How Scientific Empires End

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/07/science-empire-america-decline/683711/

by mooreds • 12 months ago

67 41 12 months ago

theatlantic.com

LoganDark• 12 months ago

https://archive.ph/hQEF1

bell-cot2• 12 months ago

Kinda like reading a long, moralizing screed against a proposed law declaring pi to be 3.00.

Perhaps I know the subject too well. Or should quietly accept that The Atlantic needs a lot of click-fodder to pay the bills.

stego-tech• 12 months ago

That’s The Atlantic for you: raising a decent point in the headline, and then squandering the article whining like a toddler who didn’t get candy at the checkout lane.

Taking the headline at face value, though, they’re not wrong at all, and this is something I’ve tried warning folks over myself for several years now. Our collective response to COVID was truly the alarm bells going off (vaccine conspiracies, anti-masking, denialism, etc), and now we’re seeing an anti-science (and anti-reality) administration celebrate the gutting of our scientific prestige in the name of nostalgia for -isms. While authors and commentators are handwringing over whether the US is “cooked” scientifically, those in the know or who are observant already know the answer is an emphatic YES.

With the present attack on science, we’ve effectively outsourced one of the last remaining industries that kept us afloat as an empire. We have no real manufacturing (at least of anything others want), and what we do make is of decreasing quality so that shareholders can get paid (e.g. Boeing jets, American cars, and now even SIG handguns - if we can’t make decent planes, cars, and guns, then what do we even export besides raw materials/agriculture?). Without science driving R&D, we won’t even have the patents on innovative new medicines, technologies, or energy sources that we can export abroad.

So yeah. We’re done as an Empire. This isn’t something we can roll back next election, and I don’t think the current crop of Americans have felt enough pain to suddenly grow cooperative and engage in self-sacrifice for the greater good.

margalabargala2• 12 months ago

I agree with most of what you wrote, but:

American cars, and now even SIG handguns

SIG is a German/Swiss company, not American. American cars vary in quality wildly by manufacturer, with Stellantis being the worst offender of what you describe but Chevrolet being the least bad (at the moment).

foobarian• 12 months ago

The only reason we even had good science is the arms race. When there was a threat of someone else getting nukes or radar then the anti-science cohorts were silenced with a quickness, and large percentages of GDP were thrown at R&D, including poaching scientists from abroad, to get there first.

With nothing like that looming right now, there is no check and balance on the anti-science regiment, and so sliding downhill we go. Sadly I don't see this changing either, unless theoretical physicists turn up the basis for some new weapon.

stocksinsmocks• 12 months ago

I agree that COVID response was the canary in the coal mine for exactly the opposite reason you do. Funny how it works both ways. Nobody is happy, and we’re living at the end of an age of decency staring into the abyss of mass-psychosis and catastrophe as we somehow always have been.

Maybe it’s OK. I don’t have to think about predators, which bugs are edible, and I have an entertainment rectangle in my pocket that I can use to tease people on the internet.

swed4203• 12 months ago

Our collective response to COVID was truly the alarm bells going off (vaccine conspiracies, anti-masking, denialism, etc), and now we’re seeing an anti-science (and anti-reality) administration celebrate the gutting of our scientific prestige in the name of nostalgia for -isms.

You act like this is something specific to one party when in fact it is representative of both parties, aka the Uniparty.

All agents of capital have blood on their hands from the pandemic they fumbled and that has not yet ended:

How the press manufactured consent for never-ending COVID reinfections

https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...

Also, this is nothing specific to the US, though considering how many countries followed the lead of the CDC etc, one could reasonably argue the US is most to blame. But don't let that distract you from the fact that ultimately, global capital runs the show:

Modern Capitalism Is Weirder Than You Think It also no longer works as advertised.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-managers-h... (https://archive.ph/Ysw6k)

CommenterPerson• 12 months ago

Well worth a read to the rest of us .. (who keep going on and on about, if LLMs are the best thing since sliced bread or not).

fuzzfactor3• 12 months ago

Well written and it's more than just the author's point of view being emphasized.

It's normal for someone who's taken a position fully in favor of "science" to show their bias against what they see as the most eminent threats. There's no attempt here to hide the bias, in fact there's a fairly respectable attempt to explain the reason for the bias which you don't always get.

Any anti-science crusaders from their point of view are not as sensible when they don't explain their bias either. Nobody expects it to be zero bias so when an opinionated person owns up to it this is just a little something that could lead back to better understanding.

You want to be able to compromise on the roots of disagreement, rather than mindless name-calling if you want to recover one of the most sorely-missed elements of greatness.

Naturally what brought this to mind is that the whole time almost nobody is paying any attention to the little detail where sliced bread has never been the best bread anyway :\

rachofsunshine• 12 months ago

Sometimes simple points are important, especially when those simple points are not generally agreed-upon. A proposed law declaring pi to be 3.00 would indeed be bad, and the simplicity of its badness would not make it any less bad.

bell-cot2• 12 months ago

Yeah...but what's the actual goal?

If it's informing and convincing people who don't agree - I'm thinking that 99.9% of those folks aren't going to read any longish article in The Atlantic. And the 0.1% who might read will quickly be repelled if not angered by the article's tone. Similar for folks who do agree, then try to convince others with arguments and tones from the article.

If a preacher has no interest in actually spreading the Good News - preaching to the choir can be quite comfortable. And he's free to take nasty digs at unbelievers while doing that.

strict92• 12 months ago

The entire article is comparing modern America to Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR.

The past is a different country. The problems existing now are not the same as those of two empires from 100 years ago.

thatnerd2• 12 months ago

Yes: our politicization of science and theirs will take a somewhat different form. And yes: if our politicization of science is is less complete, or briefer, it may not set us back as much... but RFK Jr. is out there purging scientists from the federal government if they disagree with his preferred theories about vaccines. This is not going to advance medical science in the US.

fuzzfactor3• 12 months ago

The problems existing now are not the same as those of two empires from 100 years ago.

I agree.

Not exactly by a long shot.

More like the Reagan era in the US where the pressure to dissolve scientific opportunity was strongest against places that conducted tasks more like Bell Labs most of all.

Eventually "all" was lost as labs that did survive best were not primarily "research", but that was the component which was jettisoned in an attempt to stay afloat.

If the ball was not dropped that badly that far back, Chinese research and especially their military would still be decades behind without any doubts.

NASA would have been on Mars a long time ago.

So you've got a good point, you learn even more when you look directly at the USA and not 100 years back.

Especially if you want to see how it can have a lasting influence on understanding what you're doing wrong right now.

strict92• 12 months ago

I lament what is happening with science and research.

But articles consisting of only Hitler and Stalin comparisons persuade just about no one and is not the type of discourse I expect from HN.

I also agree with you. A more recent look is much more relevant and insightful than the linked article.

jjk1662• 12 months ago

And yet, repeating the mistakes of Hitler's Germany or Stalin's USSR remains a bad idea.

insane_dreamer2• 12 months ago

The point is the US can lose its scientific research dominance just as they once did by mistreating and/or defunding its scientific community.

hermitcrab2• 12 months ago

"History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes"

thatnerd2• 12 months ago

The comparison to the present-day US isn't hyperbole. It's not a perfect match but there are parallels.

The article mentions Lysenko, a Soviet "biologist" who set back Soviet biology for a generation. He believed, for example, that plants in the USSR would not compete with each other for resources the way they did in capitalist societies, but would instead share resources. He asserted that crops could therefore be planted closer together in the USSR, yielding more food per acre. Evidence to the contrary was suppressed: Lysenko had Stalin's ear and a zealot's confidence. The rest of the field was either purged or fell in line. Scientists lost their jobs or got sent to Siberia.

The comparison to the present-day US isn't perfect, but it also isn't hyperbole. While scientists in the US mostly aren't in the same type of danger of arrest for speaking out (assuming ICE doesn't start targeting political opponents), but we're looking at a similar era in the US in terms of making theories and data fit ideology. RFK, Jr. has his preferred biological theories about vaccines, autism, and disease. Government scientists are at risk of losing their jobs and their financial security if they reference (or publish) findings that Kennedy objects to. Universities are still (as far as I can tell) safe for natural scientists because the first wave of the crackdown is focused on the humanities and social sciences, so this purge of scientists is limited to federal government employees, but the effect is real, and it isn't a stretch to assume that if the government finds success in the current purge, it will go looking further afield.

The human impact is significant for those affected, but the article is right to point out that this purge of scientists from the government for ideological goals will have a broader impact for society: it will set back American science.

Kennedy doesn't even have to be wrong on the facts for the culture he's creating to be toxic for federal science in his department and beyond. Just the politicization of science pushes our country towards being a scientific backwater.

lq9AJ8yrfs• 12 months ago

Neither US political party has a monopoly on Lysenko-style academics, unfortunately.

At least one of them seems to have an introspective capacity, at some level. So that's nice?

Genuinely I wonder if this would make for good charity? Where can I donate to promote political introspection? I'll consider any mainstream spot on the political spectrum.

jjk1662• 12 months ago

The fact that any party can implement Lysenko-style academics means the system has failed. We don't need political introspection so they more benevolently interfere with scientific progress, we need a system where they don't interfere, where they can't interfere without an impractical degree of effort.

Science is beneficial for progress, it makes sense at a 20,000 ft level for the government to encourage it, but politicians deciding which grants to offer, guidelines for what can be published by grant recipients, being able to make serious threats against universities and other such research institutions with few restrictions - there is no argument for a government to have such power. Either publicly funded research institutions should have strong protections in place for their academic integrity, or some alternative to government funding for these institutions should be the norm.

insane_dreamer2• 12 months ago

But only one party is halving scientific funding and withholding billions in research grants

stronglikedan• 12 months ago

This take is quite alarmist, but also so biased that it cannot be taken seriously.

hermitcrab2• 12 months ago

Is it though? Trump just fired an economist because she released some job numbers he didn't like.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3xrrzdr0o

danaris• 12 months ago

Universities are still (as far as I can tell) safe for natural scientists because the first wave of the crackdown is focused on the humanities and social sciences

Well, kinda—but only because they're not cracking down on any specific views in the natural sciences; they're just cutting their funding entirely.

Large swaths of natural science research at US universities relied (past tense) on federal grant funding, and that's effectively been eliminated across the board.

They just don't want any science research being done, period, unless it's 100% funded and owned by for-profit companies.

MengerSponge• 12 months ago

Let's Not Lose Our Minds (2017) by Carl Zimmer: https://carlzimmer.medium.com/lets-not-lose-our-minds-c5dcac...

The situation has only devolved since he wrote this.

Icy0• 12 months ago

My take is the fall of the current order of scientific institutions was already happening well before Trump's actions this year. Increased academic fraud, the reproducibility crisis, increase in people prioritizing career growth over pursuit of knowledge, overzealous publish-or-perish culture, administrative bloat, and so on.

Can we save it? I want to believe it, but I'm more and more of the mind that we need to create a new scientific institution to replace the old one, whatever that means.

bookofjoe• 12 months ago

https://archive.ph/akumF

How Scientific Empires End

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