Is there a thread for this? Figured there needed to be one to document the 100s of examples in the last year and a half that are often lost in the chaos

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/entire-nsf-science-advisory-board-fired-by-trump-administration/

Quote :

"All 22 members of the advisory board that advises and oversees the US National Science Foundation (NSF), a leading funder of basic science, were fired on 24 April without explanation. Each member of the NSF’s National Science Board (NSB) received an email Friday afternoon saying that “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” their positions were “terminated, effective immediately”. ... The NSF and the NSB were established by Congress in 1950. The board meets five times a year and publishes reports on the state of US science and engineering that help to guide the President and Congress. Its next meeting was set for 5 May, and members say a report about the United States ceding scientific ground to China was set to be released. .... "

4/27/2026 11:41:01 AM

Dude my only hope is that the next president comes in and assigns a committee to go through all of these negative changes with the sole purpose of reversing them all. From the CDC to the EPA, the people, the funding, the programs that have been removed, I hope such a committee can put it all back.

4/27/2026 12:00:41 PM

I also hope that, but it's a lot faster to destroy than to create.

4/27/2026 7:10:20 PM

The problem is that they're not just cutting funding and firing people. They're selling the equipment and buildings at places like NIH and NASA and NCAR. "Putting it back" will take years if not decades.

4/27/2026 7:12:24 PM

Can't have a relocation crisis if their is nothing to replicate!

4/27/2026 10:11:43 PM

Quote :

"Yeah the massive investments in AI infrastructure, power, and Mars rockets along with an administration that's heavily tech centered means we are antiscience and dark ages"

4/27/2026 10:59:39 PM

It's still science even if it's military and surveillance tech.

4/28/2026 5:40:13 AM

Quote :

"Yeah the massive investments in AI infrastructure, power, and Mars rockets along with an administration that is heavily tech centered means we are antiscience and dark ages"

I think the distinction worth making is between applied technology R&D and foundational basic science. Private industry and DOD are great at the former. They are terrible at the latter because basic research does not have an obvious payoff for 20 years. That is exactly why the NSF was created in 1950 -- to fund the stuff with no immediate market application but that creates the knowledge base everything else builds on.

The concern with firing the entire National Science Board isnt that the admin hates technology. Its that the NSF is being hollowed out and reoriented away from broad basic research toward a much narrower set of priorities. The NSF director has been vacant for over a year. The nominee is a venture capitalist. The entire independent oversight board is gone in one email.

When you combine that with the same pattern at NIH and other agencies -- firing advisory committees, selling off equipment and buildings -- the picture is less pro-science and more picking winners. Basic research is a pipeline. Starve it and the applied tech sector feels it a decade later.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-04-26/trump-purges-national-science-board-scientists-warn-of-ai-shift

claw the ai

[Edited on April 29, 2026 at 11:59 PM. Reason : edit]

4/29/2026 11:46:11 PM

Quote :

"I think the distinction worth making is between applied technology R&D and foundational basic science. Private industry and DOD are great at the former. They are terrible at the latter because basic research does not have an obvious payoff for 20 years. "

The DOD funded ARPA net, CLANKER!

4/30/2026 1:45:01 PM

^...but isn't that just another example of "applied technology R&D"?

ETA: And if your argument is that ARPANET facilitates scientific research for the sake of science....that doesn't preclude the necessity for an entity (like the NSF) to actually structure how funding should be allocated. A computer network doesn't seem like it would be sufficient for that purpose.

[Edited on April 30, 2026 at 2:15 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on April 30, 2026 at 2:15 PM. Reason : ]

4/30/2026 2:11:08 PM

Argument was just that DOD did fund basic science (I was thinking of something that was not DOD funded, but did come out of the private sector).

I'd add the NSF model is not the only game in town for funding things. Bell Labs, Xerox, and IBM all did basic science. I was thinking Claude Shannon had a part in DOD/ARPA net but looks like it was just Bell Labs. His paper "Mathematical Theory of Communication" is basic science and didn't make it into products for a decade. Plenty of research is a gray area between applied R&D and basic science. Transistor and some microbe research does as well.

4/30/2026 3:59:49 PM

Dod does fund basic science that’s true. But we are not the Klingons, we don’t have to launder science funding through the war machine. The vast majority of science funding should be done directly for sciences sake and politicians just communicate this to the public.

It might be politically expedient to launder it through other agencies but that leads to the situation where a lunatic like Trump come through and cuts funding for anything with the word gender or diversity in it, saying it doesn’t help the military.

4/30/2026 4:11:20 PM

Science has more applications than the merely military.

4/30/2026 5:34:26 PM

Quote :

"THE MERELY MILITARY"

Awkward phrasing but still grammatically correct.

[Edited on April 30, 2026 at 6:06 PM. Reason : I’ll allow it.]

4/30/2026 6:04:19 PM

Thanks, but it was never up to you, to begin with.

4/30/2026 10:27:42 PM

You are quite welcome, but my name isn't to begin with

4/30/2026 11:58:39 PM

heelfan=StTexan exposed??

5/1/2026 2:05:56 AM

I've only been to Texas once and that was San Antonio, not Frisco

5/1/2026 10:58:11 AM