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It was realized some time ago that having citizens decide to "donate to the research we care about" was not the most efficient way to get the most important research done. So we switched to a system where we pool our resources (taxes), and then use a somewhat complex process (described in TFA) to decide how to allocate them to possible research.

by halJordan45 minutes ago|

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Science needs to be done through the government because of a) hire incredibly expensive science is and b) hire incredibly concentrated wealth is.

The USG is quite often the only group able and willing to fund most projects.

by jpalawaga49 minutes ago|

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This is a very “taxation is theft” take.

Everyone knows that many things that are not directly beneficial to society would go unfunded because humans optimize for what’s around them, and things that are self-interested.

There isn’t even alignment. One person wants to fund science, the other wants to fund high speed rail, the other wants farm subsidies, one wants social security and the other wants the military. Government balances all of that together. Of course people will make value judgements about their pet interests and declare the other aspects to be better funded separately.

by frigidwalnut1 hours ago|

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Private citizens fund scientific research through their taxes. This has been the most practical way to fund science for decades.

by JCTheDenthog49 minutes ago|

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>Private citizen fund scientific research [under threat of prison or deadly force.]

I mean I'm not inherently opposed to laws or government, but I think a lot of people need to be more measured and considerate of what they are using tax money for when it is being taken from their fellow citizens at gunpoint.

by frigidwalnut35 minutes ago|

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I agree. This administration is ground zero for mismanagement of funds and outright corruption. Just look at the director of the FBI and former secretary of DHS. Both have used and continue to use tax payer money for personal use. It should make every tax payer livid.

by JCTheDenthog20 minutes ago|

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It does make me livid, just as much as the waste of taxpayer money on pointless (and sometimes outright racist) research here makes me livid: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335722

Believe it or not, it's possible to hate both Kash Patel/Kristi Noem and the unelected bureaucrats burning tax money on awful research.

by frigidwalnut18 seconds ago|

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Sure that’s fine. They funded research that you think is wasteful and you would like to have tools to provide that feedback. The issue with this OMB change is that it is not that. The OMB change is a change that allows the administration to cancel any grant for any reason without answering to citizens about it.

BTW your “believe it or not” is quite condescending. Do you talk to people in real life like that?

by convolvatron39 minutes ago|

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ignoring a gratuitous reference to use of force, absolutely. having a discussion as society about what we are funding is in fact democracy. sadly there is an issue in the sciences in that lay people may have difficulty seeing the benefit of connecting the dots. but we should try. and as flawed as it is, the adversarial system we have in the US is at least a forum for those discussion.

using grep to defund grants that contain words we don't like is the exact opposite of measured and considerate. so is punishing scientists for the sin of working for a 'woke' institution. in fact all this seems extremely punitive, and not in the spirit of optimizing outcomes for costs at all.

note that this policy explicitly removes the requirement to provide any kind of rationale. that sort of directly contradicts the notion that this is a measured discussion about priorities.

by fasterik45 minutes ago|

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Private capital is good at funding research that is likely to provide a short-term return on investment. It's not so good at funding basic research, where most of the paradigm-shifting breakthroughs come from. These provide a huge return on investment, but it nets out to society at large on time scales of decades or centuries.

Contrary to what you said, there is actually quite a bit of private philanthropic funding for research, it's just that it's not evenly distributed. The vast majority of it seems to go to medical research, in particular cancer and Alzheimer's. That's obviously a good thing, but my point here is that we can't necessarily depend on private philanthropy to distribute funds optimally.

https://www.cato.org/blog/governments-should-not-fund-resear...

I'm generally a fan of Cato and a libertarian approach to economics, but I'm still not convinced that we should be spending zero public money on basic research. I would like to see a decent amount going into mathematics and theoretical physics for example, and I doubt those fields would stay afloat on donations.