Young scientists hit the hardest as US funding falls

[Celebration]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2006/01/23/young_scientists_hit_the_hardest_as_us_funding_falls/

The physics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepted only 25 graduate students this year, down from 50 in years past. Several job candidates turned down the prestigious school for work in other countries where science funding is considered more stable. And two MIT contracts with NASA -- that PhD candidates rely on to pay for their work -- were trimmed by 91 percent.

After years of steady support for science funding and a spurt in health sciences research over the last decade that drew many young people into research labs, federal funds are now flat or declining in many areas.

Researchers in nearly every field are finding it harder to win competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other research agencies. But those hurt most by the ultra-competitive climate, say academics at MIT and elsewhere, are young researchers who are just starting their studies or their careers.

''If you have three NIH grants and you lose one, you tighten your belt a little bit. If you're junior faculty and you have one grant and you lose it, your career may be over," said Dr. Karen Antman, provost of the medical campus at Boston University, where about half of the school's 1,200 faculty members get NIH funding.

[hatrack]

1. The eating of the seed corn continues

This country is so fucked it's not even funny.

[phantom power]

6. I was wondering when we'd hit the threshold on this...

That threshold where, instead of people coming to America because we're the science leader, everybody starts leaving here, because we're a science has-been.

Maybe it's just me, but if MIT is losing students, we have crossed the fucking rubicon, brothers and sisters.

[Vitruvius]

8. The majority of my foreign-born friends in my field have gone home

because they see no future in the US and are tired of being treated like dirt by ignorant no-talent right-wing Republican managers.

In addition, EVERY US-born engineer I know who has children has told them to NOT go into engineering. Because engineers and scientists are treated like dirt in industry and academic jobs are few-and-far-between, and -- as the article discusses -- the funding situation in academia is DIRE.

So the foreign-born technologists are leaving and the native-born technologists are not being replaced.

Vitruvius

[Talismom]

2. That's the story of my life...welcome to it! So send all our trained

scientists to flip burgers at McDonalds and work registers in Walmart and sing the blues about how we're loosing ground in technology and medicine. But the neocons are having fun, so who cares?

[SmokingJacket]

3. I have a brilliant young scientist friend who might leave academia...

He's a great teacher by all measures and a fricking genius, but he might end up leaving and starting his own business, because the atmosphere in the labs has become so incredibly cutthroat due to the difficulty in getting funding.

It would be a great loss to the students, and to the education of this country's young people.

Science will continue to happen, but it'll belong to corporations...

[DELUSIONAL]

4. the military Industrial complex will hire all the bright guys

which means the brain trust will go in a non productive direction rather than into domestic or marketable research and development.

MIT or one of the large colleges/universities did a major study on the brain drain issue several years ago. It is amazing how many of the studies predictions were accurate.

In my opinion the No Child's behind left Act -- is harmful to future scientist. Educating children to pass tests is not developing their scientific abilities such as critical thinking and testing of hypothesis -- etc.

The narrow minded harm being done by the thugs in power will stay with America for decades -- if America can in fact survive their invasion.

[Vitruvius]

9. You don't stay bright if you go to work for the military-industrial

complex. Because
1.) you do as you're told, have no independence, and lose your initiative and curiosity, and
2.) working on death machines for Rethugnican colonial wars fosters a cynical mentality that is not compatible with creativity; in addition, nobody walks the extra mile for something they don't believe in; selling out saps your initiative.

Far better to leave the country. Which is exactly what I tell young scientists to do; I would do so if I were 25 or 30 years younger.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Why does the ** administration hate science so much?

OK, there are several good answers to that, and you probably know what they are. For those of us in science, it makes Canada and Europe look increasingly attractive. Once US science degrees start migrating elsewhere, the "brain drain" will be pretty well locked in place, and the "New American Century" will be suffocated in its crib.

[Mistwell]

7. Super sucks!

Bad enough that our grade schools are failing...now our best grad schools are not pulling the students in as well? Super sucks...