You seem strongly in favor science that you understand, and opposed to research that you don't take an interest in or have read.

I don't think you'd accept news media accounts of space science. But you're accepting their synopses of social science without looking deeper.

Perhaps I am wrong and you're actually an expert on sociology or some related field. But you are not accurately describing how the field works and what it does. It's hard to make the case for it when you're willing to dismiss its existence based on such a limited view of it.

> work which burns through money repeating things we already know (racism is bad! poor people are sicker!) and accomplishing exactly nothing

Why do we need to study the sun? We already know it goes around the Earth.

Flippant, but the point should be clear. Some of the most taken for granted things can also be the ones least studied... And least understood. Wouldn't you like to know why being poor leads to worse outcomes? Perhaps confounding factors?

Do you have a specific example of a wasteful STEM research project that was cut?

My (perhaps wrong) impression was that wastefulness was given as the reason for making the cuts, but that the cuts were done broadly and indiscriminately [1].

In other words, the actions don't match the stated goal of reducing wastefulness. They seem more like a punishment for the members of all scientific institutions, and deterrence for curiosity-driven research.

[1] For example, the cuts to the STEM grants & projects didn't seem attached to any evidence of said projects' wastefulness.

Like that program to study the mating patterns of sterile flies in Panama, right? They cut that because it was a $300k waste of money. Do you know what happened after they cut it? The US got a $300m infestation of those flies.

Yours is an "ends justify the means" argument, but are you comfortable with the way these cuts were done? Would you approve so robustly of your own research being cut with a keyword search for government-unapproved terms?

Thank you for providing your perspective. I really hope HN has a 'pre-vouch' button as I know your comment will be flagged in no time, even though it's quite articulated.

A fair bit of "science" is about providing training to the following generations. Sure, your example isn't going to turn up any new insights into structural racism but it is something that you can point grad students at to learn how to capture data.

Diabetes is getting worse, just saying that "we looked at poor people's problems 50 years ago so don't need to look at them again" isn't going to flag it up.

Medium effort flame bait

So where are researchers who want to study topics you don't personally like supposed to get funding, in your view?

What the fuck