zlacker

>>karako+(OP)
The people I know who work in life sciences R&D (basically anything bio) have had their funding absolutely annihilated. PhDs with 20 years of experience working second jobs as substitute high school teachers, lab workers taking up tech support positions paying a fraction of what was already terrible pay.

What's worse is that in most of these fields, you don't really even start working until after your PhD.

4 years is going to be a long time to underfund what's basically 4 entire classes of researchers coming out of Doctorate programs. It might take decades to recover our research programs.

>>bane+ye
Our lab is scrambling, spending all our time writing grants, not conducting science. It is so frustrating and wasteful.

>>Subicu+Oh
This is why I became a teaching professor. My employment and promotion are not conditioned on how much money I bring in and what I publish. But I still get to spend 4 months of the year doing research that's important to me. I don't publish as often but when I do, it's substantive work.

I've seen too many promising academic careers torched at 6-years because they had unfundable ideas. With this new administration, we see how "fundability" and "good important research" are often at odds and can change as quickly as the political winds.

When I was in gradschool it was over drones and the politics was within the FAA and their shifting definitions of what an "unmanned aerial vehicle" technically was. Recently you wouldn't get funding if you didn't have the word "equity" in your proposal. Now you don't get funding if you do have the word "equity" in your proposal. New boss, same as old boss.

Heaven forbid you were researching suddenly now <VORBOTEN> topic, your entire career is torched. I just didn't want to tie my career to that kind of capriciousness.