NSF plans end to lone U.S. Antarctic research icebreaker
54 comments
·July 29, 2025ISL
As a scientist (physics, not polar ice), scientists alone are too few to advocate for science alone -- we literally cannot do it.
If you want scientific research as you know it to persist in the United States, please take a moment to help support for science in Congress go viral in your community.
Empirical science is non-partisan. It is good and helpful to know what's true.
If your friends are devout readers of the bible, point 'em toward Philippians 4:8. While I'm not religious, that passage has resonated for me my entire life.
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
nxobject
> NSF has been opaque about these plans—intentionally so, Wellner believes. “They are purposely not putting anything in writing,” she says. And the planned cancellation is leaving in limbo the scientists who have cruises planned for the Palmer this Antarctic summer, which begins in December.
Incompetence (we didn't think about this out loud), or malice (we didn't want to leave a paper trail)?
brendoelfrendo
https://www.propublica.org/article/video-project-2025-presid...
Consider the video "Staffing an Office" where Jeff Small, a former advisor in the Department of the Interior says “When you work for the federal government everything you put in an email, text, or note is FOIAable and releasable to the American people. At interior, we had a ton of in person meetings which allowed us to speak a little more freely about the topics of the day.”
Or the video "Advancing the President’s Agenda" where former OPM director Donald Devine says "You need to keep your agenda pretty close. You got to be careful who you tell it to because if you run it through a normal process…it’s going to be in the paper tomorrow..."
It's pretty clear that the architects of our current executive branch want to keep their objectives out of the public record and out of the press. So let's go with malice.
mlinhares
And also keeping plausible deniability for the people at the top. They never told anyone to do anything, they decided to do this themselves. The third reich was full of this as well.
potato3732842
>And also keeping plausible deniability for the people at the top. They never told anyone to do anything, they decided to do this themselves. The third reich was full of this as well.
Dude, every single government ever in the history of humanity works this way. The appointed administrators of ancient rome were scheming up ways to serve their benefactors without leaving a tablet trail that their benefactors opponents could complain about. When I worked for a podunk state department of a well run solidly blue state 15yr ago we did this. There were meetings with no agenda where they'd verbally go over what the new boss's (appointed positions at top of department, not the governor himself) inclinations were on areas of policy relevant to the department and there would be discussion about how to align to that. And this wasn't people who reported to the boss, these were line level workers and middle managers. This wasn't coming from the top down. This was the bottom simply knowing what was good for it.
And just to be clear, just because it's always like this doesn't mean you shouldn't hate it and hate them for doing it.
throwworhtthrow
You'll find worse quotes from the House interview [1] of Fauci's advisor David Morens. Ever since I watched a recording of his testimony I've been more willing to give incompetence "passes" to bad behavior in Republican admins.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/house-panel-takes-fa...
bboygravity
And yet they know everything about each one of us (without admitting that they do).
Source: Snowden. It only got worse from there.
nQQKTz7dm27oZ
The beings beyond the ice wall told the NSF to go away
ricksunny
Ah we have a Linda Moulton Howe fan here I see =)
cheaprentalyeti
Hey, I'm collecting money for my expedition to see what's beyond the ice wall. I hope this will be more successful than the last expedition I sent, this time I'm sending them with a starlink terminal.
ricksunny
What’s your best source link for the NSF researchers alleged to have disappeared there for two weeks back in the 1990s?
ck2
It's going to take 100 years to recover from this spiteful, pointless destruction
Who would ever work again for any research in any science that relies on government cooperation in the US?
Only all of Congress should be able to do these things, we do not have Kings and we don't tolerate Tyrants
michaelhoney
The descent into scientific ignorance continues. What possible justification could you have for this?
lancewiggs
A lot of excellent climate research is done in the polar regions.
petesergeant
> What possible justification could you have for this
The base wants to see spending cuts in exchange for the tax cuts the rich are getting, and thinks science (especially climate science!) is a blunt tool by which liberals berate and control them.
mlinhares
The base doesn't care about this, I doubt they even know this boat exists, this is being done for the sake of destroying science because they hate it.
petesergeant
The base cares about spending being alleged to have been cut
Yeul
The base are the rich who get the tax cuts.
Looking at the US is looking at making Cyberpunk real. If you're not rich your vote doesn't matter you are just a useful idiot.
monero-xmr
There is no market test for “fundamental” research. So when an avenue of research secures taxpayer funding it exists into perpetuity, and as papers are published and requests for additional funding are made, it tends to grow like a tumor over the decades, getting more PhDs to be matriculated in the labs that began the avenue and grow ever more forever. Very rarely is an avenue of research closed off once the trifecta of university research labs + journals, PhDs who are minted to continue the research, and grants secured and grown.
A lot of the hand wringing by academics themselves are unfocused but circling the root cause, which is this. I would prefer corporations fund research but directed through the university system. The patents and gains are then funneled through the corporations that funded it, rather than the academics and universities with zero return to the taxpayers other than abstract “society gains” pablum, when the academics and universities truly gain all the profit.
When corporations that actually have a market test and profit motive are funding the research, avenues that are unlikely to succeed will be cut off sooner, and alternatives to the current vogue will be funded quicker. You can see a real-life example (of failure) in Alzheimer’s research which was hamstrung by decades of political control of research labs and taxpayer grants that refused to fund alternatives to the “mainstream” theories which set back society and the disease.
You asked for the justification and I provided it
hodgesrm
> When corporations that actually have a market test and profit motive are funding the research, avenues that are unlikely to succeed will be cut off sooner...
It's hard to see how your suggestion would work for fundamental advances in technology. For example, backpropagation took decades to move from an idea to industrial use. [0] It was also "invented" multiple times.
oefrha
Explaining the value of fundamental research and long term societal investment to some crypto bro is an utter waste of time. Polar opposite mindset.
intermerda
Under your system what is the corporate incentive to study health effects of smoking?
monero-xmr
A pharmaceutical company interested in curing millions of people dying of smoking would fund it
yongjik
...and when China leapfrogs ahead of America's science, these people will blame the nebulous American globalist elites for "letting it happen."
So much for the invisible hand of the market.
palmfacehn
Whether proponents of government directed Science, agree or disagree, your comment presents a well reasoned argument. At the moment it is the most substantive comment on the page. Moreover, it is a direct, good faith response to the parent commenter's question. Yet for all of this, I see that the comment has been downvoted into grey. At the time of posting, no substantive rebuttals have been offered.
This typifies the quality of discourse around defunding of "The Science" at HN.
intermerda
You're clearly not familiar with Brandolini's law.
exe34
it's a shit argument. Fundamental research funded by the government led to the Googles and OpenAIs of today. If industry funds research, the profits stay in the hands of the same people. When government funds research, new billionaires are minted down the line. if you like billionaires (I don't), you'd fund government research, not hope that the existing billionaires think it's in their interest. We wouldn't know about CFCs and the ozone if CFCs companies funded the research - we'd be burned to a crisp.
runsWphotons
I can understand disagreeing but it is funny that someone asked for a justification and then downvoted someone providing one, without even knowing if the person actually even endorses that line of thought. Liberalism truly is dead.
MaxPock
Someone ELI5: Why is the Trump administration defunding scientific research? Is there a bigger picture we're not seeing, or is it 8D chess he's playing ?
ISL
Reproducible and empirical fact is anathema to any administration that wants the "truth" to be the talking-point of the day.
kube-system
This administration and its influencers have some strong opinions about significantly shrinking the size and role of government, and eliminating activities they don’t believe the government should be engaged in.
sbierwagen
It's not subtle. Donald perceives colleges as bastions of wokeness. Nature literally endorsed Joe Biden: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02852-x
Now that he's president, here come the reprisals. Zero out NSF's funding, shut down NPR, end the COVID era break on student loan enforcement, withdraw grants from Harvard.
SV_BubbleTime
[flagged]
intermerda
> it’s funny because while I probably agree with you,
What do you agree with?
> FWIW, I think it is intellectually immature to talk about politicians like you know them. What else does Donald perceive? What was he like when you spent time with him?
I think it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that OP was talking about anything other than the Nature Magazine. And to know what Donald perceives, you could ask Jeffery Epstein. Oh wait.. you can't.
Noumenon72
This reads like you have a serious point to make about there being two different Nature magazines, but there aren't and there is absolutely no ambiguity that could lead you toward the concept of "nature" since he linked to the magazine that you are referring to. Not funny.
0xDEAFBEAD
If your research is funded by taxpayer dollars, you're a public servant and you should welcome public accountability. You should accept that explaining the public benefit of what you do is part of your job, and accept the possibility that the public won't see eye-to-eye with regard to that benefit.
The fundamental problem is that scientists stopped thinking of themselves as public servants, and started thinking of themselves as lecturers whose job it is to scold the public. They stopped working to follow the evidence wherever it lead, and switched to promoting trendy ideologies. Remember during COVID how we were all supposed to isolate, until the Floyd protests started and suddenly the need for isolation disappeared?
"Three-in-four liberal faculty support mandatory diversity statements while 90% of conservative faculty and 56% of moderate faculty see them as political litmus tests."
...
"For decades, college and university faculty have identified as predominantly left-leaning (e.g., affiliating with the Democratic party, self-identifying as liberal), a skew that has become more pronounced over the past three decades.[40] For instance, in the Higher Education Research Institute’s 1990 faculty survey, 6% identified as “far left,” 16% identified as “conservative,” and 0.4% identified as “far right.” In 2020 these percentages were 12%, 10%, and 0.2%, respectively.[41] College students are also predominantly left-leaning, though the rate is closer to 2:1 left vs. right, compared to 6:1 among faculty.[42]"
..."significant portions of faculty say that they would discriminate against colleagues with different ideological views in professional settings (e.g., during anonymous peer-review) or during day-to-day social interactions.[43]"
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/academic-mind-2022-wh...
Now consider that self-described "conservatives" significantly outnumber self-described "liberals" in the US electorate: https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-stead...
Academics successfully hacked away the branch that they themselves were standing on. Large fractions of the US electorate no longer believe that the research these academics do is a good-faith attempt to advance their interests as voters and taxpayers. And so they're not interested in funding it. Fair play if you ask me. If academia wants funding, it should do deep reforms in order to re-earn the trust of voters.
pastage
You are not automatically a public servant if you are funded by taxes. In my definition that only happens when you start making decision that affect other people. E.g. handle who gets a tax cut, go to jail, or other things that we need to out source to people that serve our interests in powerful ways. It is important to differentiate them from people that just do a thing for money.
Further more saying things like "It is your fault that you are in front of my fist" is not productive. Being antiscience is the problem here not being antileft.
arrowsmith
> Donald perceives colleges as bastions of wokeness.
Is he wrong?
azinman2
Yes because he’s throwing the baby out with the bath water, being completely myopic about the value add to society and what it takes to make America competitive.
Of course he’ll be dead before the real multi-generational consequences take effect.
frozenport
Yeah, specially in STEM.
Despite posturing by some academic administrators, most folks have no social agenda for a country they recently immigrated to.
aaron695
[dead]
https://archive.is/2025.07.29-011650/https://www.science.org...