Conversations About Science with Theoretical Physicist Matt Strassler
Maybe you think this shutdown isn’t all that bad? Perhaps you’re not talking to scientists, or thinking about their role in society. The effects of the government shutdown continue to ripple outward. Scientific research doesn’t cope well with shutdowns.
In many fields, the research has to be maintained continuously; if you shut it down, even for a short period, all your work is wasted.
Well, you know there’s something deeply wrong with the way your country is run when stupid things like this start happening. Take a research program that’s been monitoring several thousand people at a time, focusing on their cardiovascular health, and following them for decades (http://www.framinghamheartstudy.org/about/history.html); and without warning, cut it by over 40%. Not even … Read more
Big changes are coming to the US academic world. It’s a confluence of influences: recession, the climate argument, the online revolution, political gridlock, expensive university education, … A major accomplishment by one side has been the elimination (more precisely, the attaching of impractical conditions that made a funding process impossible) of all NSF funding of … Read more
[NOTE ADDED: Unfortunately, within two months of this post, Mr. Zakaria was suspended from his job for plagiarism. Such a spectacular lack of integrity calls into question everything he has ever written, and so I cannot anymore recommend his article, nor will he ever be quoted on this website again.] Today I’d like to … Read more