This might in the end lead to a permanent brain drain for the US:
German article
The President of the Max Planck Society wants to specifically recruit top US researchers who could imagine moving to Germany in the anti-science climate under US President Donald Trump. ‘The USA is a new talent pool for us,’ Patrick Cramer told Der Spiegel.
His institution had already received twice as many applications from the USA in response to the most recent call for applications to head research groups than in the previous year. The MPG now wants to build on the obvious increase in interest: Cramer is therefore planning to travel through several US cities to talk to representatives from science and politics. He will also make targeted contact with individual luminaries who might be interested in moving to Germany in the current political climate. Cramer did not want to name names, the report said. However, some of them ‘make my eyes sparkle’.
I doesn’t say the numbers so twice as much could be 2 people instead of one or 100 instead of 50. Hard to say how much it will hurt the US, but Germany is definitely not the only European country who will try this.
I listened to an interview where a lead scientist at Harvard was told that they needed to “discard all but the most promising research.” He was like “but the thing is, you don’t know what’s promising until it gives you results.”
And “promising” only means “money” not making the world better, helping people, getting insight in how things work so we understand our world better, etc. only and purely money.
What I’ve noticed from exchanges with “money people” is that promising research implies buzzwords (hence why everyone is trying to sell AI stuff, never die stuff or other impossible goals, just to have money to do research), or things that are on the verge of becoming a product (like, we’re testing an actual drug for cancer). Humanities means bad, and basic sciences have no meaning because that thing doesn’t fit anywhere.
I think, if everything stays like it’s going now, going forward, science communication will become incredibly sensationalist over there. You’ll have to promise heaven on earth to get money regardless on what you’ll use it and even knowing beforehand you won’t deliver your “goals”.
I don’t have complete numbers, but I do know of just under about a dozen new PIs that are said to be in some stage of the process to join the University. These are likely a combination of those that were in the process of being hired just prior to the election, and some that are earlier on in the hiring stage. We are the largest university in the country, and I don’t think it’s terribly difficult to obtain a Visa if you are being hired here. We even have exec admins who were poached from Ivy league schools because they didn’t want to stay at educational institutions that might get gutted over the next four years.
But since I work in the central division that supports research at the university, I know that out VP Research is anticipating a big surge of new hires from the US, and I suspect that’s based on concrete data, not just speculation.
To be fair, grant writing was always about selling the impossible to convince granting bodies to part with money, but yes, this will probably get much worse than it already is.
I thank the stars that my partner did her PhD during the Obama years and was safety away from the US once Trump was in, and not just from a funding perspective, but because this administration is actively hostile and ideologically opposed to her work.
I wouldn’t call this “poaching,” it’s more akin to providing asylum. If a dictatoral government is threatening your work, of course your going to leave for someone who understands and appreciates its benefits.
I know anti-intellectualism has been a thing for centuries, but I never thought I’d see it as the main philosophy of a powerful government.
I might be a bit too cynical on it too, but as with most of the research funding, it’s not universal but a contest for limited funding, meaning in the end that the people who will get that “asylum” will be the best ranked, so the ones that had more money and prestige in the first place to build that better standardised high score.
I can’t not see it as trying to fund the “best” people who got defunded by these cuts to improve their own funder scores and/or have them as affiliated partners to research/university centres to make them more reputable/be associated with more high-profile research projects.
As a person at one of the world’s largest research institutions, and has worked in the central division that supports funded research for over a decade, this is 100% accurate.
I’m not gonna to pretend I understand how university research funding works, because I honestly have no idea at all, but isn’t it better that something still continues.
I understand what your saying (I think) and that this doesn’t mean that the people who most deserve the funding will get it, but surely it’s better than the alternative of nothing being funded?
I understand it’s maybe the lesser of two evils, but a win against a dictatorship, no matter how small, is still worth celebrating, right?
Oh definitely, in the end, the practical differences are negligible and this funding will also help keep some jobs for researchers, particularly in the lower ends of the academic ladder. It was just me trying to defend my “poaching” point of view rather than a more humanitarian meaning it could have, which I can’t see because I can’t see research centres not doing this because of anything than selfish reasons (one of which can be the PR win that implies being renown as a “free research haven”).
The absolute bell ends currently running America have outdone themselves by leaking war plans to a journalist.
They go on to care mostly about oil reserves and bitch about the “freeloading” of Europe.
Funny thing is, the majority of Europeans - not to mention the rest of the world - would be perfectly happy if America, especially this administration, fucked right off.
My understanding on the effects of tariffs and who “pay” them is completely different to what some governments might think, but hey, I’m not a prestigious entrepreneur and the inheritor of a multi million fortune.
