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I mean yeah the working conditions in American labs have been absolutely appalling for decades, but they were nevertheless exploiting those postdocs to produce some really good science. I dunno if it's just in my field but when I was still in academia a few years ago it really stood out how many deeply original, creative, groundbreaking papers were coming from US institutions. Mostly from international researchers obviously, that's how it is everywhere in the west. But it seems you really will lose that now.
Were they though? Most of this "good science" was serving private interests in accumulating more profit rather than actually accomplishing something societally meaningful. They were producing science sure but was it doing anything? Making crops and medicine and technology that nobody can afford or use isn't really good science regardless of what the potential benefits could be
Yeah, idk anything about crops so I can't comment on that. Except to say that I think we'll still need food after the revolution.
But a lot of fundamental research is so far away from any kind of application I don't think you can even say that it's producing technology that people can't afford, it's not really producing anything but knowledge. And sure there's an argument that we should focus resources on helping people rather than discovery for the sake of it but... It's really a small amount in the scheme of things, I don't feel it's really fair to criticise while there is so much wasted on military and police etc.
Real science is like art, it takes place inside the political context and is constantly oppressed and shaped by it, but sometimes people do still manage to do work which isn't in support of it. A lot of the natural sciences are like that, yes they attract funding because capitalists think they may be able to exploit it but most of it will never really be exploitable and it is often incredibly beautiful if you are someone who sees it that way.
Also, do you think e.g. climate science is not worth doing? I think it would be short sighted to say that just because we already know the climate is going to fuck us up we should stop trying to find out exactly what will happen...