Inside the destruction of American scientific research by Elon’s incel army
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Imagine being an accomplished scientist and having your contractural arguments abrogated arbitrarily by some 23-year-old dipshit with zero relevant expertise:
Picture this: You’re a researcher who has spent years developing a grant proposal, gone through layers of expert review, and received National Science Foundation (NSF) approval. Then some kid barely out of college — whose main qualification appears to be founding a company that puts ads on the blockchain — logs into a Zoom meeting, pays more attention to his fingernails than the discussion, and kills your grant with an uninterested thumbs down.
Welcome to science under DOGE.
This isn’t hyperbole. It’s exactly what prompted Alondra Nelson — a pioneering scholar at the intersection of tech, policy, and society who led the Social Science Research Council and headed the Office of Science and Technology Policy under Biden — to publicly resign from both the National Science Foundation and the Library of Congress…
…Meet Zachary Terrell, DOGE’s apparent authority on scientific merit. Fedscoop identified him as one of three DOGE operatives deployed to NSF. They had such little info on him that they didn’t even list any associations (unlike the other two DOGE kids at NSF). Terrell’s apparent qualifications for overruling decades of scientific expertise? A 2022 bachelor’s degree from Kansas State and a brief career in crypto.
Since graduating, Terrell has managed to found three companies, including “Spindl,” which Coinbase acquired earlier this year for its groundbreaking innovation of… putting ads on the blockchain. His LinkedIn profile lists his current government role as “Yeoman” — apparently the official title for “person who kills research grants while playing with water bottles.”
This is the expertise now trumping peer review at the NSF. Not content knowledge, not research experience, not even basic familiarity with how science works. Just the confidence that comes with being a 23-year-old techbro who thinks he knows better than any actual expert.
Government by and for obsessive Joe Rogan listeners is working out about as well as you’d expect.