Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Travis Longcore's avatar

Hiya Matt... Have you ever tried to run an organization doing research on 15% overhead? Good luck to you -- it doesn't work if you'd like to have buildings, research labs, fiscal compliance systems, legal compliance systems, and keep the lights on and the water running. The amount of transferring to subsidize other efforts you imagine is, I would venture, grossly overstated. Scientific research is expensive and requires a large infrastructure that is reflected in very robustly substantiated indirect cost rates (aka overhead). But more broadly, the idea the administration is going after medical research to get at sociology departments is laughable. This attack is on universities, experts, and those who can speak with authority, and it is a textbook authoritarian move. The vice president said it out loud, and I quote -- "The universities are the enemy." He meant it -- this is the American Cultural Revolution not an attack on cross-subsidies from physics to English.

Expand full comment
Thomas L. Hutcheson's avatar

This still implies a very odd utility function by the Administration in the amount of harm it is willing to do to STEM departments in order to harm the others.

Expand full comment
6 more comments...

No posts