Trump just fired all 24 members of the National Science Board. Every single one. By email. No warning. No reason given. The board has existed since 1950.
The National Science Board is the independent body that oversees the National Science Foundation, the agency that distributes $9 billion in research grants every year.
Its members are scientists and engineers from universities and industry. They serve six-year staggered terms specifically so they cross presidential administrations and stay independent of whoever is in power.
On Friday, every single one of them got the same boilerplate email from Mary Sprowls of the Presidential Personnel Office: "On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service."
That's it. That's the whole letter. For 76 years of institutional independence.
The NSF funds the basic science behind MRIs. Cellphones. LASIK eye surgery. GPS. The internet itself. The Antarctic research stations. The deep-space telescopes. The research vessels mapping the ocean floor. Every breakthrough that made America the world's leader in science for the better part of a century traces back through grants this agency made and this board approved.
The board chair, Victor McCrary, was actively advising Congress on Trump's proposed 55% cut to NSF's budget. The board was helping fight back. So Trump fired the board.
Marvi Matos Rodriguez, one of the fired members, told reporters she had been reviewing an 80-page report as part of her board duties just days before being terminated.
Keivan Stassun, a physicist at Vanderbilt, said NSF's leadership had already stopped responding to board oversight requests months ago. "We would ask them, 'Are you following board governance directives?' And their answer would be, in effect, 'We don't listen to you anymore.'"
Now there's no board to answer to.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science Committee, called it "the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation. Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won't stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries?"
That's the actual question.
Because while Trump is firing American scientists, China is building research universities at a rate we cannot match. The CDC just buried a study showing vaccines work.
RFK Jr. runs HHS. The EPA is gutted. The Forest Service is being broken. Half of American children are breathing dangerous air. And now the people who decide what gets researched in the United States have all been fired by email on a Friday afternoon.
Holy shit...Stanford just built a system that converts research papers into working AI agents.
It’s called Paper2Agent, and it literally:
• Recreates the method in the paper
• Applies it to your own dataset
• Answers questions like the author
This changes how we do science forever.
Let me explain ↓
Holy shit... Samsung just dropped a 7M-parameter model that can outthink GPT-4-tier systems.
No trillion parameters. No massive GPUs.
Just recursion and efficiency.
Here’s why TRM breaks the scaling laws ↓
@karpathy I have my phone very tightened down, all calls from non contacts are screened by Google. I use a pixel phone. It does the job to save a significant amount of time with spam. I had to apologize twice for putting folks through this grind, but they understood.
@davidasinclair I have age related loss in the family. Looking for natural ingredients that could mimic dasatinib effects, I found this article in case anyone is interested: https://t.co/RKBWadIdxi
@Hesamation That chart left me thinking.. ultimately I wonder why DocuSign is shown and not other companies.. I have to try Cursor though https://t.co/3g1aozeJqc
Taught by DMSE's Professor Jeffrey Grossman, new MIT undergraduate class 3.000 (Coffee Matters: Using the Breakerspace to Make the Perfect Cup) debuted in spring 2024 and blends science, hands-on experimentation, and a love for coffee to fuel curiosity. https://t.co/qu0Drf5Wd0
✨ Data harmonization just got a whole lot easier! ✨ Our new feature uses GenAI and a low-code interface to simplify the process, improve data quality, and speed up healthcare data collaborations.
#dataharmonization#GenAI#healthcareinnovation
https://t.co/4d12aL8j0f
I wish America had more nicely dense urban areas. This concept claims to tackle #climate and #housing challenges, and maybe more areas more fun to live in. Nice read https://t.co/jGyOz1qeZk
"After 34 Years, Someone Finally Beat Tetris"
Wow, incredible video on what it took to beat Tetris, waaay beyond the game's original design.
Also a great reference for reinforcement learning and what superintelligence might look like.
https://t.co/sNDzNlrTNV
Sign Your Name to Europa Clipper's Message in a Bottle -> Earth’s first mission to conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. NASA’s Europa Clipper will determine if this ocean world has environments suitable for life to exist. https://t.co/N9WNUi2JVA
I'm researching LLM agents and going to try to implement some of the latest research papers. This thread will serve as my notes.
I'm focusing on @lilianweng's great literature review which you can find here: https://t.co/Ub4NSDrE50
Late to the party, but loving the presentation of information from @semafor, seems out of "what's our problem" book from @waitbutwhy https://t.co/Ya7dd55etr
[New Article!]
Why Do Scouters Explode?
We Asked a Robotics Expert and Got a Shockingly Convincing Answer!
↓Check out the article here↓
https://t.co/5WKKZr5sUo