Have Beaker Will Travel

“He arrived in Los Angeles in 1986 at age 18 after fleeing war-torn Lebanon. He spent a year writing for an Armenian newspaper and delivering Domino’s at night to become eligible for the University of California, where he earned his undergraduate degree and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience. He started a lab at Scripps Research in San Diego with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, discovered the way humans sense touch, and in 2021 won the Nobel Prize. But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Dr. Patapoutian’s federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to ‘any city, any university I want,’ he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years.” NYT (Gift Article): U.S. Scientists Warn That Trump’s Cuts Will Set Off a Brain Drain. (Relentlessly attacking science, universities, and immigrants doesn’t sound like an experiment that will end well.)

+ “The United States’ competitors are salivating at the prospect of gaining an edge in technological competition at our expense. France, Australia and Canada are throwing out the welcome mat to scientists who can no longer do their work in the United States. But the biggest beneficiary is likely to be China.” WaPo: We are witnessing the suicide of a superpower.