> the current WH has decided science has a bias against them

As the saying goes, reality has a well-established (left|liberal) bias...

> .. the current WH has decided science has a bias against them and wants to curb it ...

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.

I hope it’s like what happened to countries like England, France, and Spain. You see your empire collapse but the country itself remains intact.

England “gave up” scientific and technological leadership during the 20th century. (That’s a tongue-in-cheek take on it, don’t read too much into it.)

It might be what it takes though, 2nd place (if that), to get the U.S. to stop fucking around.

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You its honestly really disappointing, the thinned skinned nature of HN is really shocking never new about it until started using the active view instead of the standard view. This specific critism isn't even really that political. They are pointing out the economic consequences of poor policy. I think its tricky to navigate though because I'd prefer not everything become politcal

Also from the article:

"Speaking at the European Science Diplomacy Conference in Copenhagen, she did not elaborate on exactly how the US was wrecking its reputation."

For someone in the top position of EU's research leadership, she sure does seem to suck at explaining and arguing her statements, which should be the no. 1 skill of academics in research.

I’m not sure it does. Particularly since the diplomat is outgoing

Does it?

It's the classic breakup story, one party is just done and want to cut contact, but the other party is still hopeful and wants to find a way to restore the relationship. The EU is not independent minded in the same way that China and Russia are. That's the problem with them. Their leaders don't want to act independently from the US, because the European wealthy and politically connected classes consider themselves transatlantic, and they want to keep enjoying close ties to the US, even as the US pulls away.

Personally, as someone that has heard non-stop about how horrible the US is from Europeans ever since I was on the internet, I don't give statements from EU officials much weight. It isn't anything new.

I have family that has migrated _from_ Europe to the US, they still seem to hold this attitude that they know what is best for the US. They come live here for a higher quality of life and income, then go vacation in Europe like kings, talking about how much cheaper things are, without an ounce of irony. Not sure how they do it.

  > guilt tripping, etc. but very little about what the EU plans to do in retaliation. 

Abandoning the rules based order, science, equality, personal rights; it all will have devastating effects. For Americans, for everyone.

The US position in the NATO is an arrangement like the Americans wanted for decades, it enabled the US to profit greatly from it, and Europa was happy to have the US as a counter balance. Now, if the US wants to change the arrangement, that is of course possible. But we have signed contracts, blackmail and extortion shouldn't have a place. Can't share sources, but under this administration several powerful but corrupt people in the army even tried to extort European partners already. It is on track to become Russified in that sense, nothing to be gleeful over.

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/02/upshot/trump-...

Far too early to know the exact long term effects but it’s definitely happening.

For the year ending May 2024, China released more scientific papers -in English- than the US [1]. We have been on a decline for a while.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

[edit] I think that list is total, not just for a single year. Still telling though.

That's the thing about investing in scientific research, especially toward the basic science end of the spectrum - the real benefit is seen years down the line after technology transfer to public-private partnerships and private industry. It can take many years to decades to see the long-term benefit, which is why it needs government backing. It's not sustainable for most players in the private sector to invest research that is high risk (with respect to applicability), long term, or both. This also makes it easy to cast doubt on the value of research being done now or recently - we don't have a ton of concrete results to show for it yet. The best numbers to look at would probably be emigration / immigration of PhDs, papers published in top-tier journals and the universities associated with them, and where conferences are being held.

I suspect that's a little tricky to quantify, so we're left with anecdotal observations. I would be surprised if anyone looking around objectively could say feel the U.S. was gaining any ground.

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> But the collective efforts of some government agencies, academia and the private sector helped reverse the trend.

Well that's the key. The current administration is doing its best to sabotage science.

The current administration is braking hard against the inertia.

What is US losing, relative to Europe/other countries?

I can't really think of many notable things to come out of Europe as of late... besides maybe covid vaccines but its hard to really say that when 90% of the wikipedia page for the "creators" is about research and contributions that they did (and could really only do) in the US.

Countries didn't "outsource" it, the US competed for and dominated this extremely high value-added portion of the global economy.

It's a complete own-goal for us to give up what we fought so hard for.

It’s difficult to compete economically. If the US has welcoming immigration policies for scientists and will pay 10x what your country can afford then you’re going to end up with a brain drain.

Recent changes in the US have changed that calculus but you can’t create an entire industry in the blink of an eye (and, of course, those changes can be reversed at any point)

Countries don’t outsource any research to the US. US funding lured many scientists to the US but this has never been seen as a positive thing outside the US. In Canada we call it brain drain. Now we’re capitalizing and the US science failing to strengthen our science sector.

Long term science is not at risk. Science doesn’t need the US. This is, however, a big problem for the US.

Don't worry, countries didn't do that. Academia is quite strong outside of the US. Still a loss of course!

When we talk about innovation, hn has a narrow focus on the well-known monopolies. That is understandable, because they are well-known brands, not some obscure innovative Swiss company in a critical supply chain. Reality is more complex than we discuss about, fortunately enough.

But the focus on the winner-takes-all is also a bit unhealthy, because monopolies are the anti-thesis of a free market. A free market needs rules to keep it free and fair. I know, that conflicts with the sponsored narratives--how else can you get people to justify gatekeeper siphoning everyone of in their walled garden?

It wasn’t exactly those countries choice, but since the US seems hell bent on sabotaging itself one can only hope the rest of the western world picks up this slack.

Not entirely baseless though :

> the US government has cut scientific grants to academics working on diversity-related topics, halted biomedical grants to international partners, and demanded universities shut down academic units that “belittle” conservative ideas, or risk losing federal funding.

> These efforts have in some cases been overturned by courts or faced opposition from universities. And huge proposed cuts in federal research funding may be blunted by Congress. But still, the reputational damage has led Europe to attempt a poaching spree of disillusioned US academics.

From the EU perspective, I can see why it pays to say the US is an unreliable or unnecessary partner. It may or may not be true, but cui bono: EU gets to reindustrialize and invest domestically. Seems like a great idea for EU and US both.

While America is appearing to be the abject fool here, it’s hard to take any of Europe’s criticisms like this seriously when even in the best of times they have constantly castigated us as fools.

They were calling us fools when we were inventing AI in 2015 too.

I think what we are doing today is horribly executed, but likely motivated by a farsightedness Europe can’t believe is there since we are all just dumb fools. (Collapse of globalism as a sustainable system)

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Having a president who lacks object permanence makes long-term planning difficult.

Like these? https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/11/over-74000-people-wer...

New account because I’m a lazy lurker, but “diversity related” projects could be as simple as trying to balance the number of studies done primarily on white males vs other groups. Especially in biomedical research, the gender of the population studied has a profound effect on the relevancy of results.

By many measures, over 75% of studies have historically focused on white male populations, which for a variety of potential research/treatment areas, is important to control for.

https://www.google.com/search?q=percentage+of+medical+studie...

It wasn't very welcoming in the 90s either.

In the previous Trump term "diversity related topics" included things like biodiversity which is an important area of research and should be apolitical. Not because of a shift in focus, but because of top-down orders to not fund anything related to "diversity."

Conservatives in the past have also tried to belittle research grants to justify eliminating them, such as "studying X about fruit flies." It might sound silly to a lay person but drosophila is an incredibly important model organism from which many discoveries have come.

The problem is a highly political, often careless or incompetent, and sometimes blatantly corrupt administration taking a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel to so-called "waste."

[1] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2019...