OBAMA/TRUMPCARE MEGATHREAD

[mr_genius]

You want that to get coverage? Open the rest of the government.

 

sure i'll do that right away and i'll fix all of the insanely bad software Obama has paid a billion dollars for.

[Balta1701]

sure i'll do that right away and i'll fix all of the insanely bad software Obama has paid a billion dollars for.

That's still a helluva lot less money than your shutdown wasted just on destroying this year's Antarctic research program for no good reason.

[mr_genius]

this year's Antarctic research program

 

i will fix that too, as a personal favor to you

[Balta1701]

i will fix that too, as a personal favor to you

You literally can't. They've spent the last week evacuating the base. The money spent to get there was already spent, now the operations funds are being spent to send everyone home. The money for the year is lost. It was spent for nothing.

[mr_genius]

You literally can't. They've spent the last week evacuating the base. The money spent to get there was already spent, now the operations funds are being spent to send everyone home. The money for the year is lost. It was spent for nothing.

 

 

 

[Balta1701]

HAHAHAHAHA

 

You know what's hilarious? Ruining people's careers while still wasting a couple billion taxpayer dollars.

 

After all, I might have to go back more than 3 posts to find you complaining about the government wasting money. But hey, it's wasted by this shutdown, who cares.

[mr_genius]

HAHAHAHAHA

 

You know what's hilarious? Ruining people's careers while still wasting a couple billion taxpayer dollars.

 

After all, I might have to go back more than 3 posts to find you complaining about the government wasting money. But hey, it's wasted by this shutdown, who cares.

 

I never said Boehner doesn't love wasting money. But you always say wasting money is good for the economy? So can we say the glass is half-full here as a bunch of money is being wasted?

[Texsox]

HAHAHAHAHA

 

You know what's hilarious? Ruining people's careers while still wasting a couple billion taxpayer dollars.

 

After all, I might have to go back more than 3 posts to find you complaining about the government wasting money. But hey, it's wasted by this shutdown, who cares.

 

How are careers ruined? The rest of academia can't adjust to delays, even whole years?

[Texsox]

 

Tom Hanks could play him in the movie

[mr_genius]

Tom Hanks could play him in the movie

 

sounds like a good movie

[Balta1701]

How are careers ruined? The rest of academia can't adjust to delays, even whole years?

There's a recently-hired tenure-track faculty member in the building next to mine who was funded for field research in Antarctica this year. That research program probably would have set her up for several publications which would basically have put her on the path to tenure. Now she's spent the money in the grant, doesn't have that money again, and will lose a field season that would have produced several years worth of work. Tenure at universities is based on the work you achieve during your first 4-5 years.

 

If the University isn't extraordinarily flexible, this will cost her tenure, at which point she'll leave the university after it is denied. That will happen to dozens, hundreds of people.

 

Similarly, she has grad students, as do most of the hundreds of scientists heading down there. Those grad students are in school for 2-5 years depending on the program. If those students lose the data they were relying on getting...they can't graduate. "I couldn't go because of the government shutdown" isn't an excuse. They're losing multiple years of their lives preparing for projects that won't happen. The numbers of those people will be in the thousands. Schools will not simply come up with money to keep these people in school for longer to make up for the government screwing with them. That's not how it works. Some of them will just switch to other projects, but those projects need funding for extra students...and this years' funding has been destroyed by the sequester already, so the funding for students to start new projects simply doesn't exist.

 

And mind you, the grants to fund those students and faculty members were already paid. The government spent hundreds of millions of dollars saying "You're a great person to go get this data", gave them the money, and then said that the money had to be spent turning around and doing nothing.

[Jake]

When that person comes up for review, they'll remember and consider that they lost this project in progress. Unfortunately, that doesn't take the place of the publications they need to prove their competence. Publishing is hard, especially in the sciences where you need funding to do much research, so there just may not be such a good opportunity again. It's so hard to land a tenure track that it could feasibly set back this person's career permanently. Likewise, as Balta mentioned, the time it takes to get stuff researched and then published is very relevant. Like the grad students who need publications before graduating, this researcher has to have publications before tenure review comes. Sometimes it can't be made up later, because later never comes.

[Balta1701]

When that person comes up for review, they'll remember and consider that they lost this project in progress. Unfortunately, that doesn't take the place of the publications they need to prove their competence. Publishing is hard, especially in the sciences where you need funding to do much research, so there just may not be such a good opportunity again. It's so hard to land a tenure track that it could feasibly set back this person's career permanently. Likewise, as Balta mentioned, the time it takes to get stuff researched and then published is very relevant. Like the grad students who need publications before graduating, this researcher has to have publications before tenure review comes. Sometimes it can't be made up later, because later never comes.

My guess says that the number of grad students who will not graduate...ever...because of this is in the hundreds. People will have their lives hurt by this 40 years from now.

[Balta1701]

A solid baseball comparison might be Jared Mitchell. All the talent in the world, lost the equivalent of 2 years right at the key moment in his career when he needed to be doing as much learning and growing as possible, very good chance his career is entirely ruined because of it.

[Texsox]

Too bad academics aren't able to adapt to the present conditions. I guess I thought more highly of them.

[Jake]

Too bad academics aren't able to adapt to the present conditions. I guess I thought more highly of them.

 

huh?

[Jake]

Too bad academics aren't able to adapt to the present conditions. I guess I thought more highly of them.

 

They have by making part-time lecturers into 40% of the labor force while eliminating tenure lines, all while public schools are essentially operating as private institutions because they have lost so much public funding. This is, of course, why losing valuable research is so devastating. It is so hard to find a tenure-track job that losing one chance may very well be your only chance at getting one. Once you are out of grad school and not in tenure positions, you may never get the resources to build your research portfolio again

[Balta1701]

Basically all he's saying is that academics either need to change careers or leave the country because a career in education is untenable in the United States.

 

And like I've said, plenty are trying.

[Jake]

Unfortunately, we still have the best schools - so STEM folks have to choose between institutional quality and the possibility of receiving federal grants.

[Balta1701]

Unfortunately, we still have the best schools - so STEM folks have to choose between institutional quality and the possibility of receiving federal grants.

The Sequester is working on that.

[StrangeSox]

Depressing thread is depressing

 

[Texsox]

huh?

 

They can't adjust to the facts that some government supported research was halted and work around it. According to Balta, the careers and lives of academics have been shattered. There will be a mass exodus of researchers leaving this country for green pastures where funding is more consistent and guaranteed. I believed that people could make adjustments and understand why certain research was suspended.

[Balta1701]

They can't adjust to the facts that some government supported research was halted and work around it. According to Balta, the careers and lives of academics have been shattered. There will be a mass exodus of researchers leaving this country for green pastures where funding is more consistent and guaranteed. I believed that people could make adjustments and understand why certain research was suspended.

Yeah, it was suspended because of a group of complete idiots in Congress.

 

Tex, you went to grad school, I believe, correct? Here's the scenario. You're 2/3 done with Grad School and suddenly you're told "you have to start over and there's no money available to assist you so it'll cost you another 2 years and $30,000 a year".

 

People are just going to quit. That is the right adjustment to make. Would you extend your graduate school career by 2-3 years and pony up your own money for it because Congress destroys the program you were relying on, or would you say "screw it I need to do something with my life"?

[Texsox]

Exactly. I had hoped that academia could make adjustments. They can not.

 

How many grad students are awarded federal money for their projects versus Professors? The complaint was that only long in the tooth professors drink from that well.

[Balta1701]

Exactly. I had hoped that academia could make adjustments. They can not.

 

How many grad students are awarded federal money for their projects versus Professors? The complaint was that only long in the tooth professors drink from that well.

At least in my science, there are very few grad students at the masters or Ph.D. level who are able to complete a project without some level of support. Many of them will support a portion of their educational expenses through being a teaching assistant, but that money generally cannot be used to fund a research project.

 

Some schools do have dedicated research funds for those purposes, but in that case we're talking about private schools that have large enough endowments to fund those programs.

 

At every school I've been at, including 2 large state schools and 1 private school, the actual research was overwhelmingly funded based on federal grants. If you lose those, you effectively end the students. There isn't anyone else who foots the bill for the majority. You can definitely get private funds but mining and oil companies aren't willing to fund all that much outside of their own groups; they're more than happy for people to do research under federal grants and then hire them afterwards.