[HN Gopher] We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain dra...
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We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing
American science
Author : mitchbob
Score : 158 points
Date : 2026-02-19 20:56 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| axismundi wrote:
| Come to Europe, we have cookies ;)
| saagarjha wrote:
| We know, the law requires you tell us of this if they're for
| marketing purposes.
| grumpymouse wrote:
| It's actually a cookie experiment
| m4rtink wrote:
| And original bottle caps on all plastic bottles!
|
| (Like seriously, it turns out to be pretty useful in practice.
| :) )
| dietr1ch wrote:
| I'd love to, but where to? The Swiss are trying to cap
| population, the Germans elected the AfD, the UK no longer
| counts.
| Winblows11 wrote:
| > The Swiss are trying to cap population > the UK no longer
| counts
|
| Well the Swiss are not in EU either, but both are still in
| Europe
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Does that mean Europe will get a sustainable lead on
| irreproachable Science?
| ronnier wrote:
| No. Europe is in decline. Asia will.
| tensor wrote:
| I think that depends on a lot of factors. E.g. will there be a
| turn around in the US, and if so how fast? Will Europe and
| other nations increase science funding to account for all the
| new talent that wants to come? Will that funding be permanent,
| not just a one time effort?
|
| Also, if the US restores their democracy and also decides to
| value science again, will the salaries for scientists abroad
| compete enough to prevent scientists moving back.
|
| To maintain a sustainable lead the money and investment has to
| be substantial and long term.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Europe isn't the one to watch, IMO. It's China. China has
| already significantly increased it's R&D funding and in some
| areas, particularly solar and battery tech, it's world
| leading.
|
| China also has been playing the long game with the build out
| of it's technology capabilities. I could very easily see them
| doing the same for medicine. They aren't afraid of losing
| money on investment for a particularly long period of time.
| They are currently thinking in decades and not quarters.
| xienze wrote:
| > Also, if the US restores their democracy
|
| We don't have elections anymore? When did this happen?
| 9rx wrote:
| China also likes to claim it is a democracy because it
| holds elections.
|
| It is fair to say that the USA is still a democracy, but
| not because of elections. Elections have little to do with
| democracy.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| No, the US still spends 5x what Europe does on biomedical
| research, measured as a percent of GDP.
| tensor wrote:
| For now. US science is still in decline. Major works by
| places like Moderna have been denied permission to continue,
| for example. You can't assume that funding will not continue
| to decrease at a rapid rate in the US.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Even if it continues, there's been a huge amount of
| reputational damage done and no political will to do what
| must be done to reverse that damage.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| China is putting up the money, not Europe. Europe only gets a
| slice if they invest in it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| For all the recent hand-wringing about the U.S. becoming less
| welcoming to immigrants, the U.S. is still far, far ahead of
| any European country in terms of immigration opportunities. If
| you're qualified to come to anywhere in Europe, you were
| qualified to come to the United States years or decades ago.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Frankly, if the places that dominate at healthcare delivery
| efficiency also dominate at research, that could be good for the
| world.
|
| The US having a dogshit healthcare delivery system but so much
| research means that good vertical integration is not possible.
|
| Conversely a more integrated EU -- continent scale welfare state
| -- could do really interesting "integrated OpEx and CapEx"
| medical research in ways that are simply impossible in the US.
|
| Remember the Danes making Ozempic is making something that is
| fundamentally far more useful for Americans than Danes (of course
| the money is good for Danes). Most non-American drug research
| today probably chases the lucrative American market, but ideally
| that would change.
| alistairSH wrote:
| [flagged]
| KevinMS wrote:
| > In the normal trajectory of a life in science, Morgan would be
| planning to set up his own laboratory conducting groundbreaking
| research designed to win the war on superbugs. But with an
| ongoing hiring freeze at NIH, his options are limited.
|
| That seems a bit too optimistic to be a valid argument.
| Retric wrote:
| Morgan (or someone else)
|
| The hiring freeze stops everyone not just that one specific
| person. A 4 year pause on new researchers is meaningful even if
| this specific person wasn't going to start a lab.
| Avicebron wrote:
| True. Morgan could also end up running pipettes and 96-well
| plates in Foster City for $45000/yr.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Well, he might be _planning_ to set up a lab. Probably wouldn
| 't, though, statistically.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| It's not surprising. smart, educated people are a direct threat
| to the current administration and in general the US right has had
| academia in its sights for awhile. Ultimately it's bad for the
| country but how the US has been trending. Similarly, US education
| funding and the content of it has been politicized and it's
| producing a negative feedback loop.
|
| Political goals and what's good for the average person are
| completely disconnected at this point.
| reenorap wrote:
| I think the US draining other countries of their best and
| brightest is why many countries have been left behind in terms of
| economic development.
|
| Other countries need to take up the mantle of research and they
| can't do that if all of them go to the US. I think this is
| overall good for the rest of the world, because relying on the US
| and the sociopathic companies that exploit public research for
| personal gain is bad for the entire world.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Yes, Canada has already seen a large uptick in researchers and
| doctors coming in from the US and other countries have too.
| It's good for everybody for research to be more decentralized
| so that it can better withstand shocks in single countries.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| This kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on.
| "Brain drain" is not really a concern.
|
| There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We
| have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts,
| it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured
| professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you
| measured.
|
| The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even
| stingier. It's not like there's a firehose of funding drawing
| away researchers. There may be a few high-profile departures, but
| the US is still the least-bad place to find research money.
|
| We need to produce fewer PhDs and provide better support for
| those we do produce.
| tensor wrote:
| This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries
| are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]).
|
| Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no
| longer _safe_ for a great many of the scientists that would
| normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that
| aren 't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very
| liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US
| has suddenly become a very undesirable place to live if you
| value these things.
|
| Third, scientific freedom is under attack in the US. And there
| is nothing scientists value more than the freedom to pursue
| their research.
|
| My take is that most Americans can't imagine a world where they
| are not number one. But that is a very naive idea.
|
| [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-
| develop...
| b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote:
| >scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and
| democracy a great deal
|
| _two_ election results in the past ten years have apparently
| failed to teach y 'all wholesome folx that many people around
| you are secretly unwholesome.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| What do you recommend
| vkou wrote:
| My neighbours may be turds, but I can get over it... Up
| until the point when they start pissing in my punch bowl.
| roger110 wrote:
| I've heard more than 0 people complaining that it's not safe,
| but not a whole lot. And not the productive people either.
| Also, unfortunately the same opinions that get you in trouble
| in the US will get you in trouble in western Europe. I'm not
| saying it's right, just that it doesn't seem to be actually
| draining brains.
| godsinhisheaven wrote:
| "Scientists tend to be very liberal" well see that's your
| problem. (a little over) half the country voted for Trump in
| the last election, and pretty much every "scientist" with a
| public face is anti-Trump. Of course there is going to be a
| backlash! Shoot the backlash has been happening for the past
| 20 years, probably even longer.
| SetTheorist wrote:
| 77,302,580 people voted for Trump in 2024. That is not
| "half the country".
|
| Nor does he or ever did have the support of "(over) half
| the country". His maximum approval level in 2025 was at the
| beginning of his term at 47% "approve" and is currently
| around 36%, according to the Gallup poll.
| pesus wrote:
| Why do you feel scientists deserve to be punished for being
| against a political regime that is anti-science?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| > many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g.
| [1]).
|
| This illustrates exactly my point. Canada is planning on
| spending _up to_ CAD$1.7B _over 12 years_. That is equivalent
| to USD$100M per year, or 0.3% of the NIH 2026 budget. Maybe
| if Europe does something similar they can get to 2%!
|
| > The US is also no longer safe
|
| I agree that Trump's regime has made the US a less welcoming
| place for foreign scientists, and that budget cuts mean less
| research will be done. What I disagree with is the idea that
| "brain drain" is a significant threat to US science. We
| simply have such an incredible oversupply of biomed PhDs that
| we should welcome the prospect of other countries absorbing
| the supply.
| layer8 wrote:
| Horizon Europe is a EUR93.5 billion budget over seven years
| for scientific research. The EU allocated an additional
| EUR500 million from 2025-2027 to attract foreign
| researchers specifically.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Horizon Europe funds everything -- physics, engineering,
| social sciences, climate, agriculture, digital
| technology, space, and health. And its budget is still
| less than 1/3rd of the US NIH budget focused solely on
| health.
| mtsr wrote:
| You are forgetting that tenured researchers often need lots of
| PhD students to actually do their research. So that ratio of 8
| PhDs to a tenured researchers could actually be pretty good.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Pretty good for the professor, not so good for the students.
| jltsiren wrote:
| That's a result of the funding model focused on small
| competitive grants. You could probably get at least as good
| research with a funding model that replaces every three PhD
| students with a student and a staff scientist. But then the
| society would have fewer PhDs overall, which would have
| unpredictable consequences.
| lukev wrote:
| Set aside the question of how we might implement this (which I
| grant is complex and path-dependent)... but imagine if 5% of
| the wealth of every US billionaire were instead allocated to
| research and development.
|
| Ultimately I don't think even the billionaires would be
| unhappy.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| While I agree, US is still the top destination for research, I
| don't agree with "Brain Drain is not a concern" nor do I agree
| with "We need fewer PhDs". The real risk of drain is people
| leaving their fields of expertise to never return. Pretty much
| all AI startups at the moment are coming from and being built
| by PhDs. The pace of innovation slows down and it can have huge
| long term economic impact. Having fewer PHDs also exacerbates
| that problem. If fewer people are looking for funding in the
| first place, you'd have even fewer ideas that could end up
| contributing meaningfully to society. The only solution to
| funding problems is more funding.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| >The real risk of drain is people leaving their fields of
| expertise to never return.
|
| That is happening right now, all the time! Especially in the
| biomed field! Many, many PhDs spend 5-8 years getting their
| degree and receiving minimal pay, then 4+ years being nomadic
| postdocs, also making terrible money, only to eventually
| arrive at the end of the road and realize they have to do
| something completely different.
|
| It is unsustainable for every professor to train 10 PhDs in
| their career, because there aren't going to be 10
| professorships (or even 3) for those PhDs to fill. Funding
| has to grow at the same exponential rate as the number of
| researchers. It did, from roughly 1950s to 1980s, as the
| university system expanded to accommodate the Boomer
| generation. It has slowed since, and the PhD to professorship
| pipeline got longer and leakier. It's doing a tremendous
| disservice to the bright, well-intentioned young people who
| join PhD programs.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Why does the fact that there isn't enough funding for the PhDs
| that exist imply we should produce fewer of them? At least from
| what the article mentions, figuring out new and better ways to
| fight diseases seems like one of the most important problems a
| human could be working on. In my mind the solution is to
| provide funding and fix the funding process, not produce fewer
| scientists.
|
| Also, those scientists already exist. If the US decides not to
| fund them, they will go produce patents and grow the economies
| of other places. Many countries wish they could attract the
| talent that the US does.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| << Why does the fact that there isn't enough funding for the
| PhDs that exist imply we should produce fewer of them?
|
| In most of the world, most humans have to move within the
| realm of available resources. One could easily say that if a
| manager of US sees too many PhDs, it is natural to conclude
| that since there is not enough resources to go around, adding
| more resource consumers is silly. We can argue all over
| whether it is a good policy, or whether the allocation makes
| sense, or whether the resources are really not there, but,
| how is is this a difficult logic gate?
| danaris wrote:
| We have vast amounts of resources. More than enough to
| supply the basic needs of everyone in the country.
|
| The US is currently choosing to divert absolutely
| staggering amounts of those resources away from things we
| have traditionally valued--science, art, infrastructure,
| taking care of the least fortunate among us, etc--and using
| them instead to enrich the already-wealthy, in the most
| blatant and cruel ways.
|
| There is no _possible_ way this can be spun as being about
| "available resources". The grift is utterly, 100%
| transparent.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| << There is no possible way this can be spun as being
| about "available resources". The grift is utterly, 100%
| transparent.
|
| Eh, I mean if you put it that way, I suppose all those
| budgets are just a show and not at all an indication of
| how utterly fucked we are as a country unless we both:
|
| a) massively reduce spending b) massively raise taxes
|
| In very real terms, there is only so much money. Some
| additional money can be borrowed, but we a slowly ( but
| surely ) reaching a breaking point on that as well.
|
| The issue is: no one is willing to sacrifice anything.
| And I am sympathetic, but if hard choices are not made
| now, they will be kinda made for us anyway.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I understand that the government is now too coarse to use soft
| power, and maybe it wasn't even working as well as it used to,
| but it is bizarre to undercut the sciences when their military
| capability is derived almost entirely from high technology since
| they can't field or lose lots of soldiers. I get they want to be
| Rome 3.0 or some bullshit, but Rome was famous for investing in
| engineering.
|
| A bunch of dunces.
|
| Or perhaps they are so far up their own assholes that they think
| AI is going to do research by itself with no funding from now on.
|
| Ironically enough, the guy that coined the term "soft power"
| recently died. He did his doctorate with Henry Kissinger.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| They're happy to fund the military, they have a list of words
| [1][2] that they use to flag grant applications, including
| "female", "bias", "political" and others. Cuts seem to be
| directed at biomedicine, health and social studies.
|
| [1] https://grant-witness.us/
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-
| fede...
| beloch wrote:
| >"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets,
| almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US
| National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH
| employees have been fired."
|
| ----------------
|
| Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S.
| scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where
| immigrants are welcomed.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not everything is about money. The killer app of the US used to
| be that the US was rich _and_ welcoming to foreigners _and_
| politically quite free.
|
| China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least
| some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their
| mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader.
|
| Their cultural insularity does not help either. You can live in
| China, but you will never be accepted as Chinese. The US was
| quite unique (together with Canada, Australia etc.) that it was
| able and willing to accept you as an American even with a funny
| accent, as long as you wanted to be one.
| dheera wrote:
| > Not everything is about money.
|
| It is when researchers can't make enough money to eat and
| live, which is an actual reality in the US right now.
|
| Researchers at top institutions often make less than Uber
| drivers.
|
| There are other countries where you can live on less and the
| government isn't dipping their hands into your pockets every
| 5 seconds.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Some people will switch careers, but I do doubt that in an
| economy with very low unemployment amongst qualified
| people, any actual scientist will literally starve and
| become homeless.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Well yea, but I suppose that exceptional molecular
| biologist can use his potential somewhere else better
| than as a lower manager in a corporate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > The US was quite unique
|
| Well, based on the current admin and supporters, only part of
| the US was unique
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That is a trivial observation. A nation of such size can
| hardly be a hive mind with totally homogeneous politics.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| You're right best reserve such observations for small
| nations like China
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah. And? So?
|
| When the part of the country that was less unique took
| power, they immediately did what everyone else that was
| not unique did and became unwelcoming of foreigners.
|
| I guess to you other countries that the US is becoming
| more like would also not be of a hive mind by having
| people that are welcoming of foreigners. Where's your
| hive mind comment about that part of the original
| comment?
| dougfelt wrote:
| Yet China is 3 times as big and you are quite comfortable
| treating it this way
| bluGill wrote:
| That has always been true, and for everywhere. However very
| few countries are anywhere near as accepting for foreigners
| as the US as a whole despite the many who are not. Canada
| is just as accepting from what I can tell - I don't know
| enough about Australia to know. Most other countries are
| far worse - though many will not admit it just how bad
| their country is.
| denkmoon wrote:
| Sadly Australia is very welcoming to foreigners until you
| get about 50km out of the major cities. Our xenophobe
| political party (One Nation) has had a significant rally
| in the last few years, to the point where by some
| measures it is the second largest party.
| mulmen wrote:
| > China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at
| least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep
| their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader.
|
| I mean we are literally putting people in concentration camps
| right now. Kinda hard to take the moral high ground at the
| moment. Scientists are fleeing the United States for their
| safety, just like they did from 1930s Germany.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| America is hostile to science and technology. I'm not sure
| how anyone with a functional desire to improve humanity
| decides "Hey, those americans, they sure do deserve better
| vaccines."
| mikestorrent wrote:
| Well, perhaps it is time for large, ethnically-homogenous
| countries that are on the ascent to adopt diversity policies
| of the sort that the US was approaching before the "vibe
| shift"
| ljsprague wrote:
| They sound like very loyal people who I would love to have as
| my compatriots.
| Natfan wrote:
| they can't be your compatriots if you imprison them, nor if
| they've to death due to working without any funding, also
| know as "pay"
| kettlecorn wrote:
| Many of the world's most intelligent and caring people are
| loyal to values over tribe.
| raffael_de wrote:
| What country is it attracting then?
| agumonkey wrote:
| It's also repelling their own citizen. Lots of videos of people
| being fed up with the ambient angst in the US any time they come
| back from another country.
| roughly wrote:
| This is a thing that you don't notice until you experience it.
| No more compelling argument that we're doing something wrong as
| a nation than that first time stepping onto an American street
| after visiting a civilized country.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| It's incredibly inexpensive for countries to import that top
| talent into their own universities. But governments just don't
| see the value, for the most part.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is not a "brain drain" when you declare war on science and
| fire all of your scientists. There must be some other phrase for
| that.
| pesus wrote:
| Brain flush?
| layer8 wrote:
| Brainwashing? ;)
| lgleason wrote:
| If you create an economic incentive to go into math an science
| you will have no trouble attracting good people. But, for years,
| it has been a race to the bottom where the US over-produced
| researchers, scientists etc.. But then to put salt in the wound
| it also imported more of them to drive the wages down further. As
| more people have flooded in to STEM at bargain basement prices,
| the quality of the research has also gone down.
|
| All of this was by design so that big corporate interests could
| get cheap labor and increase profits. Since the US government is
| for sale to the highest bidder, and the corporations have no
| loyalty to the country, they will feed off the host until it can
| no longer sustain itself and then look for another host to feed
| off of.
| lvl155 wrote:
| I am pretty sure we are still attracting top talents. We are not,
| however, attracting good to mediocre talents. Is that a good
| thing? What's going to happen to all these mediocre graduate
| programs spread out all over the country where they simply
| existed to satiate foreign demand?
| xiphias2 wrote:
| USA is still one of the top countries for scientists. Just as an
| example Europe had a few years of exporting the best GLP-1 drugs
| (finally something in which Europe was leader in science), Eli
| Lily quickly took it over.
|
| In software San Francisco is still the top for AI research: even
| when Peter Steinberger didn't know what he will do with OpenClaw,
| it was clear to him that the only place to move to was USA.
|
| Terrence Tao was a good example of what happens when an
| exceptionally smart person stops getting funded by an American
| University: not moving to another country, but got VC money and
| created a new company.
|
| USA politics is looked at so closely, because it matters and
| changes and still more democratic than most countries in the
| world even though democracy is a mess (as it's supposed to be).
| dlev_pika wrote:
| Meanwhile I've been getting Migrate to Canada ads in my IG
| feed...
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