Tag: Science

National Science Foundation

On Friday, April 24, President Trump fired all 24 members of the National Science Foundation Board without saying why their staggered six year terms were not honored. Unlike executive branch departments, such as Treasury, Defense (now called Dept of War), Education, etc., which rightly should reflect the policy preferences of the President, the NSF, like the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, was carefully designed to be nonpartisan for good reason. A Forbes article by John Drake nicely explains the purpose of such design.

“Most people outside the research enterprise have never heard of the NSB, so it’s worth saying what it is. The National Science Foundation Act of 1950 created NSF with two heads: a director and a board. Jointly they set the strategic direction of an agency that now distributes roughly $9 billion annually in federal research funding, approve its budget submissions, and authorize new major programs. The board’s members are nominated for their distinguished records in science, engineering, education, and public affairs, drawn from industry and universities, and confirmed to staggered six-year terms so that scientific research priorities are set by the long arc of scientific progress rather than the election cycle. The statute requires that members be chosen “solely on the basis of established records of distinguished service.”

“That last phrase is the one I keep returning to.

“American scientist, inventor and administrator Vannevar Bush (1890 – 1974), whose ‘differential analyser’ was a forerunner of the computer, served as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development throughout World War II and authored an influential report that led to the founding of the National Science Foundation. More American scientific preeminence is often discussed as if it were a product of talent or funding. It is really a product of institutions, the unglamorous architecture of boards, charters, terms of service, peer review and statutory independence that the postwar generation built deliberately. The structure traces to Vannevar Bush’s 1945 report Science, the Endless Frontier, which argued that federal science required governance insulated from political pressure and stability of support beyond any single budget cycle. The five-year fight to translate Bush’s vision into law turned largely on questions of independence and accountability, and the staggered six-year terms were part of the resulting compromise. Six-year terms exist for a reason. Staggered appointments exist for a reason. “Solely on the basis of distinguished service” is in the founding statute for a reason.

“The board’s function has been contested before, but always on the existing terms. As recently as 2022, scholars were debating how to modernize the board’s role, proposing to reduce its management duties and make NSF look more like other federal agencies. But other federal agencies are precisely the ones most exposed to political control. Their leaders serve at the pleasure of the president. Their priorities shift with each administration. The whole reason NSF’s structure is unusual is that the postwar designers did not want science funding to work that way. Even the would-be reformers recognized this: they proposed keeping the board’s staggered terms and statutory independence intact.

“These structures depend on a shared understanding, across administrations and across parties, that some institutions are worth preserving even when they constrain you. When that understanding lapses, the structures themselves do not survive long.

“On May 5, the National Science Board is scheduled to meet. There is no agenda, and at the moment, no board. That absence is the thing worth attending to, beyond the news of any particular firing. The question is not who sits on the board. The question is whether the kind of board the 1950 Act envisioned still exists in practice, and what American science looks like if it does not.” 2026/04/25/ “Trump fired the entire national science board-here’s why that matters”

At a minimum, when the President takes such action, the public should be given an explanation for why he thought it was justified. Ideally such a dramatic step should be preceded by a public discussion of the pros and cons of doing so.  This is not Trump’s style.

It my opinion Elon Musk’s DOGE downsizing of government (9% reduction in Federal employees before some had to be rehired and reducing the federal budget by claimed savings between roughly 160–215 billion dollars, counting job cuts, contract and lease cancellations, asset sales, and grant reductions) did more harm than good. Musk initially talked about cutting “at least 2 trillion dollars” from the federal budget, later revising goals down to around 1 trillion and then still lower, but actual savings fell far short of any of those targets.

A CBS‑covered analysis by a nonpartisan research group estimated that while DOGE claimed about 160 billion dollars in gross savings, its actions would also impose roughly 135 billion dollars in additional costs in the same fiscal year (for example through deferred‑resignation pay, disruption, and lost enforcement/revenue), implying a net savings nearer 25 billion dollars in that window.

But the real tragedy is that the opportunity to carefully evaluate and publicly debate whether government agencies were performing beneficial functions and doing so as efficiently as possible was totally missed. I offer the example of USAID, with whom I have worked both as a contractor and across the table as a collaborator. In my experience they have done an outstanding job serving America’s foreign policy interests:  https://wcoats.blog/2025/02/17/usaid/

The Trump administration has not operated in the traditional manor of our best (or even mediocre) Presidents. Even Kings are usually more careful in justifying and explaining their dictates.

Protecting Jobs

Protecting jobs sounds like a good thing to do (if you don’t think very carefully about what it means). Free markets protect jobs that are performing desired tasks better than someone else can. President Trump’s protection of steel workers’ jobs by imposing tariffs on competing sources of steel (mainly Canada) is protecting a relatively inefficient industry and thus “protecting” a lower standard of living for our country at large. “Protectionism” protects us from innovation and exciting technical changes that we eagerly embrace when offered in the market.

This week’s Economist magazine has an interesting article on the latest economic disruption (known to economists as “creative destruction”).  “Today the latest bonanza is in full swing, but instead of steel and sand it involves scripts, sounds, screens and celebrities.” https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/11/14/who-will-win-the-media-wars

Movies (cinema or film for the more sophisticated) were only available in movie theaters when I was a kid more than half a century ago and yes they were already talkies (don’t be a smart ass). Then there was TV and we could watch movies there if we could stay up late enough. Cable TV packages greatly broadened the choice of channels.  Then video players and cassettes meant that we could choose what movies we wanted to watch and when.  We used to get CDs from Netflix in the mail.  I think I still have an unreturned diskette somewhere.  Maybe I will frame it so that my grandchildren can marvel at such historic relics.  In 1985 Blockbuster Video opened and we could skip the mail and browse thousands of films for rent.  They filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and the last two stores (in Alaska) closed last year.

“This week Disney launched a streaming service which offers “Star Wars” and other hits from its vast catalogue for $6.99 a month, less than the cost of a DVD. As the business model pioneered by Netflix is copied by dozens of rivals, over 700m subscribers are now streaming video across the planet. Roughly as much cash—over $100bn this year—is being invested in content as it is in America’s oil industry…. This binge is the culmination of 20 years of creative destruction (see Briefing). New technologies and ideas have shaken up music, gaming and now television.” The Economist

We can look at these amazing technical and business innovations in several ways:  1. A lot of jobs were destroyed as newer technologies replaced older ones and the jobs associated with them.  2. Fortunately no one succeeded in “protecting” them and we, the consumers–the targets of greedy profit seeking capitalists, enjoyed the greater benefit of more entertainment, more conveniently delivered and costing less.  3. New jobs were created to provide these new services.

“Disruption has created an economic windfall. Consider consumers, first. They have more to choose from at lower prices and can pick from a variety of streaming services that cost less than $15 each compared with $80 or more for a cable bundle. Last year 496 new shows were made, double the number in 2010. Quality has also risen, judged by the crop of Oscar and Emmy nominations for streamed shows and by the rising diversity of storytelling. Workers have done reasonably. The number of entertainment, media, arts and sports jobs in America has risen by 8% since 2008 and wages are up by a fifth. Investors, meanwhile, no longer enjoy abnormally fat profits, but those who backed the right firms have done well. A dollar invested in Viacom shares a decade ago is worth 95 cents today. For Netflix the figure is $37.” The Economist

Such dramatic disruptions can be painful for some–those whose jobs were lost or whose investments lost value. We need to adopt policies that minimize that pain. But thank God we didn’t try to protect those jobs and share values and the older ways they reflected.

Do we really need Free Speech?

James Damore was fired by Google for a memo he posted at work giving his views on why there are so few women at his workplace. Basically, he argued, fewer women are interested in math and science than men and thus Google’s hiring policies designed to attract and hire more women are misguided. In this note I make two points: First, we lose a great deal of first order importance if we counter erroneous or offensive speech by repressing it—FREE SPEECH is protected by the First Amendment for good reason. Second, it is more effective to counter false ideas with correct or better ideas than to repress them.

Damore went further than Larry Summers did twelve years ago. Summers, who was President of Harvard University at the time, noted the fact that there were so few women at Harvard in the hard sciences and asked why that might be so. He explored several possible explanations without endorsing any of them. He was, in fact, raising a serious question for serious discussion. Many of his colleagues found his question so offensive that he was forced to resign his Harvard presidency. This is what I wrote about it at the time: “Science-discrimination-and-Larry-Summers”

One of the possible factors in the underrepresentation of women in the sciences not raised by Summer is the fact that the approach to teaching math and science has been designed by man and best suits the ways men generally learn. Considerable research indicates that men and women tend to learn differently. A pedagogy best suited to men might discourage otherwise potentially interested women from perusing science.

Damore went further by concluding that Google’s hiring practices were discriminatory to men and thus illegal. In a Wall Street Journal oped Damore stated that:  “I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment…. I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and, yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too).” “Why-I-was-fired-by-Google” None of us needs to be convinced that there are biological differences between men and women (hopefully), so why not with regard to tastes in employment?

I have not read Damore’s ten page memo and don’t intend to take sides on the points he makes, over than to agree with his statement that Google will have a better Human Resources policy if it is based on fact rather than ideological presumptions of the facts. Open discussion of the issue—of Damore’s biological claims—is one of the best ways to sort out what is scientifically supportable from what is ideological fiction.

Opening public discourse to the views and comments of anyone wishing to say something, i.e., “free speech,” potentially exposes us to some pretty nasty stuff. There is a fundamental and critical difference between addressing rudeness—bad manners—via inculcating cultural values of mutual respect (good manners) and via government suppression. Today’s millennials seem to have been raised to expect protection from anything unpleasant (shame on you helicopter moms). Rather than take responsibility for their own good behavior and the encouragement of the same in others, they seek and demand protection imposed by the “authorities” with “safe zones” and the like. In my view this is on the “Road to Serfdom.” I have shared my views on the emergence of state imposed political correctness on several earlier occasions: “What-is-wrong-with-PC”

To my second point, suppression of speech is also an inefficient way of countering falsehoods or doubtful or “bad” principles. If such views cannot be aired openly and publically, they are very likely to live on and survive within social or ideological bubbles where they are not challenged. The Internet facilitates living within a bubble or reaching beyond it and we need to encourage everyone, and especially each new generation to reach beyond their echo chamber in order to confront their beliefs with other views.

In an interview with Bloomberg on August 10, Damore stated that: “There are simply fewer women that want to get into these fields,” he said. “If you’re a girl and you’re interested in technology, that’s great…. If anyone is interested in technology they should just pursue it,” he added. “It’s a great field.” “Fired-google-engineer-says-company-execs-shamed-and-smeared-him.” This doesn’t sound much like a bigot to me.