American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history
112 comments
·July 2, 2025JSR_FDED
msgodel
[flagged]
galangalalgol
The echo chambers of social media donthat to us. The fewer interactions we have with those holding opposing viewpoints the more difficult it becomes to rationalize their views as anything but malicious. In that spirit can you explain what you mean? From my perspective it looks like the attack on academia that always occurs during populist coups. I don't doubt that biased science is done out pf greed, but I would need exceptional evidence that it was the norm, or even common enough to warrant this. Healthcare workers including doctors are leaving now too. This all mirrors what was seen in Hungary andany places before that.
rybosome
I cannot for the life of me think of what you are referring to.
If it’s COVID-related mandates like vaccines and lockdowns, then surely it’s obvious that NASA had nothing to do with that?
There is no single issue that I can see linking all of these science organizations together. Even if it’s about budget, there are bigger targets.
SailingCactus33
They went off mission. Here is a NASA example that might help linking it together: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11457489/
IAmGraydon
Please…elaborate. How were they “weaponized against most of the country”?
VectorLock
Weaponized against what?
dotnet00
This has definitely been my feeling too as a fresh postdoc. For a while it has been feeling more and more like the US isn't worth the effort and stress.
Sure, I make more money here, but is it worth dealing with nonsensical immigration policies, haphazard funding cuts, crumbling infrastructure, completely random rulemaking, and demoralized colleagues facing severe and nonsensical budget cuts when various other countries with a good standard of living and competitive research labs make immigration very easy for skilled people like scientists?
It isn't specifically a Trump thing, but he's certainly proving to be the straw that broke the camel's back, and it's likely I'll go elsewhere once my postdoc appointment ends.
I can imagine that the decision is even easier for people from countries like China. Why deal with the stress of the government suddenly deciding that you aren't allowed to work at your institution anymore regardless of track record or background, (many chinese colleagues have been worried about the proposed legislation and it comes up often), when you can work at a similarly cutting edge institution back home? You just have to determine if the US being less authoritarian on certain things is valuable enough to put up with the awful treatment through the long immigration process.
senectus1
I see Trump as being a socially acceptable widening of this sort of behavior.
AI is just an enabling of the the imagination of the now widened bracket of behavior.
As has been often remarked on. this is a really shit timeline to exist in.
Herring
Americans getting a crash course in how white supremacy destroys itself. Did you know: Slavery was so profitable, it sprouted more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation.
Look at them now.
https://www.history.com/articles/slavery-profitable-southern...
msgodel
Slavery was terrible for the economy and the debate at the time was actually surprisingly similar to the illegal immigrant labor debate today
Nevermark
The parallel isn’t perfect.
But the deep irrationality driving artificial opportunistic ideological divides (this time less raw white supremacy, but still a lot of xenophobia, party loyalty propaganda, cult of personality, and fear and backlash with respect to minorities), drives sub-cultures like lemmings, off the cliff of reality. Taking the rest of us with them.
Obvious even as it becomes unstoppable.
Herring
Yeah and the infrastructure of economic/political exclusion is initially just used against that "horrible" group X, but eventually expands to the majority of the population. This is because greed is basically an endless hole. They get to threaten the wider population "toe the line or you'll end up like them".
A lot of times the effects are invisible. I doubt everyday Mississippians even think about how slavers stole their future from them. Americans barely ever think about the trillions of dollars that the Iraq war wasted/stole.
Nevermark
Yes, horrible starts as a scapegoated minority that can’t defend itself, who are treated performatively badly to shake out whowever won’t go along with the excess. These become the next trailers. This keeps expanding to include anyone who has any opinion different from the leader(s).
The continually incrementally enslaved majority is told that each thing they give up is just a temporary sacrifice until they have lost all their freedoms. Even then, their hardships are blamed on scapegoats, to maintain their “leader’s” grip on their minds and loyalty.
Anyone raising alarms is a traiter.
Watching the Republican Party metamorphose into group think, hero worship, the last couple decades has been deeply troubling.
Seeing the inability of any effective opposition or remedy, has been equally troubling.
krapp
What? White supremacy isn't anywhere close to destroying itself. The power base just shifted from the plantation owners to CEOs.
givemeethekeys
Are institutions elsewhere massively increasing funding and positions?
Aren't all the non-bankruptible tuition fees providing plenty of funding already? Where's that money going? The football team?
magicalhippo
The gov't here in Norway put $10 million on the table[1] for 2026 as a response to what's going on in the US. Due to reasons they can't direct it solely at US researchers, but the intent is there:
The minister has followed the recent developments in the United States closely:
"Academic freedom is under pressure in the United States, and it is an unpredictable situation for many researchers in what has been the world's leading research nation for many decades. We have had close dialogue with the Norwegian knowledge communities and my Nordic colleagues about the development. It has been important for me to find good measures that we can put in place quickly, and therefore I have asked the Research Council to prioritize grant funding schemes that we can implement rapidly," says Aasland.
The program is meant to last years, we'll see how it goes.
Now I know, $10m ain't much in the grand scheme of things, but we're just 5 million folks over here.
[1]: https://www.forskningsradet.no/en/news/2025/100-million-nok-...
linotype
That’s like a couple of DoE grants in the US.
i_cannot_hack
It's an example showing that institutions elsewhere are actually responding to this (a question asked by the parent post), and Norway will very likely not be alone here.
ViscountPenguin
Norway is a small (albeit wealthy) country. For conparables, you want to keep an eye on EU and Chinese science funding, and see if they're taking advantage of it. Norway is a good existence proof of countries reacting to this though.
foxglacier
Yea that's practically nothing, even accounting for your population. It's $2/person compared to NASA's pre-cut budget of about $80/person/year. Where are all these other countries that might pick up the slack? Seems nobody else in the world wants to pay for science. They might complain about American science funding cuts but are happy to keep their already tiny science budgets tiny.
Norway's overall science budget is $1 billion per year, or $200/person/year. US's was $200 billion/year or $600/person/year. So Norway isn't really pulling its weight.
magicalhippo
Where did you get that $1 billion figure from? From what I can see[1][2], it's more like $4.6 billion? In that case it would be more like $920/person/year.
[1]: https://www.fpol.no/det-norske-statsbudsjettet-2025-gir-en-n...
[2]: https://nifu.brage.unit.no/nifu-xmlui/handle/11250/3166076 (second page, first section)
the_snooze
I don't know where that money is going, but from my own experience, research at universities really isn't supported by tuition money. At least in STEM, PhD students are paid for by grants and contracts that their advisors secured from sources like NSF, DARPA, NIH, NSA, etc. Those are the people actually execute the research.
You might want to say tuition should support research, but the reality is that it doesn't.
ribosometronome
Why would we want tuition to support research?
givemeethekeys
Before universities became so expensive - yes, there was a time when they weren't - it made sense for research funding to come from our taxes.
But, if university is going to be so expensive, then we the people, and especially the students are being double-taxed - first for the education, and then to support research.
The irony of ironies is that all that research is going to put all those students that paid for it out of a job!
sevensor
If we assume science still has new things to tell the world, who better for researchers to share their discoveries with than the next generation? That’s the argument, anyway. In practice, it’s a crapshoot. Many researchers are dreadful educators due to incentives, training, and disposition. Every now and then you’ll run across a researcher who is also a great educator, but there’s no institutional force that pushes them in the right direction.
specialist
Universities produce scholarship. That's expensive.
dangus
I think the cynical student paying tuition in America would ask what the money is actually paying for and why it can’t cover the full cost of programs and research given that it’s so high.
Let’s say you go to Ohio State. The out of state (unsubsidized) tuition comes out to about $37,000 for full time tuition. That’s around 108 hours of instruction per year by my estimation.
Students are paying $342 per lecture hour, which means each professor is bringing in between $3000-30,000 per hour.
Sure they have to grade papers but…come on, right?
How is this not wildly profitable?
This does not include room and board, which has to be even more wildly profitable. Imagine being able to charge $1200 a month for a shared room with no kitchen or private bathroom with some cafeteria slop as included food.
I finished a formal university degree recently and probably only 1/4 of my professors were actually actively decent and all the lessons were heavily recycled copy paste jobs that get passed around the department.
Online school makes this an even worse value since the professor just grades electronic work and spends one hour a week on chat hours, with the rest of the lectures being pre-recorded or pre-written.
To be clear, I personally believe the government of wealthy nations should fully cover the cost of higher education to anyone who wants it because it’s a no-brainer obvious investment that pay off in positive societal ROI. My commentary simply concerns the status quo where costs are high despite subsidy and endowments still existing.
Figs
> Aren't all the non-bankruptible tuition fees providing plenty of funding already?
No. Having worked in academia for years, most of my funding came from the NSF. Sometimes it was from the state government, or private organizations partnering with us instead. Usually the university took a 50%+ cut of the grants we got as "overhead" too...
Spivak
Can confirm, universities aren't giving money to researchers- they're actually taking a cut of the grants that actually fund research. They don't even pay salaries, that's only in exchange for teaching hours.
Thankfully, since grants started putting caps on how much the university is allowed to take I haven't seen a 50% overhead cut in a long time. It's still a pretty significant chunk though.
standardUser
When grants are cancelled and people are fired, new grants and new staff do not magically appear. It's an extreme strain and an unexpected expense on these institutions, not to mention a huge disruption for the lives of the people involved.
mikeocool
Given all that university students are asked to pay for already, it would seem rather odd to ask them to also pay for the world's cancer research.
tkgally
I don’t know if it should be called “massive,” but in Japan both the government and universities have announced increased funding:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/38843335-64cd-4c03-bdbc-a77...
api
AFAIK the massive influx of cash into universities for the last 30 years or so has gone into administration, which is basically a jobs program, not academics.
TSiege
I believe that's tuition. Grants fund scientists research directly. It funds labs, hires grad students, etc
dotnet00
A decent chunk of the grant money goes to the university, and a chunk of the money used to pay the students also loops back to the university in the form of non-tuition fees, rent etc.
andsoitis
> Many of the most valuable scientific organizations in the world, including NOAA, NASA, the NSF, the CDC, the EPA, and the FDA,
I don’t dismiss the premise of the article and I think it is a shame how these organizations are being impacted, but I don’t know that these are the best exemplars of cutting edge science being shut down that will lead to America’s downfall from its scientific perch.
rainsford
Why do you believe those aren't good examples of cutting edge science funding? I get the stereotype that government organizations of all types are just stodgy bureaucrats stuck a few decades in the past, but the reality at least in the US in the year 2025 is that truly cutting edge science is not obviously being funded at any significant scale anywhere but government.
The world of privately funded research organizations like Bell Labs is long gone, with companies being barely able to look past the next quarter never mind being willing to invest in long term research that may not pay off for a few decades, if it pays off at all. And by definition most cutting edge science has that kind of financial time horizon. If there was an obvious, short term path to directly benefiting those conducting it, it's probably not very cutting edge at all and closer to engineering than actual scientific research. Not that there is anything wrong with that, we need engineering investment too. But it's not a replacement for science research.
I think a lot of people who scoff at the idea of government being on the cutting edge of science research don't understand how that research is being conducted. Sure, some of it is done by actual government employees, but especially for organizations like the NSF, the bulk of the research is being done by organizations and individuals outside of government who are simply given a check to look into things that might not immediately pay off or which have major societal benefit but no real path to commercial payoff.
dotnet00
To be fair, there are still many well funded private research labs, they just focus on "sexy" easy-to-market science like quantum computing, photonics, deep learning, robotics etc.
whatshisface
That's engineering. Science involves laws and facts about the natural world that are not yet known.
andsoitis
> Why do you believe those aren't good examples of cutting edge science funding?
They are, but the article asserts, without evidence, that the US, like Nazi Germany, has passed a threshold where it is going to lose its preeminence in scientific research.
anitil
They're also the data collection point for much down stream research which is cutting edge
searine
> but I don’t know that these are the best exemplars of cutting edge science
Then you simply aren't familiar with their work. These (plus NIH, DOE, DOD etc.) are the engines of a large portion of the world's science.
The engine is starved and it is going to destroy American industry.
baby_souffle
> Then you simply aren't familiar with their work. These (and NIH) are the engines of a large portion of the world's science.
The problem is that not all cutting edge science is "sexy". NOAA and NASA are doing some _really_ cool stuff with weather monitoring / climate predicting. Sexy? Arguably no. Unless the weather app on your phone is sexy.
Important? I'd argue that it's critical that we keep getting better at it.
apical_dendrite
And some important work is even less sexy than that. People like Ted Cruz love to mock work on animal models, because if you don't know anything about the field it sounds ridiculous ("look at these idiots wasting money putting shrimp on a treadmill"). But finding a simpler animal model has been one of the most successful ways to understand biological systems, and we've found all sorts of useful things by looking at how animals solve problems.
andsoitis
> are the engines of a large portion of the world's science.
the article is meant to educate and inform, so inform the reader, who might know that fact, of it and some evidence to characterize the dynamic.
when you preach to the choir, you miss a chance to widen the circle of empathy.
dahart
What are better exemplars?
apical_dendrite
I'm not sure why NIH is left off this list, since it's probably the most important scientific organization in the world. Between them NIH and NSF fund a huge proportion of the cutting edge science that is done in the US, either directly or by funding the training and early career work of researchers.
They fund a lot of the foundational work that doesn't get a lot of resources from the private sector. 99% of new drugs approved between 2010 and 2019 relied on NIH funding.
analog31
It was probably an omission. Fill it in, and it makes sense. I believe the NIH is larger than the NSF. In addition to funding research, these agencies also fund education, both directly and indirectly.
Loughla
Correct. One of the guys in my cohort in post graduate work was funded by a grant from the NIH.
stonogo
Then I have trouble believing you understand how cutting-edge research happens, because these organizations are the ones who fund it. The missing piece here is DOE Office of Science, but they're coming for that too.
throwawaymaths
you ever worked with DOE office of science or anyone at the national renewable energy labs? not the brightest lightbulbs out there.
mcphage
> not the brightest lightbulbs out there
That’s true—all the brightest bulbs are working at FAANG companies building advertising delivery services, or at Fintech companies figuring out how to gamble faster.
ideashower
Isn't it true though that they, altogether, fund America's exemplars of cutting edge science? Like, isn't that the point?
giantrobot
> but I don’t know that these are the best exemplars of cutting edge science being shut down that will lead to America’s downfall from its scientific perch
Most of these agencies do some foundational science but maybe more importantly they collect lots of boring data. Boring data they give out to researchers for free. They also hand out grants which might not be lottery tickets but they pay for boring stuff.
The current administration believes that if you stop measuring any problem it ceases to be a problem. No one can push back on their flood of bullshit about everything if there's no data to point to. Authoritarians despise objective reality and empirical measurement and will always strive to make it easier to push their bullshit narratives.
throwawaymaths
NIST and NOAA collect boring data, the rest not really so much.
null
arctics
All the scientists who came to the US in 1930s were mostly Jewish for obvious reasons. After victory in WW2, we had Operation Paperclip when we brought thousands of Nazi affiliated scientists to work for us, the whole premise that scientists fled Nazi Germany is very shaky. I just don't believe so many people don't know the history...
nandomrumber
The US had Jewish scientists and Nazi affiliated scientists come over, and proceeded to become the singular global superpower.
That’s a massive accomplishment, and kinda proves that a whole bunch of people there were victims of circumstance, a do or die situation.
Never underestimate the ability of a small percentage of malevolent people to upend society.
arctics
Yes, just pointing out that this article implies that Nazi Germany was the reason many scientists moved to the US which isn't the case, many moved when the war was over and they lost.
wslh
I don't clearly see how a massive exodus of American scientists moving abroad could happen. While I understand that young scientists might find it easier to relocate, the decision becomes significantly far more complicated for couples, even when both partners are scientists. For other countries or regions to become truly competitive, they would also need to increase their investment in science significantly [1].
[1] https://www.wipo.int/web/global-innovation-index/w/blogs/202...
shihab
People don’t understand that other countries (primary suppliers of stem graduate students) do have lots of research positions, it’s just they don’t usually get first rate talent because USA is far more attractive for those people. Now they will
standardUser
Other nations are indeed taking deliberate steps to seize the reins from the US, particularly China and Europe.
cgh
Canada is recruiting US scientists: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/us-scientists-canada-1.750252...
marcus_holmes
If all the jobs doing research disappear because all the funding is cut, then what other choice to they have?
If one parent loses their job and cannot get a new one in their field, they have to either switch career (and start a new career at a lower point) or they take a longer-term view, assume that the other parent will also lose their job, and switch country.
apical_dendrite
China will scoop up some researchers, but likely there will just be fewer people entering the profession in the US because there will just be less funding and opportunities for graduate students, postdocs, and early career researchers.
linguae
I agree with this analysis; it would be hard for American scientists with spouses and children to relocate. However, there’s another thing to consider: the amount of researchers from grad students all the way to tenured professors and senior industry researchers who are not American citizens who moved to America for their careers.
The following is anecdotal and I don’t have any statistics. When I was a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz, roughly half of my classmates were foreigners, many from mainland China and India, but also from Iran, South Korea, Greece, Uruguay, and Mexico, to name a few. My first advisor was a German who became a naturalized American citizen, and while roughly half of my professors were native-born Americans, I also had professors from China, Ireland, Greece, Singapore, and Argentina. During my time in industry in Silicon Valley as a researcher, I’ve worked with many people who grew up abroad and moved to the United States for grad school.
The biggest issue I see with a brain drain in America isn’t necessarily Americans going abroad, since it would be a major sacrifice giving up family and friends to move to a place with an unfamiliar language and culture. The problem I see is when immigrants to America who have already made those sacrifices end up leaving America, either to return to their countries of origin or to different countries. If a significant number of immigrant scientists leave America, this will be a tremendous blow to American science, and this may also be a boon to countries that are willing and able to hire these talented people.
China, for example, has the money to fund science at levels competitive with the United States. I don’t foresee a lot of Americans moving to China, partly due to the language barrier, and also partly due to China’s political system. However, what if Chinese researchers in the United States return to China en masse? This is not good for us, though it would be great for China.
These are scary times in America.
marcus_holmes
> The biggest issue I see with a brain drain in America isn’t necessarily Americans going abroad, since it would be a major sacrifice giving up family and friends to move to a place with an unfamiliar language and culture
So, all those people you met did exactly this.
> it would be hard for American scientists with spouses and children to relocate.
No harder than it was for any of those other people to relocate to the USA.
I know that Americans like to believe that everyone in the rest of the world really wants to live in the USA, but that's actually not true. There's a certain fascination, for sure, but (and especially recently) the USA is not the shining beacon on the hill that it once was.
> I don’t foresee a lot of Americans moving to China, partly due to the language barrier, and also partly due to China’s political system
I suspect that both these barriers are easily overcome with the simple realisation that the choice is "be a scientist in China, or not at all".
If the USA cuts funding for all science, then all scientists must move abroad. There's no option to stay in the USA and be a scientist, because science in the USA is government funded and the government stopped funding it. If the individual chooses to stay in the USA, then they must also choose to stop being a scientist.
dotnet00
I broadly agree, though I wonder if part of the reason why Americans think that going to other countries might be a very difficult decision is that if they aren't immigrants or children of immigrants, they have a very limited experience of learning a second or third language and adapting culturally.
Learning Spanish in high-school isn't quite the same as learning to function in a new culture and language.
stonogo
Which is happening: See https://www.science.org.au/news-and-events/news-and-media-re... and https://www.univ-amu.fr/en/public/actualites/safe-place-scie... for current examples.
But other countries don't need to increase funding to become competitive, since we are decreasing funding. All they have to do is nothing.
null
msie
This exodus will be known as "Trump's Gift."
ahartmetz
Operation Paper Clippings
randcraw
Or "Trump's Big Dump".
goldforever
[dead]
bgwalter
[flagged]
tomhow
Please don't post inflammatory comments like this on HN. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines, especially these ones:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
sxcurry
How many of those were hired due to diversity programs?
Please take a deep breath and think next time before you post such an ignorant statement.
tomhow
> Please take a deep breath and think next time before you post such an ignorant statement.
You can't comment like this on HN, no matter what you're replying to. We've had to ask you before to avoid personal swipes in comments, going back many years. Please take a moment to remind yourself of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
apical_dendrite
> How many of those were hired due to diversity programs?
This is an incredibly obnoxious and uninformed comment. NASA does not hire incompetent people because of "diversity".
> The parallel with Hitler really does not apply. The US won't be sending scientists working on nuclear weapons, stealth aircraft or profitable endeavors like GPUs.
Also an uninformed comment. The physicists that came to the US and UK and then worked on weapons programs were not for the most part working on weapons programs in Germany. They were just able to transfer those skills into the Manhattan Project, radar, or other programs.
the_snooze
It's also a very shortsighted view. R&D isn't just a bunch of eggheads grinding out a cleary-defined end like, say, nuclear weapons and making it happen. It's thousands of unseen shots on goal, most of which miss, but you get a handful of high-leverage innovations out of it.
What this pullback in US scientific funding does is reduce the number of those shots on goal. It undoes what the US prioritized from World War II onwards: that scientific innovation is foremost a strategic asset, not strictly a moneymaking venture. You saw that on display with the recent B-2 sorties over Iran: those could not have happened if not for highly specialized researchers slowly contributing to that body of work over decades.
bgwalter
?
apical_dendrite
I don't even know what you mean by "let those kind of people go". If they can't get funding, they won't become scientists in the first place. If they lose funding, the US can't just prevent them from moving overseas. It's (still) a free country! And a large proportion of them are foreign-born anyway.
Geoff Hinton couldn't get a job doing AI research in his native UK, so he moved to the US, where there were a lot more opportunities. At that time, neural networks weren't seen as particularly promising. Decades later, it paid off big. That's the kind of thing that will happen less and less (or work in reverse, with US researchers taking jobs overseas) since there will be far fewer funding opportunities.
The value destruction is mind blowing. The fact that it’s deliberate I just can’t wrap my head around.