People still bring in bad faith arguments about private companies funding research or replication crisis. Sure these are big issues in current scientific research. There is no denying that.
While there might be an intuitive sense of less public research means money saved, there is no data or research (duh!) showing the impact of reduced public research.
From what we have seen so far this will make things worse - because for one private research is going to biased. It happens today but public research can counter that. Later there will be no defense. Like MAHA report making up BS sources using AI to push its agenda.
The irony in all of this is - the man pushing ivermectin during a pandemic - one of the biggest replication issue if not the big one - is telling others how to do research and people are defending him.
The US spent ~1 trillion dollars on science in 2024, 2025 will be maybe 10% less.
The EU spent ~460 billion dollars on science in 2024 ... and 2025 will be 10 to 20% less.
So the problem I have here is simple. I mostly agree with you. But European governments, despite having more money to spend, spent less on science, and are taking back grants faster than Trump. Per-capita or per-GDP-dollar they spent 3 to 4 times less than the US on science. In absolute terms, they spent less than half the US spent.
EU politicians (and diplomats) are doing worse than Trump on this issue, not better.
This is the part that's always forgotten. Everyone's gleefully saying that this Trump White House is going to finally, after decades, reverse the EU to US brain drain!
Then you look at the facts ... and no, it's not. In fact it may accelerate under Trump. What the EU is doing to science funding is worse than what Trump is doing.
I mean, I get it. Trump is worse than Biden. Or, to put it a different way: the US is so far ahead of the EU in science that the major idiotic stumble Trump is turning out to be ... just doesn't matter. But yeah, bring back Biden!
If getting a science grant for X is 5 years of effort in the EU, it's about 2 years of effort in the US. Sure, it used to be 1.8 years and that sucks. But there is still a very large difference and obviously the expected outcome here, if we're being honest, is that the US ... will easily remain far ahead in science to the EU.