National Science Foundation (NSF)
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2009
Confused by the fact that science sees religion as its chief threat. Might we worry instead about threats posed by NSF/NIH/NAS?
I find @EricRWeinstein addressed by @NSF speaking in the first person singular. Think Eric: what did Moses do in this situation?
Oh @NSF do not confuse me more. Did thou not fund me to go to MIT? Did thou not command me to gain the PhD for our nation's good?
Give me a sign @NSF: what are we going to do about the epidemic level of hogwash that threatens our nation in finance/markets?
For @dabacon: "NSF/NAS study ways of glutting markets to depress wages for universities and other employers ignoring the scientific impact."
BTW @dabacon, any fear of writing such a blog post is meant to be covered by your academic freedom. Your fear, is exactly my point.
QED.
"scarce talent *lured* into the PhD-level NS&E career paths will not be available for other uses." -Internal NSF labor study [Emphasis mine]
"This pessimistic scenario of rising PhD scarcities and *rapidly rising salaries*.."-NSF study fearing high scientist wages. [Emphasis mine]
By far the biggest threats to innovation, discovery and scientific revolution come from our dominant science organizations.
New Topic: "What's your vision of true academic freedom?" [Asks @Philip_Girvan.]
An old joke about the diference between the Soviet and US constitutions. Both give freedom to dissent. The US gives freedom the day after.
Academic freedom is about making secure heroes out of Margot O'toole, Doug Prasher & Nassim Taleb instead of pushing them to the periphery.
Academic freedom is freedom to invite a senior colleague to self-copulate for inserting himself before your name on YOUR paper..and survive.
Academic freedom comes from the academic *obligation* to schedule lectures if you have even the possibility of strong disruptive results.
Academic freedom entails a right for a non-expert theorist of high ability to cross boundaries and live on merit without seeking permission.
Academic freedom is the insulation from threat or want to continue in good standing for *any* and *all* contributions & reasoned dissent.
What few people admit is that opposing "String Theory", "The Great Moderation", "Scientist Shortages" etc...leads to excommunication.
This was best put by @BretWeinstein: "Selection is to be feared only when just individuals are prevented from returning costs."
So @ahaspel asks what institutional reforms are needed (which was where I was headed when a birthday party occured in physical reality).
First of all, I am focused primarily on science. If universities can't provide Academic freedom, science needs to move homes.
Next: Basic research in science is a public good (inexhaustible and inexcludible). Therefore we need higher levels of public funding.
To maintain academic freedom we need to move resources from what is falsely called 'scientific training' to the compensation of researchers.
To get strong individuals, our target for researchers should be something like MA by 21-22 PhD by 25-26, permanent job by 26-28 (approx.).
Graduate training is actually much shorter than assumed. Typically one is a graduate 'student' in year 1,2 of a PhD and working thereafter.
Raising PhDs should be Eusocial. Giving students to PI's in a 1 on 1 relationship is like parking choir boys with priests. Better in theory.
We must also fund entirely different sorts of people. Without Huxleys, Grossmans, & Hardys you don't get Darwins, Einsteins, & Ramanujans.
A central point: scientists are supposed to be K-selected but universities are hell bent for leather to r-select PhDs.
Yet that's insane.
Research & Teaching in Universities are as perfectly linked as Skiing & Shooting in the Biathalon: tenuously for all but Professors / Finns.
Last point for now: Freedom for academics is precisely freedom from academics. A real marketplace of ideas beats the pants off peer review.
Something occurs to me. If you've never had reason to test your own academic freedom, you may have absolutely no idea what animated me.
On May 23, 2003 an extraordinary talk at NAS called âExactly Backwards: Scientific Manpower Theoryâ was given.There is no record of this.
The talk was so extraordinary that it was repeated again at NAS 11 days later on June 3, 2003. Again there is no meaningful record of this.
The talk presented evidence to the National Academy of Sciences that NAS & @NSF partnered to manipulate markets over scientist salaries.
Now ask yourself why would @NSF be trying to weaken American scientists? Why would NAS help? How would NSF dependent scientists self-defend?
Gauge theoretic economics interest has come recently from @mathpunk @dabacon @diffeomacx @riemanmzeta @tylercowen @ahaspel etc... Loving it.
I should say that Gauge theoretic economics is also all about academic freedom, quashed as it was by the rennegade Boskin Commission idiocy.
An email from Twitter overnight said: "National Science Fdn (@NSF) is now following your tweets on Twitter." Yet, now @NSF is gone. But why?
As we can obviously see each other @NSF, I propose public dialogue on whether NSF should be strengthening scientists (ergo raising wages).
If you would like to see a dialogue with @NSF on academic freedom, compensation, shortage canards, etc... retweet and star.
An excellent test of our President is whether the Obama era @NSF can undo catastrophic damage to US scientists begun by the Reagan era NSF.
@NSF's human operator clarifies @NSF's follow/unfollow: RT @pffli @EricRWeinstein Because human operators make mistakes.
But @NSF / @pffli, why not engage with reasoned critique? You have a fine economist on staff named M. Boylan. Ask about: http://bit.ly/NSFSG
Of course following me isn't a mistake at all @pffli. You paid for my education to do research. My research is at NBER http://bit.ly/NSFSG
In order for us to help keep @NSF funded, healthy, & attractive, we need you to engage. And, of course, we've followed each other for years.
Thanks @pffli/Paul. You shouldn't have trouble getting @NSF clearance to follow me. Ask around @NSF/NAS/Harvard/NBER/ASCB. I'll check out.
I tweet as an Individual scientist. There are no work (Gov't/Corp) entanglements in this stream for @NSF to worry about.
2010
I'm delighted to learn of teaming between Google & NSA followed by Microsoft & @NSF making a joint announcement today. #Bob&Carol/Ted&Alice
I'm trying to figure out why the US is now crazy for 'Singapore Math'. Does anyone believe that the US sucks at math? Well, anyone smart?
The US needs to invent 'US mathematics' where we learn from our own awesomeness instead of malingering to get @NSF funded.
Glashow, Weinberg, Glauber, Politzer, Cooper, Hulse & Schwartz went to one US public school over 25 years (1941-1966). Can we claim to suck?
Hoffmann, Cohen, Stein, Lederberg, Axel, Fogel, Lax went to 1 rival US public school across town in the same period. But in '70, WE changed.
The problem with US math & science education is that we became dependent after 1970 on a permanent state of lying about just how bad we are.
I await being lectured on data supposedly showing that we'll be speaking Korean if we don't follow tech CEOs.
I love bulgogi: bring it.
Lockhart's 'Mathematician's lament' makes a strong argument for what to do in the face of math hysteria: http://bit.ly/11lyg.
Oh man. @DARPA_news claims there is a US geek shortage. Uh...Do they know it has authors? Circa 1986? By @NSF? Jointly with NAS via GUIRR?
Recommendation to @DARPA_news: request all internal docs written by @NSF economist Myles Boylan. Some are undated with no attribution.
Finally after standing up for Pornographer rights, Ed Teller, NSA, and pointing out that @NSF/ NAS lie about shortages, I have 0 followers.
.@NSF funded cartoon Cyberchase is quite radical. Counter-stereotypes girls & minorities as better at math with white boys more confident!
2011
I'm fascinated by scientists cheerleading for @NSF without understanding it's dual roles in both promoting & destroying innovation.
2016
1/ The invisible world is first detected in the visible world's failure to close. [For @naval @johndurant @pmarca et al. A tweet storm try.]
2/ In physics we have conservation laws. We found the light/invisible neutrino because decay in heavy/visible particles violated these rules
3/ Likewise in biology we proved the germ thy of pathogens vs theories like spontaneous generation/miasma by visible effects at macro scale.
4/ I used 'failure to close' to deduce from 1st principles that the NSF must have done a secret study in '85-6 on how to *lower* sci. wages.
5/ This was b/c the incompetent 'shortfall studies' that got NSF in trouble would have lead to different visa laws than those that passed.
6/ I was shocked when a highly competent "smoking gun" study hidden in '86 showed up exactly where my thy predicted: https://t.co/VZvmupRFon
7/ This is the secret history of H1-B. The @NSF secretly studied how to interfere w/ US labor market 2 avoid paying scientists market wages.
8/ Rules:
I) Look for a macro system failing to close.
II) *Don't* posit a detailed explanation.
III) Posit a 'neutrino' place holder & dig.
9/ HW: A) Why don't top OEMs sell laptops w/ lens covers, mic kill switches & hardwired video LEDs offering security to gain mkt advantage?
10/ How do you get 9 figures of wealth doing charity work & public speaking without selling, inventing, founding or investing brilliantly?
11/ C) Why were Bernie's massive rallies often not covered @ NYT & why did a positive Bernie article go neg after massive linking from web?
12/ D) Why do laboratory bred mice used for drug testing have extra long telomeres (allowing radical tissue repair) compared to wild type?
13/ I could go on. I don't know which are nefarious. I'm a different kind of conspiracy guy. I *don't* have answers but know where I'd dig.
14/14. Thank you for your time. Feel free 2 attack. But remember, I've been here before just as w @NSF...before digging up their smoking gun
2017
Odd. My paper on NSF conspiracy behind the 1990 immigration act has been hosted at NBER since '98. Until just now... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:V2bdTXXnf8YJ:www.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG/NSF+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Waiting to know how (or if!) @nsf, @michiokaku, @theNASciences & other prominent backers of large scale scientific immigration defend this..
Did @nsf trick congress into undermining PhDs to benefit #STEM employers? @EricRWeinstein found the smoking gun https://ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government-universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech-workers
@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg
These are from trade theorist @paulkrugman in his âProtectionist Momentâ piece. Iâm not trying to win here. Iâm worried that you arenât watching how this neo-liberal edifice is being abandoned because the expertâs public stance was a lie.
@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg @paulkrugman What are your thoughts here @RadioFreeTom? I can go into detail on a number of these. We could do the fake STEM shortage backed by the @NSF and @theNASciences if you donât believe in such things.
Oh, which is why I included the Brad DeLong slide. Where he says it straight. Did you see that one?
Are you comfortable with experts saying âwe trot out exoteric theories to hide our real esoteric theoriesâ when the real theory may transfer wealth to insiders? Is that mere spin?
@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg @paulkrugman @NSF @theNASciences Do we disagree on fundamentals over this:
@RadioFreeTom @SamHarrisOrg @paulkrugman @NSF @theNASciences And, no I donât call something a conspiracy because I disagree w/ experts. I usually agree w/ them! What I disageee with is using expertise to transfer wealth & agency from the supposedly childlike voters who intuit something is rigged but canât name it in political 3 card Monty.
2018
2019
2020
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo No. I refused to believe it until people told me what they were up to. You may want to read this rather carefully. Iâm not making this up:
https://users.nber.org/~sewp/references/archive/weinsteinhowandwhygovernment.pdf
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo Let me have the NSF tell you in their own words why they want so many of your graduate students to be foreign. From section 5:
We need an emergency talk about this media war on @AndrewYang & @TulsiGabbard that was waged on @RonPaul, @BernieSanders & others before.
This is what I call the âVampire Effectâ; institutions will not reflect certain people just as vampires supposedly donât reflect in a mirror.
This isnât cute as #YangMediaBlackout. This isnât hidden any more. This is a boast by our media. Their point to all of us is: âFuck you and your illusionsâ. And We arenât calling it what it is: a declaration of war by our own media and parties against our own democratic process.
Forget the Russians tampering in US democracy. Thatâs amateur hour. The Russians arenât bragging like this. @MSNBC has been asking: âSo tough guys, whatcha gonna do about the fact that we just keep knocking your milkshake into your dateâs lap?â
Iâve experience it every time I bring up the secret NSF study that lead to the H1B visa. There is an absolute black out. But because I have the study, media canât say it doesnât exist. So they just refuse to reflect it. Same w/ other such issues. Thereâs just *no* MSM reflection.
We need to just be done with this open coup against meaningful elections. This is âMagicians choiceâ ... which is no choice at all. To hell with our news magicians. We need to make their credibility a financial issue. Open to suggestions.
Take a look:
https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-media-blackout
This is the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex or DISC in action.
A hyper specific allegation that the @NSF and GUIRR inside the @theNASEM in 1986 directed an internal economic analysis to figure out how much they would have to pay STEM workers in the future.
The study is economically competent using both supply & demand, and then found new US graduates would have to be paid 6 figures shortly. They termed this the âpessimistic scenarioâ, and then (and Iâm not making this up) faked an *incompetent* DEMOGRAPHIC study by removing demand!
The *competent* ECONOMIC study was protected and buried by never releasing it and removing the date and author from it. The author is still attached to NSF. To be clear: our @NSF is faking incompetence. The mainstream media is faking disinterest. Why? To not reveal the reasoning.
The reason we have sky high STEM immigration is wage tampering. The @NSF & @theNASEM undermined our own model of scientific independence, academic freedom & irreverent science that was the envy of the word by flooding US markets with pliable STEM labor. And over what? Just wages.
Now who is willing to get the @NSF on the record denial? Only the right leaning @BreitbartNews here! And US Instutional media treats anything that appears there as automatically beneath discussion. This is the logic of the Gated Institutional Narrative:
I donât exist. Breitbart doesnât exist. The secret study doesnât have an author, a date or publication. All restrictionists are automatically racists. Blah blah..
But then why not call a liar @nsf? Why invite me to the National Academy 4 separate times to present this @theNASEM?
Ask yourself why your trusted media wonât put this story to rest. Just deny it @NSF. I triple-dirty-dog dare you. I would love the pleasure of having your spokespeople on The Portal to use your superior access to documents to explain.
Welcome to the DISC. Letâs do this thing.
2021
2022
2023
Now I feel completely alone.
I want our wanting out of this story. I have a huge dog in this fight. I spend every day fighting my own human desire for GU to be proven correct.
I believe this is how String Theorists stopped being scientists.
I just want our data & the physics.
If biological aliens were here from others star systems in crafts that defy the current physics of the standard model and, more importantly, general relativity, I would be one of the few people who would have a guess on day one as to how they must have gotten here. Itâs tempting.
I donât think biological interstellar alien visitors using GR and the SM make much sense. So I try to have a war *inside* my own mind as to what is true. I have a genuine âNeed to Knowâ as to whether this is BS NatSec space opera disinformation theater. Because to me, it is data.
What just happened isnât data. Itâs that a sober individual just pushed one of the many longstanding highly conserved NHI narratives collected from *many* diverse sober NatSec informants over the sworn testimony line. And it gets a LOT crazier from here. But itâs not science yet.
As Iâve been saying, there is so much deliberate NatSec BS out here that our own scientists are being propagandized. Weâre drilling holes in our own scientistsâ lifeboat. Last time we saw this it was virologists/immunologists/epidemiologists being gaslit. Now itâs physicists.
Let me be very careful in what I am about to say. We have at least the appearance and optics of scientific self-sabotage. And wanting things to be true is how science dies.
I fight like hell to promote my theory. But Iâd sign on to another to know the truth if I was wrong.
We may be looking at the birth of a new UFO religion. Or a moment of contact. Or a long running Disinformation campaign. Etc.
To go beyond GR, letâs be scientists & get NatSec out of our data first. Where is our data pruned of space opera disinformation and cultic religiosity?
What I want to know:
Why was the Mansfield Amendment passed?
Why did NSF fake a labor shortage in our MARKET economy destroying American STEM labor markets?
What stopped the Golden Age Of General Relativity?
Why was the SSC really cancelled?
StringTheory & STAGNATION: WTF?
What the hell was the 1957 Behnson funded UNC Chapel Hill conference actually about?
Why are we not stopping to QUESTION quantum gravity after 70 years of public *FAILURE* inspired by Babson-Behnson patronage of RIAS, the Institute of Field Physics and the precursor to Lockheed?
This is the 50th year of stagnation in the Standard Model Lagrangian. It is AS IF we are deliberately trying to forget how to do actual physics. Everyone who has succeeded in Particle Theory in standard terms is now over 70. This is insane. In 25 years there will be no one left.
Why are we not admitting that quantum gravity is killing physics and is the public respectable face of 1950s anti-gravity mania that lives on to murder all new theories in their cradle?
Quantum Gravity is fake and works to stop actual physics.
There. I said it. Now letâs talk.
If you want to know whether there are biological interstellar visitors here observing us, the short answer is âAlmost *certainly* not if they are using our current stagnant non-progressing theories of physics.â
Letâs finally get serious about this whacky subject? Thanks. đ
2024
I highly recommend learning about the history of where H-1B came from before getting emotionally invested in it.
It was born as a labor tampering conspiracy against American scientists headquartered at the @theNASEM (GUIRR) & @nsf (PRA) under Erich Bloch.
"A growing influx of foreign PhD's into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries to the extent that foreign students are attracted to U.S. doctoral programs as a way of immigrating to the U.S."
-Photograph from the secret @NSF study that led to the H-1B. https://t.co/Wrd3DL2Q8h
Vivek: this hurt a lot of Americans.
I invited you to a public debate about your claims as Iâve been fighting this insinuation of inferior American values in STEM for 35 years or more.
Itâs a myth that came out of the @NSF & @theNASEM.
Letâs debate this in public. On camera.
2025
This is fascinating. Erich Bloch and Peter House employed economists to specifically and intentionally design our scientific immigration system to drive down U.S. scientific compensation using foreigners and âluresâ. Yes, the @nsf and @theNASciences in 1986 secretly designed our U.S. stem system so that our STEM employers could save money if we drove away our own top STEM talent.
Scientific backstabbing. Plain and simple. We took the worldâs top scientific workforce and destroyed it to save money on science salaries and to get access to more pliant employees. Why? Because our leaders appointed idiots to save a few bucks. Iâm sorry but that is what happened.
So, who is this Collins guy and what is he doing at the top of the U.S. science pile? Why are we listening to him? Is he some great thinker? Is he some kind of policy genius? Is he more ethical and merit loving than the rest of us slobs and mere mortals?
Ah. Yes. I remember now. Francis Collins! The one who calls for âdevastatingâ take downs against his âfringeâ MD/PhD professorial colleagues and their work. And yet, here he is again! Why wonât he slink off somewhere where he canât do even more damage? Why is he here??
This is what DC science policy circles look like. Two faced. Francis Collins would end your career without a second thought for principaled scientific dissent. As he tried to do to my colleague @DrJBhattacharya at Stanford.
He should not be speaking for science. He does not represent science.
Science cannot afford Francis Collins and his culture of backstabbing officials.
You are discussing the use of outside referee reports.
The codification of âPeer Reviewâ is a different beast.
Outside referees were at the *discretion* of editors.
âPeer Reviewâ was a last ditch promise made to government funders: âWill you stay out of our research if we agree to give away much of our discretion?â
You want to look up: Medicare act, MACOS, Baumann amendment, Utah medical clinics, and the NSF peer review wars of 1975.
Michael Shermer: you are quite incautious about what I say. Your world is dominated by careful scientists and wild eyed conspiracy theorists. The idea of wild eyed scientists (e.g. Francis Collins, Gerald Bull, Peter Daszak, Edward Teller) and careful conspiracy theorists (e.g. Seymour Hersh, William Davidon, Jack Raper, Gary Webb, etc) doesnât occur to you nearly enough.
Roughly speaking I claimed that the U.S. government was, at a minimum, faking UFOs and that there is ample evidence that we FAKE exactly such things (which I documented) and destroy our own peopleâs sanity, reputations, careers and lives on a regular basis playing the âThat sounds like a conspiracy theory!!â game.
Which is *exactly* what just happened in UFO land. We admitted we did what I claimed we were likely doing when I was on Rogan.
And what I claim about our failed 40 year âQuantum Gravityâ and âString Theoryâ program is simply that it completely disabled a potentially dangerous activity: successfully discovering and sharing the power of new physics in open universities with foreign nationals of rival nations well beyond the Manhattan Project era nuclear physics. Is that deliberate? It sure as hell would be a lot less suspicious if we ever had the string theorist/quantum gravity people at the same conference head to head with their rivals and detractors. Wouldnât it?
Iâm sorry this seems crazy to you. But the U.S. government makes shit up. Itâs called âCovert Operationsâ. In laymenâs terms: we conspire to gaslight our own people. And we do it a lot around national security.
Now would you please consider that you are carrying water for the very people that do this particularly vile form of reputational wet work? Is that what you want to do??
Enough.
I was writing about the danger of a manipulated CPI in 1996 (now admitted). The fake NSF labor shortage (now discredited) in the 1980s. Bidenâs cognitive crisis for all 4 years of his presidency (now known to all). The fake racism charges against the Wuhan Lab leak theory (ahem).
Etc. See the pattern?
Michael: you do not get to do this cheaply. You live in a simplified world of good rational people and bad madmen. I live in a different world and the scourge of that world is the shitty debunker making fun of the scientists with the courage to say âUh, ya know the mainstream position just doesnât add up.â
Conspiracy is everywhere. And those of us who are disciplined in talking about them do not need you telling us what is possible based on heuristics.
I donât think our secret federal scientists are in possession of the final theory at all. I have never said âWe have anti-gravity.â
Stop stirring the pot. You are not the amazing Randi and I am not a spoon bender. I debunk debunkers. Deal with that first.
If you want to go head to head with my track record, let me know. I would LOVE that.
If not: be more careful.
Like a scientist. Thanks.
No hard feelings.
We cut off the academic oxygen to anyone who challenges the leadership.
Invite me back to Harvard as the co-founder of the Science and Engineering Workforce Project in the @HarvardEcon department and I will give a talk on how this really works. You donât have to pay me a cent if you video it.
Iâll cover:
The need to fire Claudine Gay.
The need to end activist studies depts.
University Bioweapon research
String Theory
CPI Cost of Living
Evolutionary theory applied to Humans
Low Dimensional Geometry
NSF STEM Shortage Panics
DEI hiring against merit
Epstein and Science
Cognitive abilities expectations in Geographicly widely separated populations.
We can do it in Memorial Hall to overflow crowds or one of the ground floor Science Center halls.
It canât happen. You arenât serious about this. You are looking for a little truth. Not a return to actual white knuckle science.
Or am I wrong in this? I have the credentials having done this work *AT* Harvard. Let me know.