to study, which sadly make up many 1/3 of the students of our PhD programs, especially hard sciences.
higher education in the USA needs systematically reform, but I don't think anything Trump has done has improved anything, just accelerated the issues by turning off the money/labor spigot so many research programs were overly-reliant on.
a lot of this talented foreign labor is now going to study in other countries rather than the USA and that will impact things for decades, reducing USA's lead in many scientific fields.
"... money / labor spigot so many research programs were overly-reliant on."
I don't see how research or more generally anything at all could get done without money or labor.
I know it’s “science” but there’s too many articles where someone’s run a basic survey on the obvious that gets reported as “obviousness observed”