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The Academic Pipeline Stall: Why Industry Must Stand for Academia

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146 points MaysonL | 4 comments | 12 May 25 02:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.
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1. 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.

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2. AStonesThrow ◴[12 May 25 07:02 UTC] No.43960331[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.

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3. firesteelrain ◴[12 May 25 09:51 UTC] No.43961255[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
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4. jcranmer ◴[12 May 25 11:49 UTC] No.43961969{3}[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.