This is a regularly done conservative tactic. Attack research because it’s frequently stupid sounding. But sometimes stupid sounding research leads to incredible things.
Sometimes you research the mating habits of red eyed tree frogs and you learn a lot for conservation efforts and stuff about the species. Conservatives love this because they can hand wave and go “who cares about this thing I personally don’t care about”
But those science nerds sometimes do stuff like researching gila venom in the 70s which eventually led to ozempic now, one of the potential major treatments for t2 diabetes, a scourge of our morbidly obese modern society. This has gigantic positive implications for public health and financial benefits
The whole point is you can’t know until you’re done what will be groundbreaking
It’s an even more fundamental conservative tactic. What they do is find a single example of something they think they can easily deride and hold it up as representative of that entire thing. Think welfare, immigration, criminal justice, reproductive rights, gender identity, and much more. Right wing media is full of single cases they beat into their viewerships’ minds while ignoring all other cases
They don’t want groundbreaking though, unless it’s profitable. They want people to suffer unless they can profit from their relief. They don’t want the government funding this sort of research. They want the government funding their companies that then perform this sort of research at a 5000% mark-up.
This isn’t about efficiency, it’s about attacking science as a tool for evaluating truth. It’s a way to discredit the authority of expertise and shape the course of research with selective funding and demonization.
I think it’s because Elon Musk just really wanted to be the head of a department called “D.O.G.E.”. The whole attacking science thing is just a bonus.
Elon Musk: now singlehandedly responsible for the US falling further behind China in innovation and research (for the record, fuck the CCP).
I seriously hope the UK takes advantage and offers visas and funding for the research. We’ve already got a good research sector though it took a hit from Brexit. Taking in these US scientists, even if it’s only for four years, would accelerate the UK’s growth, suck it Yanks!
p.s. also the EU would love to have them as well.
Yeah how much is this “office” going to cost the taxpayers? I would guess a lot more than $100k on a sunfish experiment.
How much do we pay for politicians and their security to go golfing?
I personally don’t think that politicians should be given elaborate security details. Their performance or lack of performance should determine how safe they are from the populace they’re tasked with serving.
Ehhh, with a large enough population you’re bound to find someone crazy enough to do it for no reason at all.
Sunfish I can’t find the actual study, it appears it was done in 1975, and was a big thing that congress at the time used as the examples of wasteful spending.
First 2 I can’t really say the value or lack of value of. I mean they were studies on effects of dangerous substances on behavior. and yes of course like all studies you pick animals that you might be able to get the effects of. Obviously a lot of science is just randomly probing around looking for oddities that give you a hypothesis to try and refine later into something useful. Obviously addictive substances is an important topic to understand, and poking around randomly might actually give solutions that could be discovered IMO.
Now the last one is the only one I’d agree, isn’t exactly super useful.
was done in 2016.
All that being said… lets also take a serious statement on cost here… a million dollars in 2016. That’s like, 15 minutes of iraq war money.
How much is it gonna cost us to create this new “D.O.G.E.” Department and pay Musk? The cost of these studies is completely irrelevant to the situation, like others have said the GOP props up ridiculous situations and makes it seem like they represent the entire situation, and they do it to disguise what they’re doing which is fleecing taxpayers money to private corps.
Well, that was something that benefitted women, so it’s clearly not efficient for any of the grey, white men in this committee
Knowing your wife is pregnant definitely benefits men too.
including trans women, which they also hate
They hate women; ergo they hate trans women.
That’s not true. The rethoric is easily explained. They’re not women if you can’t “grab them by the pussy”
This is the predictable outcome of empowering ignorance. When your opinion is as valid as my facts, bad things are going to happen.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/21/533840751/episode-779-shrimp-fight-club
It’s a great listen and conservatives as usual can’t stop being fucking retards.
Studying fly development has led to cancer treatments targeting the sonic hedgehog pathway.
Wait, but which is it? Tequila or Gin? I need THE SCIENCE!!
Here’s the tweet in question: https://xcancel.com/DOGE/status/1858540521096089876#m
Anyone know what studies it’s referring to?
