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United States Science

US Agencies' Science Journal Subscriptions Canceled (semafor.com) 95

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The US government canceled several federal agencies' subscription to Nature and other scientific journals. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said all contracts with Springer Nature, Nature's publisher, had been "terminated" and that taxpayer money should not be used on "junk science." Nature newsroom, with an update : On 2 July, one US government agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the National Institutes of Health (NIH), appeared to walk back its earlier statement to Nature's news team saying that it was cancelling contracts to Springer Nature. Now the HHS says: "Science journals are ripping the American people off with exorbitant access fees and extra charges to publish research openly. HHS is working to develop policies that conserve taxpayer dollars and get Americans a better deal. In the meantime, NIH scientists have continued access to all scientific journals."

US Agencies' Science Journal Subscriptions Canceled More | Reply

US Agencies' Science Journal Subscriptions Canceled

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  • Sad (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The US is going to hell in a handcart!

  • history doesn't repeat itself, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't have any use for any of that degenerate Jewish^W Woke science.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Hey, you never toook science in high school, or jr. high. What are you doing *here*, pretending to be a nerd?

  • We need to know how AI will take over our jobs.

  • Ingsoc (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Welcome to 1984!

  • No longer true, missed the update! (Score:5, Informative)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Thursday July 03, 2025 @10:12AM (#65493642)
    From Nature: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

    Update: On 2 July, one US government agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the National Institutes of Health (NIH), appeared to walk back its earlier statement to Nature’s news team saying that it was cancelling contracts to Springer Nature. Now the HHS says: “Science journals are ripping the American people off with exorbitant access fees and extra charges to publish research openly. HHS is working to develop policies that conserve taxpayer dollars and get Americans a better deal. In the meantime, NIH scientists have continued access to all scientific journals.”

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by abulafia ( 7826 )
      Christ, even when they're right these people sound like petulant freaks.

      A regime by assholes, for assholes.

    • From Nature: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

      Update: On 2 July, one US government agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the National Institutes of Health (NIH), appeared to walk back its earlier statement to Nature’s news team saying that it was cancelling contracts to Springer Nature. Now the HHS says: “Science journals are ripping the American people off with exorbitant access fees and extra charges to publish research openly. HHS is working to develop policies that conserve taxpayer dollars and get Americans a better deal. In the meantime, NIH scientists have continued access to all scientific journals.”

      If HHS can pull that off and make taxpayer funded science available via open or very low cost source, they won't have to cancel subscriptions, the pubs will die a natural death. It is ridiculous that gov't funded research isn't freely available. I get peer reviewers like an honorarium, but I'd propose adding to research grants a stipulation that for every X dollars of grant money the grantee needs to provide Y of peer reviews.

  • what google has to say about it (Score:5, Informative)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Thursday July 03, 2025 @10:14AM (#65493646)

    "Yes, the scientific journal Nature has taken positions on Donald Trump and his presidency.
    In 2020, Nature explicitly endorsed Joe Biden for US President and condemned Donald Trump's administration, citing his "disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic," his undermining of science and public health agencies, and his disregard for research-informed knowledge.

    More recently, particularly after the 2024 election, Nature has published editorials and articles expressing concerns about a second Trump administration and its potential impact on science. For instance, a February 2025 article stated that Trump is "taking a wrecking ball to science and to international institutions,". Another article from the same month denounced Trump's "assault on science".

    It's important to note that Nature's decision to endorse a political candidate has sparked debate, with some arguing that it can undermine public trust in the journal and science itself.

    • Re:what google has to say about it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Thursday July 03, 2025 @10:17AM (#65493656)
      I guess it's not very scientific to oppose the intentional and indeed willful destruction of science.
      • It's hard to peer review.
      • No, it's not scientific to choose politicians instead of pointing out the conqsequences of their chosen policies and then letting voters decide whom to vote for. We should be striving to keep science as apolitical as possible so that people on any part of the political spectrum can trust what scientists say and know that it comes from science and not politics. It's inevtiable that some politics will creep in because we have to get funding for our research but inviting politics in through the front door by e

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

          Two paragraphs of victim blaming.

          They tried to warn us and are paying the price.

          • They tried to warn us and are paying the price.

            Well I'm trying to warn you about the problems of politicizing science and clearly my karma is paying the price but that's a price worth paying.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          It would become pretty clear what the political ideology of our supreme court justices was after a year or two. I don't see the point in hiding it when after a few dozen rulings it would become apparent what their political beliefs are.

          Not to mention who appointed them would kind of give it away too.

          • It would become pretty clear what the political ideology of our supreme court justices was after a year or two.

            Would it? I'm not sure I could tell you the political affiliations of the supreme court justices in either the UK or Canada.

        • After all, gravity is apolitical.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Good old both-sideism

          Look guys, I know Trump is destroying our democracy, is openly using the justice department to go after his enemies and ignore his friends, is promoting his crypto and merchandising openly, is ignoring due process first for non-citizens and soon for citizens, has put a actual crackpot in charge of our nation's health, is destroying the economy with insane tariff wars and deporting hard working migrants, is changing the EPA's mission from protecting our environment to helping its destruc

          • You are completely missing the point. Apolitical is not "both-sideism" it's "not-taking-a-sideism". Trump's policies ignore scientific fact and his budget is slashing science research funding that will cause the US to lose its scientific lead. There is plenty there to criticise scientifically i.e. using rational, reasoned arguments based on evidence without any need to take a political stance.

            Just because Trump is destroying all the social, legal and ethical norms does not mean that everyone else has to
      • It's not a destruction of science, it's a shift in government spending priorities.

        So no, it isn't scientific, it's political - a dispute over resource allocation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sinij ( 911942 )
          This is part of dismantling of apparatus that fuels woke Marxist agenda. People who object to this as anti-science move are confessing by projection, they disagree with the removal of funding for their pet pseudo-scientific *ism studies graft.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by sinij ( 911942 )
        Politics are subjective. Science suppose to be objective. When a publication takes subjective positions it could not act scientifically in doing so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by r0nc0 ( 566295 )
          Kinda makes sense in an idiotic sort of way - Fox News viewers don't seem to be able to understand that its not news but Op/Ed, so having an editorial section in a scientific journal might confuse people. You know those scientists have a hard time telling fact from fiction...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        No it is not scientific.

        Science is about facts, not policies. Ideally, policies are decided based on these facts, but at that point, it stops becoming science and it becomes politics.

        A scientist's job is not to support a politician over another, decide on budgets, or anything like that. What a scientist can do however is point out the possible consequences of a policy, backed with data and using proper methodology. He can make recommendations on what to do to achieve a certain goal, referencing relevant sci

  • There's always divine intervention (Score:3)

    by toddz ( 697874 ) on Thursday July 03, 2025 @10:17AM (#65493654)
    I still don't get why so many in the USA feel that religion and science are so incompatible.

    • Re:There's always divine intervention (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday July 03, 2025 @10:40AM (#65493700)

      “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”

      --Barry Goldwater

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DewDude ( 537374 )

      "All things happen through god"

      Therefore...literally...science is invalid. Why did the sun come up? Rotation of the earth? no. God hung it up there.

      • Science is the study of, if you are religious, HOW God hung it up there. In no way does that fundamentally conflict with the idea of religion.. However, it can easily conflict with some religions when they are stupid enough to try to describe science even though that's not what they are for.

    • Re:There's always divine intervention (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Thursday July 03, 2025 @11:04AM (#65493758)

      I still don't get why so many in the USA feel that religion and science are so incompatible.

      Many long, bloody, vicious wars have been fought over religion, so it seems to me that it isn't even compatible with itself, never mind with science. Science at least tries to distance itself from conclusions based on magical thinking and folklore, while religion pretty much is magical thinking and folklore.

      So I find claims of compatibility between them surprising. Peaceful-but-sometimes-scrappy coexistence? Sure, I buy that - it's what I share with my brother-in-law who uses racial slurs and is fond of the phrase "brown people". But compatibility? Not so much...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      A lot of our religious folks are very religious and very conservative. This stems all the way back to our early colonial period when Britain used the colonies as a place to get rid of their religious extremists as well as many coming over here on their own to get away from British persecution. Fast forward to today and we're full of religious radicals and the UK isn't.

    • The really odd part is that science was invented by profoundly religious people, including a number of monks and priests. For example, Mendel was a monk who noticed how traits were being passed on in his garden. It was, in many ways, a project to learn more about Creation and thus become closer to God.

      St. Augustine said something appropriate, but as I'm having trouble tracking down the exact quote I'll paraphrase - When scripture and our observations of the natural world appear to contradict each other

      • The barriers are not pointless at all, if we read the writings of the founders of America you can see they were all keenly aware of it and there are reasons the system they made is structured how it is, there was a lot of debate about this. These were all religious people and as one of them put it in debate to put god into the Constitution would be man saying he can add to God's wisdom which would be sacrilegious basically. The separation was not out of contempt for religions but respect and necessity.

        • I think you misread my point. I'm not talking about the oft-misrepresented "separation of church and state", I'm talking about a wall between two approaches to finding truth that prevents either from succeeding.

          • That wall isn't a created thing like the governmental separation, religion by it's very nature cannot subscribe to scientific methods, it's a thing of faith precisely because the truth it deals with is distinctly different than science.

            How do you put a hypothesis or a measurement on the existence of god or the afterlife or a miracle? This line of argumentation is mostly in the realm of apologia, what truth do you think combining religion and science could reveal that neither of can't them deal with on thei

            • No, the wall is created by your line of reasoning and its inverse on the other side. That's my point. It is imagined into being by flawed reasoning nobody wants to deal with. It's like sitting around all day trying to screw in a nail. By the end of the day, you're so frustrated that you give up and say "Nails are bullshit! They don't work - you just spend all day scraping the head and ruining screwdrivers." Step back a bit, relax, and maybe you'll realize that what you've been trying to drive into the

              • No, religion deals with the supernatural and if science could measure the supernatural it would no longer be supernatural.

                Why does the New Testament begin with that encoding? Because the author knew about it, we can look into that. Was it written by man or divine being? Can we measure it?

                If you're talking inspiration and philosophy of science type things, sure, right there with you, we are just humans after all, I never understood creationists when you can just as easily say natural selection was god's int

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jerrry ( 43027 )
        Looking back over the past few thousand years, how many times has religion been right compared to science? I don't think there are many cases at all.

        Just taking the example of the christian bible: the earth is at the center of the universe, the universe was "created" in six literal days, there was a world-wide flood that covered all land masses and killed all life except that on a wooden shop, people who live for hundreds of years, men have one fewer ribs than women, bats are birds and whales are fish, a
        • It is strange to see you demonstrate my point without understanding it.

        • If you try hard enough, you can misconstrue anything.

          No verse says the earth is at the center of the universe. It is at the center of mankind's universe, though, for now, and probably for millennia to come. The universe wasn't created in six literal days (Gen 1:1 just says in the beginning). It was restored to a habitable state after Lucifer's judgment in six literal days though. Noah's flood destroyed the world he knew and he saved the local wildlife that came to his ark - probably a description of the Bl

      • There's a bit of a difference in the way science and religion tend to operate. A scientific theory might be completely disproved, but more often it will be refined or replaced with a better one. When an organized religion is proved wrong, it just murders the people who said so.

        • I never suggested they operated in the same way. I had hoped to communicate my point that part of the problem is that each side expects the other to operate as it does.

          I also remember an instance where people thought they had their science right, and rather than admit that it was wrong in the face of clear evidence, they let millions of people die. Turns out that wheat simply will not grow in Siberia.
          Marxism maintains the pretense of being "scientific history" that accurately predicts the future. Y

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Agree. Science says these people are dumb as fuck. Religion says "Oh, nice, these people are dumb as fuck, lets exploit them!"

  • The civil servants' parents have a right to prevent their offspring being exposed to reality
  • weird that a US agency charges another list/retail prices. Why no discount?

  • I've worked in a lot of places and they all stopped paying for this stuff years ago. You want a magazine, go buy it yourself.

    DOGE reported on many thousands of subscriptions to things that were being paid for by the taxpayers. It's about time that stuff ended.

  • Worm brain doesn't care what people who studied the subjects their entire career think. The only thing he cares about is getting his anti-vax [arstechnica.com] cronies [cbsnews.com] in office to destroy decades of scientific research and replace it with homepathy.

  • Idiocracy is when one of the best scientific journals on the planet gets called "junk science". I guess these morons will not get their "science" from the bible or any other such spurce.

  • Good science requires: 1) Reporting of negative results and 2) Confirming of positive results.

    However, most science journals insist on only reporting 'relevant' results, so they never publish negative results and also only report 'new' science, so they refuse to publish results that confirm or deny existing results.

    Personally, if I were President (never going to happen), I would refuse to pay for any journal unless they consistently included both negative results and secondary tests of existing reports.

    Unf

  • ... taxpayer money should not be used on "junk science."

    If there's one thing I'll give this Administration, they know junk science - just ask RFK, Jr (HHS) , Dr. Oz (Medicare) ... Unfortunately, we'll be paying for junk science even w/o subscriptions to journals they simply don't like.

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