[naturalmovement]

There's a lot of collateral damage that could have been avoided if millions weren't being squandered on dubious "science" like studying grooming habits of trans aboriginals in the Central African Republic (a made-up scenario, but there are many like it).

At some point the baby's going to be thrown out with the bath water until the course is corrected.

[evan_]

Aren't you in any way concerned that you can't give a real example of the sort of thing you're talking about, and have to make one up? This should be the wake-up call that makes you re-evaluate your priors.

The reality is that reactionaries often describe "useless" scientific endeavors like "condoms for worms" that end up being the only thing stopping parasitic screwworms from infesting the US cattle herd, which will end up costing us hundreds of millions of dollars to resolve- and spike the already-high cost of beef for decades.

[bsdetector]

You can look at the list of canceled NSF grants yourself, and HN readers should.

https://grant-witness.us/nsf-data.html

    #1 Center for Integrated Quantum Materials
    #2 a STEM Graduate Education Model for American Indians and Native Alaskans
    #3 Identity Development Evaluation of African American Science Students 
    #4 The Greater Alabama Black Belt Region (GABBR) LSAMP
    #5 A Model to Advance Historically Underrepresented Minorities
    #6 The Hispanic AGEP Alliance for the Environmental Science
    #7 "" [different recipient]
    #8 Puerto Rico Center for Environmental Neuroscience (Cycle II)
    #9 Advancing Inclusive Leaders in Astronomy
    #10 Intersectional Directions to Engender Success

This list starts off with at most 2 of 10 that's real science and not racial, ethnic, or gender discrimination previously funded by the government (spoiler, the ratio gets lower with more samples).

Previous commenter may have not given real examples so you would be free to argue his point rather than specifics. In any case, here's at least 1500 examples for you.

[Itoldmyselfso]

There's nobody gatekeeping what can be studied and what can't. You claim millions are being wasted; by who? Is the goverment funding the studies you deem as wasted? If so you'd think that rather than making up a study you'd be able to give a single example. Should be very easy if millions are being wasted on these what I'd assume you'd call "bogus" studies.

[enragedcacti]

Seriously, when our tax dollars pay for idiots to play around with lizard spit[1] all day, why should we trust anything they want to fund?

[1] https://biomedical-sciences.uq.edu.au/article/2024/04/rise-o...

[pesus]

What's next, paying them to study worms??

https://www.wgal.com/article/new-world-screwworm-pennsylvani...

[triceratops]

Should've added an /s there

[pesus]

Instead of getting upset about made up scenarios, why don't you find some real scenarios? Like the one this thread is discussing, for instance.

[preg_match]

A lot of this “dubious science” isn’t dubious at all. Rather, people just have a political view on it. Like climate change is considered dubious science by the right. It’s not, but that’s how they view it.

[Sabinus]

To me this argument sounds like, " the Dems funded too much trans science so you made us defund climate and social science and damage the rest"

Is that about right?

[epistasis]

> a made-up scenario, but there are many like it)

There are many made-up scenarios, but not many real examples of what you are using to justify the weakening of the entire nation.

And the fact that you had to fabricate something is literally proof of it. Now, go find any supposed "waste" and you'll find that, again, the science has been completely misrepresented to the public by an anti-science media source that was focused on creating fake propaganda rather than properly informing the public.

Seriously. Prove me wrong, go find all this bath water that you claim exists, post it here!

[peyton]

Exactly, it’s a failure to gatekeep and self-police. You can’t tell truths about rocks and lies about people.

[epistasis]

Give me an example of this supposed phenomenon, because I haven't seen it. And anytime I've heard somebody claim with an actual example, it's been easy to disprove their assertions.