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    The Academic Pipeline Stall: Why Industry Must Stand for Academia

    (www.sigarch.org)
    146 points MaysonL | 15 comments | 12 May 25 02:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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    gotoeleven ◴[12 May 25 04:01 UTC] No.43959536[source]▶
    I didn't look at every one on the list of these 1000 NSF grants that were cancelled:

    https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO?jnt...

    but I think if you skim the titles you can sense a theme.

    Here's the very first one: "Cambio: A Professional Development Approach for Building Latinx-focused Cultural Competence in Informal Science Education Institutions" for a whopping 2.8 million dollars.

    This is not basic research, this is not important research, this is left wing politics parasitically attached to scientific institutions.

    replies(14): >>43959617 #>>43959696 #>>43959698 #>>43959756 #>>43959866 #>>43959886 #>>43959911 #>>43959942 #>>43960873 #>>43961611 #>>43962211 #>>43962669 #>>43962754 #>>43963624 #
    userbinator ◴[12 May 25 04:19 UTC] No.43959617[source]▶
    Besides the usual DEI stuff, some of those titles sound like the output of a stochastic generator trained on buzzwords:

    "HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Using Peer-Enhanced Blockchain-Based Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement and Retention"

    "Blockchain-Based Learning Environments". That's my WTF of the day.

    replies(3): >>43959708 #>>43959858 #>>43959970 #
    hshdhdhj4444 ◴[12 May 25 04:41 UTC] No.43959708[source]▶
    You do realize VCs were putting billions into this shit a few years ago right?

    Maybe DOGE should have shut down YCombinator.

    replies(2): >>43959719 #>>43959977 #
    1. nickff ◴[12 May 25 04:43 UTC] No.43959719[source]▶
    VCs also put lots of money into Theranos, it doesn’t make it a good idea.
    replies(1): >>43959763 #
    2. marcus_holmes ◴[12 May 25 04:54 UTC] No.43959763[source]▶
    Theranos was a great idea. The problem was that they couldn't make it work and they lied about that to everyone involved. That's different from it not being a good idea in the first place.
    replies(3): >>43959919 #>>43960193 #>>43960290 #
    3. bestham ◴[12 May 25 05:31 UTC] No.43959919[source]▶
    A good idea is an idea that possible to turn into reality, else it is just an idea.
    replies(2): >>43959967 #>>43960276 #
    4. riffraff ◴[12 May 25 05:42 UTC] No.43959967{3}[source]▶
    But that's what venture capital and research should be about, financing ideas to see if they can be realized.

    I mean, the people who put money into Theranos later should have done better due diligence, but I don't fault the initial investment.

    5. burch45 ◴[12 May 25 06:29 UTC] No.43960193[source]▶
    Theranos wasn’t a great idea or even a good idea. The “idea” was

    1. Get a drop of blood 2. … 3. Cure all diseases

    That’s not even an idea. It’s just magical thinking.

    replies(1): >>43960331 #
    6. marcus_holmes ◴[12 May 25 06:49 UTC] No.43960276{3}[source]▶
    How do you know if you can or cannot turn the idea into reality without trying?
    replies(1): >>43960343 #
    7. anovikov ◴[12 May 25 06:52 UTC] No.43960290[source]▶
    This. Even worse: every good idea is the one that looks bad to a layman, otherwise there won't be an opportunity there: if an idea is obviously good, a lot of people already came up with it a long time ago.
    8. AStonesThrow ◴[12 May 25 07:02 UTC] No.43960331{3}[source]▶
    No it wasn’t. They never promised anything like that.

    Theranos technology was the proposition to run smart blood tests on very small volumes of blood drawn from patients on-site. That’s really about it. They couldn’t deliver this service but they never promised any cures, bro.

    replies(1): >>43961255 #
    9. pona-a ◴[12 May 25 07:04 UTC] No.43960343{4}[source]▶
    By conducting a throughout literature review over possible methods, consulting the experts, and checking if your proposed method is within laws of physics?
    replies(1): >>43960497 #
    10. fallingknife ◴[12 May 25 07:37 UTC] No.43960497{5}[source]▶
    I agree. If Albert Einstein had gone with your sensible approach he could have quickly ruled out his silly idea of relativity as impossible and gone back to his more important work of approving patent applications.
    replies(1): >>43960893 #
    11. n4r9 ◴[12 May 25 08:44 UTC] No.43960893{6}[source]▶
    Venture capital is not a good way to fund theoretical work. And Einstein didn't lie about his achievements.
    replies(1): >>43962461 #
    12. firesteelrain ◴[12 May 25 09:51 UTC] No.43961255{4}[source]▶
    It was implied which led to fraud convictions. Elizabeth Holmes made misleading claims that gave the impression their technology could revolutionize disease detection and management for example by speaking about a future where people could test themselves regularly and catch disease
    replies(1): >>43961969 #
    13. jcranmer ◴[12 May 25 11:49 UTC] No.43961969{5}[source]▶
    The fraud in Theranos for which Holmes et al were ultimately convicted was running regular blood tests (i.e., those any certified lab would run) on samples which were too small so that the blood tests gave essentially random data. Yes, they made much more outlandish claims about what they could eventually do (and at times veered into making those claims about what they could do at the present), but the actual fraud was that they couldn't even do what they were certified to do.
    14. mensetmanusman ◴[12 May 25 13:03 UTC] No.43962461{7}[source]▶
    That there could be useful LLMs was theoretically argued about; essentially VC funding answered what wasn’t happening in academia.
    replies(1): >>43962598 #
    15. n4r9 ◴[12 May 25 13:20 UTC] No.43962598{8}[source]▶
    In the case of LLMs I would say that VC funding made the engineering possible. The theoretical breakthroughs were largely made in IBM and Google. OpenAI certainly made some improvements to architecture and training, but ultimately they implemented a refined version of a transformer-based LLM.