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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

> I can either let this kind of stuff lead to my funding being cut, or reply to it and slow down my research.

Research is always going to require some of your time spent justifying the funding.

This is true, but it's one thing to justify your funding to a funding agency, and another to justify your funding directly to an angry public that is being fed anti-science propaganda, and to politicians who are not acting in good faith.

I work in private industry, and I certainly have to justify my funding, but nobody's writing news articles accusing me of fraud -- if they even know that I exist.

Sorry, I'm not attacking you, but your comment triggered a reaction that I've been thinking about for some time.

You hit the nail on the head. I'm already noticing points I improperly conveyed, necessary context for that that I left out or did not explicitly clarify, avenues to the creation of new misunderstandings that might lead to new public pressures and criticisms if any of this information propagates. I finally understand "never explain, never complain." I am never commenting in public again without significant editing, trying to consider the out-of-field perspective very deeply to think about misinterpretations that I unintentionally produce, discussing more with my colleagues what kind of engagement is productive and what kind isn't, etc. But when I made this comment, one of the other main comments was literally calling for executions.

In the future, every graduate student will need a PR department. And every Welfare recipient.

I appreciate the moral support from someone on the private research side. Politics aside, we all tend to value the common goal of improving population health, even if egos are tempted by perverse incentives.

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