Ron DeSantis signs bill to limit tenure at public universities

[Person Man]

This is the 2022 GOP platform:


Anyone who is publicly disobedient against the state or the state ideology is guilty of a Misdemeanor in the First Degree.
Research into non-state-approved science, especially chemistry and its various applications, cultivates irreligion and idleness.
Teaching civics, when unsupervised, in the public schools alienates racial affection, contributes to the delinquency of minors, and causes filial impiety.
Only the state ideology and basic numeracy and literacy should be taught to children.
The party should be the ultimate arbiter of all major institutions in the public life in the state and the church will be granted imperium by the state to punish those engaged in filial impiety.
Private estates (especially publishers like MAANG, Disney, and both the popular boutique and large legacy publishers) must carry out the policies of the state.
Elections will be held but only in such ways that the state party maintains the majority and may retroactively cancel any election that is determined to be irregular by the state party.

[Person Man]

Then we should privatize research grants more then if that’s the issue cause government subsidized things never can truly be “free” as the government has to actively choose which grants to approve and which not too .

That decision is usually made by people who do have political agendas as well so the this will mainly just provide more oversight over  unelected  bureaucrats which I generally support.

Major grant decisions (at places like NIH and NSF) are made by scientific peers, not by "unelected bureaucrats". It depends on the agency, but a few faculty send our scores in to someone working at the agency. The scores are based on rubrics that are available to anyone and tend to prioritize (1) general academic merit and (2) something specific to the agency (for the NIH, health outcomes; for NSF, "broader impacts", which is generally some sort of community impact or public science education). Critically, the "someone" (usually called a program officer) is someone who has also had academic training and probably has received several grants themselves at some point; it's seen as prestigious, if tedious, to become a program officer. The highest scoring proposals are then discussed as a bunch of peers, and the grants are ranked. Depending on the agency, the program officer may have a bit of discretion for grants that fall right on the boundary of being funded, but again it's based on the same criteria I outlined above.

Only about 10-15% of major grants are funded. I'd say the main issues with funding these days is that (1) one-in-ten isn't a great level of success, so you're incentivized to chase the funding obsessively rather than following the science, and (2) it's often the case that the rich get richer (e.g., you generally need pilot data to get a grant funded these days, but how do you get pilot data if you don't have money in the first place?). The amount of interference from "unelected bureaucrats" is small unless you consider faculty members to be "unelected bureaucrats". (But I think we'd all agree it would be bonkers for elected officials to evaluate scientific grants, right?!) Even then, the folks working at the funding agency aren't just random people with political agendas, they're usually scooped up from tenure-track positions by the NSF or NIH.

 I don’t have any problems with grants for hard science research

NIH and NSF don't just give money to "hard science research"; Republican senators have been targeting the social science directorate of the NSF for budget cuts for years. The grant that funded some of my training was singled out by Rand Paul one year as an example of "flagrant government waste" (except whoops I now do the things that he said the grant didn't accomplish). I also described how grant programs work for funders in education and other fields that you probably call "soft science". (I don't know how funding works in the humanities but it probably follows along similar lines. Grants are less important in those fields, though.)

I also find it funny that OSR with all due respect supports " hard sciences ", when his political party in my view, goes against even the most basic of science foundations.

Wrong you can believe for example climate change is real and believe the Covid vaccines are good without also believing you should try to :


- Get rid of the oil and gas industry through government regulations

- people should be forced to take the vaccines

So you can understand the science behind global warming and pandemics and still think that providing for Public Health and Ecological Welfare are not appropriate roles for the Government. That one's ability to avoid or recover from COVID or not be involved in a Global Warming related natural disaster is a private matter and a personal choice.

[Person Man]

Then we should privatize research grants more then if that’s the issue cause government subsidized things never can truly be “free” as the government has to actively choose which grants to approve and which not too .

That decision is usually made by people who do have political agendas as well so the this will mainly just provide more oversight over  unelected  bureaucrats which I generally support.

Major grant decisions (at places like NIH and NSF) are made by scientific peers, not by "unelected bureaucrats". It depends on the agency, but a few faculty send our scores in to someone working at the agency. The scores are based on rubrics that are available to anyone and tend to prioritize (1) general academic merit and (2) something specific to the agency (for the NIH, health outcomes; for NSF, "broader impacts", which is generally some sort of community impact or public science education). Critically, the "someone" (usually called a program officer) is someone who has also had academic training and probably has received several grants themselves at some point; it's seen as prestigious, if tedious, to become a program officer. The highest scoring proposals are then discussed as a bunch of peers, and the grants are ranked. Depending on the agency, the program officer may have a bit of discretion for grants that fall right on the boundary of being funded, but again it's based on the same criteria I outlined above.

Only about 10-15% of major grants are funded. I'd say the main issues with funding these days is that (1) one-in-ten isn't a great level of success, so you're incentivized to chase the funding obsessively rather than following the science, and (2) it's often the case that the rich get richer (e.g., you generally need pilot data to get a grant funded these days, but how do you get pilot data if you don't have money in the first place?). The amount of interference from "unelected bureaucrats" is small unless you consider faculty members to be "unelected bureaucrats". (But I think we'd all agree it would be bonkers for elected officials to evaluate scientific grants, right?!) Even then, the folks working at the funding agency aren't just random people with political agendas, they're usually scooped up from tenure-track positions by the NSF or NIH.

 I don’t have any problems with grants for hard science research

NIH and NSF don't just give money to "hard science research"; Republican senators have been targeting the social science directorate of the NSF for budget cuts for years. The grant that funded some of my training was singled out by Rand Paul one year as an example of "flagrant government waste" (except whoops I now do the things that he said the grant didn't accomplish). I also described how grant programs work for funders in education and other fields that you probably call "soft science". (I don't know how funding works in the humanities but it probably follows along similar lines. Grants are less important in those fields, though.)

I also find it funny that OSR with all due respect supports " hard sciences ", when his political party in my view, goes against even the most basic of science foundations.

Wrong you can believe for example climate change is real and believe the Covid vaccines are good without also believing you should try to :


- Get rid of the oil and gas industry through government regulations

- people should be forced to take the vaccines

So you can understand the science behind global warming and pandemics and still think that providing for Public Health and Ecological Welfare are not appropriate roles for the Government. That one's ability to avoid or recover from COVID or not be involved in a Global Warming related natural disaster is a private matter and a personal choice.

I do not believe destroying our economy and also destroying our ability to respond to threats like Russia and China are the way to go at all . The solution is actually encouraging more entrepreneurs  like Elon Musk And of course investing in nuclear energy , not using government regulation to destroy our current energy industry.

So  yes I believe generally in a free market solution to dealing with climate change not a government one .

What about subsidies that have already been given to oil and gas? Even if you agree that public welfare violates property rights, there are areas where the health, welfare, safety, and morals of the community align with property rights.

[Person Man]

I think the funniest thing is that there's a good chance that those who argue that non-STEM is useless aren't even top of their class within STEM. I study STEM at an elite university and my peers who are the most accelerated and doing advanced research in the hard sciences all have respect for the social sciences and humanities since they understand how creativity and collaboration is needed for groundbreaking advances.

It's no coincidence that many scientific greats--Einstein, Newton, Russell, Da Vinci, Darwin, etc.--all had very fleshed out philosophical views and were involved in many soft-science and artistic circles.

This is really just a dig at OSR, but I can't help but think this is true.

For a Humanities degree, you need to have some sort of pedigree behind it to be valuable…

If Florida schools simply become the party’s trade schools then there is no point in teaching humanities or really doing research in anything. There’s a reason why we have no democratic enemies and our authoritarian enemies keep stealing our intellectual property. Even in the Cross of Globalism, when the United States became the 1000 week reich, the United States was relying on espionage to modernize its military and do its space program.

[Person Man]

The reason I specified hard science is cause they unlike social science are not as political

Ummmm.... they are too? Evolution? Global Warming? Artificial Intelligence? Stem Cell Research/Trials? Gene Editing? GMOs?

Beyond opposing aggressive counter-terrorism and police tactics, 100% supporting science was the bedrock of my political ideology.

I've always supported Education, Civil Rights, and a world that is safe for Democracy.

[Person Man]

The reason I specified hard science is cause they unlike social science are not as political

Ummmm.... they are too? Evolution? Global Warming? Artificial Intelligence? Stem Cell Research/Trials? Gene Editing? GMOs?

Beyond opposing aggressive counter-terrorism and police tactics, 100% supporting science was the bedrock of my political ideology.

I've always supported Education, Civil Rights, and a world that is safe for Democracy.

Difference is hard science is objectively true while social science is not so the latter has much more chances of poltical bias too . Also we have seen for example when many of their research is used in fields such as education and international relations, it ends up being massive massive failures so there clearly has to be some reform first .

Hard science is liar sometimes, too.

[Person Man]

Conservatives have been attacking universities for decades, what else is new?

And no surprise that the usual suspects think this is a good move.

This boils down to the fact that right-wingers are just terrified of dissent. That's why they hate universities so much, because it gives their children the opportunity to think for themselves instead of just parroting back what mom and dad have taught them.

No but there should be less grants given out for non hard science research

Frankly, nonsense like this is why there are so many problems with our society. Do you sincerely believe that social sciences and the arts don't produce anything of societal value?

If the social sciences departments were comprised of a truly diverse group of people with a wide spectrum of perspectives, then, yes, that would be the case.  That's not what the Social Sciences in our universities is about today; it's about people with various leftist perspectives performing research to justify their own viewpoints with data, while demonizing opposing conculsions. 

Imagine the flak a Social Sciences Professor would receive for producing research that shows clearly that the Traditional Nuclear Family produces (unquestionably) better outcomes for children, both in childhood and throughout life.  Imagine the criticism a professor would receive if they questioned the wisdom of out-of-wedlock births, easy divorce, etc. by showing outcome data, and by pointing out that the paradigm of our society has shifted from a focus on the well-being of children to a focus of the happiness and personal choices of adults.  How would they be received?

That was Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in the 1990s.  Now imagine a Social Sciences professor doing longitudinal research and finding out the results of the outcomes of children growing up in not just single parent households, but in gay/lesbian households, trans households, etc.  Just what would be the response to data which showed the outcomes of children raised in such homes to be less optimal than children raised in two-parent biological families.  Would this research be received well, or would the research be suppressed, the researcher systematically discredited?  Which would happen in today's environment?

Now I don't know what honest longitudinal research into a topic like this would show.  What I do know is that much of academia is not prepared to be open-minded into all sorts of assertions as to what social norms should be.  Let's not pretend that Social Science departments of universities are stocked with open-minded objective researchers. 

So certain questions are to be forbidden because of an unactualized fear that a single question will be forbidden?

[Person Man]

I'll probably regret this post but...

SNIP

Ok but even take the important social sciences (so not ones like gender studies and all) like international relations . Wouldn’t it be better if the amount of PHD’s in that were less so the field was truly exclusive so then you would get the smartest people to go into that.

You're right, there are way too many PhD candidates for the number of (non- temp/adjunct) faculty positions available. This problem is by no means limited to social sciences and humanities. I'm not sure if limiting the number of PhDs in international relations would result in better aggregate geopolitics analysis, but I don't pay much attention to geopolitics in general, so maybe I'm not qualified to chime in.

Now imagine a Social Sciences professor doing longitudinal research and finding out the results of the outcomes of children growing up in not just single parent households, but in gay/lesbian households, trans households, etc.  Just what would be the response to data which showed the outcomes of children raised in such homes to be less optimal than children raised in two-parent biological families.  Would this research be received well, or would the research be suppressed, the researcher systematically discredited?  Which would happen in today's environment?

Never majored in a social science, but in all honestly I don't think such a study would be widely discredited. There probably haven't been enough children raised in gay/lesbian households (let alone households with one or more transgender parental figure) for there not to be sample size issues with an ongoing longitudinal study.

There are good reasons to “cut the fat” in academia, none of them have anything to do with 90% of professors hating you and your baby.