DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office

https://www.science.org/content/art...ore-10-000-stem-ph-d-s-trump-took-office

Interesting analysis of a topic that is probably under the radar for many. Many graphs in the link, so won't copy the text here.

It will be a while from now, but in the future, this will really sting....

TWSS

How many of these positions were necessary? Does anybody have an answer to that?

Just because some held a Ph.D. doesn't mean they were doing anything of worth.

I don't know 'Peen. Some may say twelve government employees are "necessary" to change a light bulb.

As usual, the headline doesn't really paint the entire picture though. In fact, some may even (rightfully so) call the title of the thread a lie. The net loss was 4224 STEM Ph.D.s., it says it right there in the second paragraph of the story.

Never much time to read beyond the headline though, get your quick dopamine hit and move on to the next. But hell, anything to embellish a story that "Trump hates science"; I guess that's the goal anyway.

What a lot of us hate, and voted for, is government bloat. But as usual, just like Daman's post above, libs love to paint a scary picture of the future and forever hide in the bushes when it doesn't come to pass. It's like groundhog's day for dummies.

And then there's this:

Why they left

Science’s analysis found that reductions in force, or RIFs, accounted for relatively few departures in 2025. Only at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where 16% of the 519 STEM Ph.D.s who left last year got pink RIF slips, did the percentage exceed 6%, and some agencies reported no STEM Ph.D. RIFs in 2025.

At most agencies, the most common reasons for departures were retirements and quitting. Although OPM classifies many of these as voluntary, outside forces including the fear of being fired, the lure of buyout offers, or a profound disagreement with Trump policies, likely influenced many decisions to leave.

Many Ph.D.s departed because their position was terminated. At NSF, 45% of the 204 STEM Ph.D.s who left last year were rotators—academics on leave from their university to work for a few years at the agency. Last year, NSF eliminated three-quarters of those positions.


So -- most departures had nothing to do with "pink slips". A lot of the people who left peed their pants on the way out the door because they don't like Trump. Many of the terminated were those that bounce back and forth between government and academia.

Scary story #4559 about how Trump is wrecking the country and there will be hell to pay later.

Nothing in the article is a lie -- over 10.000 have left, with a net reduction in 4224. Stop BSing.

Anecdotally, the number of colleagues I know at NASA/DoE who are taking early retirements, moving to industry, or moving to Europe are extremely high. In addition to the net number leaving, the smaller number who are applying to jobs in the US is an even bigger factor. The job market this year in the US is a nightmare.

For example, look at Marie Curie Applications (the Biggest Postdoctoral Science Prize in Europe). Applications went up 64% this year compared to 2024, with the majority of the increase coming from applications outside of the EU. Those are people who would be applying to be in the US (either US citizens staying in the US, or internationals that would be applying to the US, but are staying away due to immigration restrictions:

https://marie-sklodowska-curie-acti...-postdoctoral-fellowships-2025-proposals

I'd think the reality of the situation is to look at previous data and determine if this year (and moving forward) the numbers are abnormally high. I have no clue on that answer.

But much like the discussion about Covid and it's mortality - whereby fierce opponents to shut downs and vaccines wanted to claim that "all" deaths were being reported as Covid related when they weren't and that it was all fake news - but the reality was that while regular flu deaths were down, the excess mortality vs the expected rate was 15% higher. I know some don't like math and facts and data - but that there proves what impact Covid had, people debating it are fooling no-one.

""The U.S. experienced a 15% increase in expected deaths from March 2020 to May 2023, totaling 1.38 million excess deaths due to COVID-19 and its broader impacts. Globally, excess mortality was two to four times higher than reported COVID-19 deaths. ""

So if we look at the usual or expected number of departures in a given year for "U.S. government losing STEM Ph.D.s" -- and compare it to previous years, we'll know if 10,000 (nett 4224) is indeed significantly up from the norm or not .... I guess what would be interesting is at what point it makes a difference? 5% higher? 10%? 15%? ... Debating how many of the positions were necessary is deflection and distraction from the point at hand and a completely different discussion.

The article provides the numbers you are asking for....

I get the same energy in your post here that I was replying to in the other thread.

It just seems to me that in your zeal to 'get' certain posters on click-bait articles/narratives, you are missing the forest from the trees.


Right there in the portion that you quoted, it says that many of the voluntary resignations were driven by fear of losing their job and the overall environment leading up to the RIFs. If these positions are anything like industry, then these voluntary resignations are people that had alternative employment options (i.e. they're good). It seems that there was also a sharp increase in the number of these folks that want to work in Europe (coincidence...? maybe).

Plus, at the end of the day, this is research/work that was being done and now isn't. And while it may make some feel better to read a tweet from their favorite guerrila-journalist about how this one specific grant or research project may not be the most important thing to work on (assuming the anecdote is accurate and honest), common sense dictates that this research work, in total, is what keeps us on the bleeding edge of technology and makes us a preferred destination for the world's intellectuals (or did).

?

A joke. The "that's what she said" jokes are on the upswing here right now. IYKYK

If you're down 10G on your business trip in Vegas, but you win back 6G, do you come home and tell your wife you lost $10,000?? GTHOH.

It's an intentionally misleading headline, you know it, everyone that (now) knows the facts knows it. Nobody that just read the headline and moved on does.

Your anecdote piqued more interest than a bunch of numbers describing the most bloated organization in the history of mankind (our government). You think it spells doom and gloom, I think it probably spells the opposite.

10k leaving means those 10k were lost. Adding 4224 means you replaced those you lost. This isn't a Vegas trip.

All you are doing is trying to argue semantics.

That's because you're painting the forest with broad, beautiful strokes when it's really a large collage of ugly because too many people were handed a crayon. Top to bottom, side to side, a big mess. Abstract art.

Saying "research won't be done" is based on what? Research projects are being scrapped? Please point me to that link.

The bottom line is that the BLOAT is one of our greatest weaknesses. Any leader in any field will tell you that's true. You're fantasizing worst-case scenarios because that is what you've been trained to do.

Food for thought...


Scientists generally find that beyond a certain point, adding more people to the same project hurts productivity and impact more than it helps.

Key scientific findings
Diminishing returns with size

Studies of research teams show that outcomes get worse as more organizations or investigators are added, unless coordination effort also increases significantly. Larger multi‑university collaborations, for example, tend to have poorer outcomes partly because coordination activities drop as the number of institutions grows.

Coordination costs and communication overload
Work on team performance shows that potential communication links grow roughly with n(n−1)/2, so each added member increases coordination complexity non‑linearly. Reports on “team science” note that larger science teams face higher coordination costs and often have fewer meetings and less knowledge transfer, which undermines effectiveness.

Social loafing and the Ringelmann effect
The Ringelmann effect describes how individual effort falls as group size rises, even when the task is the same. Experiments with rope‑pulling and other tasks showed that people exert less effort per person in larger groups, due to reduced accountability and “someone else will do it” thinking.

Impact vs. sheer productivity
Analyses of scientific careers suggest that very productive scientists often work in large teams, but those large teams do not necessarily produce above‑average impact per paper. In contrast, impactful scientists often rely on a smaller core of close collaborators rather than sprawling groups.

Diseconomies of scale in big collaborations
Research on multinational teams finds “diseconomies of scale”: as teams span more countries and grow, dense, intimate collaboration tends to shrink to a small core, while peripheral members are less connected and contribute less to creativity.
​
Rough “sweet spot” for team size
Reviews of team science and organizational work often converge on small teams (roughly 4–9 people) as a practical sweet spot: big enough to cover needed skills, small enough to coordinate and keep accountability.

Beyond that range, decision‑making slows, communication overhead grows, and average individual contribution typically drops unless the work is tightly modularized and sub‑teamed.


These are scientists. You don't want to ignore the science, do you? Bottom line, I'll quote rapper Tech N9ne -- too much ass in one room. And you know this.

An argument like "people were afraid of losing their job -- so they quit" is ridiculous. As are other factors which seem to get swept under the rug... all industries are shedding boomers at an increasing rate. These boomers were probably hanging out waiting for a buyout, they got it, be happy for them. 👏

You got the math wrong, they added nearly 6000, a net loss of only 4224.

I hope you don't do your own taxes.

I pay attention when doing my taxes. Not so much on drivel arguing semantics. When they cut research by billions of dollars combined with cutting the number of researchers at the same time it's obvious to see a lot of research will be cut back. I mean speaking of math skills.......................

See the alarming extent of NIH and NSF funding cuts in 2025

Totaling about $3 billion in unspent funds, the cuts by the Trump administration reshaped many fields of science

In 2025, more than 3,800 research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation were terminated or frozen as part of the Trump administration’s effort to realign funding priorities.

Cuts that reshaped U.S. science

As of November 2025, NIH has seen about $2.3 billion in unspent funds across nearly 2,500 grants frozen or terminated. At NSF, over 1,300 grants had about $700 million in unspent funds cut. The chart below estimates how these cuts have affected all research areas supported by both agencies. While this doesn’t capture the full extent of government cuts — science-focused agencies such NASA, NOAA and the EPA aren’t included — it does highlight the breadth of the reductions and the ripple effects likely to be felt throughout the scientific community for years to come.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nih-nsf-cuts-2025-data

Proposed 2025–2026 budget requests for NASA, NOAA, and the EPA include significant cuts to climate research, satellite programs, and STEM education, with some proposals suggesting a 24% reduction for NASA and a 30% cut to NOAA.

Hey Perplexity, how much spent at NSF and NIH for workforce diversity programs?

NSF and NIH spent significant sums on workforce diversity programs prior to the 2025 cuts, with NSF's INCLUDES initiative (targeting underrepresented groups in STEM) receiving about $10 million for its Coordination Hub alone in a prior 5-year grant, alongside broader network funding for alliances, pilots, and connectors totaling tens of millions annually. NIH funding for similar diversity efforts, including minority health and DEI-related grants, reached into the hundreds of millions yearly before freezes, though exact pre-cut totals for unspent portions aren't specified in reports.

NSF Breakdown
INCLUDES Coordination Hub: ~$10M over 5 years (pre-2025 award).
​Alliances and pilots: Additional $5.5M+ per competition year across 10-15 projects.
​Terminated DEI grants: Nearly 90% of NSF's 1,500+ cuts targeted these, with $1.4B total unspent by mid-2025.

NIH Breakdown
Workforce diversity fell under minority health and training programs, hit hard alongside cancer research; specific pre-cut spending hovered around $500M+ annually across affected biomedical equity grants, per trackers. These were part of the $2.3B unspent total frozen by November 2025.

https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/ns...rants-nearly-90-percent-were-related-dei



I hope we all survive. I, personally, feel dumber after reading that, and I'm not even a "scientist".

I have a meeting I have to run to, so I'm only responding to one portion of your response to me.

From Google AI

As of mid-2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has seen approximately $2 billion to $3.8 billion in grants terminated, with some reports indicating an $8 billion reduction in obligated funding for new and existing projects compared to the previous year. These cuts, directed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have impacted major research institutions, with some, like Columbia University, facing up to $250 million in cuts, while others like Vanderbilt and Brigham and Women's Hospital face tens of millions in reductions.
Science | AAAS
+4
Major Impacts and Funding Reductions:
Total Scope: Roughly 2,300 NIH grants were terminated by June 2025, impacting clinical trials for cancer, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases.
Targeted Areas: Funds were cut for studies on DEI, LGBTQ health, vaccine hesitancy, and specific research deemed to have low return on investment by DOGE.
Institutional Hits: Top institutions experiencing significant drops in new grants include Columbia ($136M+), University of Washington ($134M+), Duke ($132M+), and UC San Diego ($140M+).
Specific Impacts: The Institutional Development Award program lost $75.4 million across 59 grants.
Job and Research Loss: Over 1,300 NIH employees were let go, stalling research into Alzheimer's, cancer, and dementia.
CBS News
+4


Grants are what generally fund research projects (people, materials, etc). When you cut funding for grants, there are projects that are directly and proportionally impacted. Above are some examples of research that has been halted directly because of funding cuts.

I'll also say that I find it funny that you talk about others painting in broad strokes and then in the same post say these people affected were all boomers waiting for a buyout. You sound like you've never been in the position of having to make a calculated decision of leaving a job or risk being RIF'd. I wouldn't insult them by saying that I'm happy for them.

When you depend on AI results over facts I'm not surprised you feel dumber after reading it. If you want to read something even more stupid check this out......

Trump Cancels Federal Research Grants. What Are the Consequences?

While more than $1.5 billion in federal grant money has been terminated by the Trump administration, the consequences at state universities and community colleges are particularly dire.

https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-n...al-research-grants-what-are-consequences


Mapping Federal Funding Cuts to U.S. Colleges and Universities

American science and innovation should not be subject to the political winds of the day. Find out how the Trump administration’s grant terminations are affecting your school, your community, and your future.

https://www.americanprogress.org/ar...ng-cuts-to-us-colleges-and-universities/

I mean it is pretty stupid to cut research that would help all Americans because colleges and universities are woke and chit.

Didn't say they were all boomers. I said that was an aspect. Your brain searches for things that aren't there when you read my posts so that we can engage in ancillary arguments.

Then you take my words and apply it to people I wasn't even talking about in an effort to shame me for something I never said. It's like trying to install a transmission on a bicycle and then saying I sold you the wrong parts.

And since that will be the scope of the "arguing" today, I won't bother reading the front of your post. Have a good meeting.

Oh,, Ok

Having an argument would imply you're approaching the topic with at least a base level of scrutiny and seriousness. Honestly, trying to engage with you is becoming more and more like getting pulled into a debate with Pit.... you dismiss a legit concern with a general statement, and then get pissy when people start picking it apart. Having unpopular opinions is fine, but going full snowflake on one part of the post and actively ignoring the preceding part is you contributing to thing you complain about the most regarding this board.

If I were you I'd stop while you're still behind too.


Yeah that's it. Everyone who disagrees with you are holding a meeting. It's always everyone elses fault and they're all out to get you. Where was Memphis when you needed him?

Why would you say something like that? We're all on the same side in FATEland and we're due to have our meeting in an hour. How will we ever come up with a strategy to defeat FATE if you continue to sow this kind of discourse? lol

He said he was going to a meeting! SMDH 🤣

I thought you wee done for today? So much for honesty.

Where did I say I was done for the day? WTaF??

I get it. You didn't see your response to me as argumentative.

And BTW in case you didn't notice, he made sure not to tell you who he was meeting with.

You did exactly what I said you did. 100% twisted what I said into a new statement so you could shame me for it.


So far in this thread I've pointed out a disparity in a headline, to which people tried to reinvent mathematics.

You accused me of trying to "get people" and told me I was missing the point of all the research that wouldn't "get done".

I asked what research wouldn't be done and got crickets.

I've posted about government bloat, something everyone in the country has been SHOCKED by... since whatever their age is minus about fifteen years (more mathematics)... more crickets.

I've posted about actual scientists saying "too many people involved" is detrimental to research... more crickets.

Pit shifted the argument to funding, I showed we were funding DEI at astronomical amounts, he shifted the conversation to funding education.


So why don't you go ahead and tell me which of my talking points you've addressed during this "conversation" now that you've told me I'm a snowflake and too hard to communicate with?

The problem in DT land is that "unpopular opinions" aren't embraced for their content. They're shouted down by a cast of some and then "picked apart" by others. Then you're a "snowflake" when you call a spade a spade.


Pound salt, dude. You guys can have your circle jerk back and all agree on how Trump is ruining science. You obviously have ZERO interest in any of the nuance, facts that don't fit your agenda, or adult conversation about all the contributing factors.

Now I'm done for the day. Have a fun slurp-fest!

Is that what you call using some bogus AI numbers that were proven to be wrong even after you posted them? Is that what you call some bogus game of semantics?

Slurp away. And tell them to install some street lights in that alley.

I literally quoted a paragraph from the very article that was posted by the OP.

Did you take stupid pills this morning or just trying to read blindfolded?

Let me guess. It's all my fault that you have a total lack of self control and can't live up to what you post.

So all you really did was post that while it is 100% factual that 10k were lost some of them were replaced later directly from the very article you claimed was misleading?

Well done!

It makes me wonder what the hell you've been taking.

Way to shift your lie and trade your dunce hat for some goalposts. Good job! So proud of you!

I didn't change anything. You yourself posted you got that information from the very source the OP posted. So the source didn't mislead anyone.

Tell me how any of that is a lie. Don't worry I'll wait

And I'm not the one who lied about "being done for the day."

If I had any doubt before, which I didn't, Republicans are no longer the party of personal accountability.

I'm sorry, your hell-bent stupidity has been mildly entertaining.

You're right though, I should leave before you go from Joey Tribbiani to full-blown Homer Simpson.

Says the man who all he has are insults when he has no defense he can present with any facts.

Typical trumpian response. Just another sign in how your kind are dumbing down America.

We have gotten off track here.

Bottom line, some jobs were trimmed for various reasons, and some were added.

Back to my original comment, were all of them needed? In the end I am not all that worried about it.

Not only were researchers jobs cut, so was research funding. It's not a complicated road map. Cancer research isn't something to play around with.

And let's be honest here, the reason were were given for a lot of research funding cuts to colleges and universities is because "they were woke" and nothing else. Please help me understand how that is a plausible reasoning for funding cuts to diseases and cancer research?