US Agencies' Science Journal Subscriptions Canceled (semafor.com)
- Reference: 0178269906
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/03/1313250/us-agencies-science-journal-subscriptions-canceled
- Source link: https://www.semafor.com/article/07/03/2025/us-agencies-scientific-journal-subscriptions-canceled
> The US government [1]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, [2]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."
[1] https://www.semafor.com/article/07/03/2025/us-agencies-scientific-journal-subscriptions-canceled
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02080-1
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, you never toook science in high school, or jr. high. What are you doing *here*, pretending to be a nerd?
As long as Communications of the ACM is safe (Score:2)
We need to know how AI will take over our jobs.
Ingsoc (Score:1)
Welcome to 1984!
No longer true, missed the update! (Score:5, Informative)
From Nature: [1]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.”
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02080-1
Re: (Score:2)
Like I care what a barely-literate coward thinks.
what google has to say about it (Score:5, Informative)
"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:4, Insightful)
I guess it's not very scientific to oppose the intentional and indeed willful destruction of science.
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It's hard to peer review.
Somethings should be Apolitical (Score:2)
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
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Two paragraphs of victim blaming.
They tried to warn us and are paying the price.
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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.
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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.
There's always divine intervention (Score:2)
I still don't get why so many in the USA feel that religion and science are so incompatible.
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The Cass Review was prepared following the same careful method of scientific meta-analysis followed by RFK Jr. and his vaccine experts.
No "/s" because this is strictly factual, and even more worrying due to that.
Re:There's always divine intervention (Score:4, Interesting)
“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
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That reminds me of an amusing fact. The most reliable churchgoers and the most reliable Democrat voters are the same group - black women. Which is odd given that the Party appears to be hostile towards their religious beliefs.
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Which religious beliefs exactly are the Democratic Party hostile to? Taking care of the poor, the infirm, and the elderly? Being good stewards of the earth? Being welcoming to immigrants? Forgiveness of debts?
I think black women have a better grasp of what it means to be Christian than the Republicans you seem to think they should be allied with.
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"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.
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> 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
Re: (Score:2)
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.
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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
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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.
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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
parental rights (Score:2)
The civil servants' parents have a right to prevent their offspring being exposed to reality
no discount? (Score:2)
weird that a US agency charges another list/retail prices. Why no discount?
What companies still pay for periodicals? (Score:2)
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.
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Because journals in your field are a tool just as are labs and their respective instruments. It's absurd to hire a scientist, and expect them to bring their own NMR, or beakers, or scales. Taxpayer funded subscriptions to scientific journals are a drop in the bucket. Trump taking yet another vacation at Mar-a-lago costs more than those subscriptions.
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> DOGE reported on many thousands of subscriptions to things that were being paid for by the taxpayers.
Given their track record, I think it'd be more accurate to say DOGE reported thousands of times on the same one subscription being paid for by the taxpayers, because it appeared on multiple databases, no one at DOGE normalized those because they have no idea how to do that, and as a result the cost informed in their report was falsely inflated by three orders of magnitude.
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> DOGE reported on many thousands of subscriptions to things that were being paid for by the taxpayers.
And now our deficit is gone!
Does it matter? (Score:2)
Worm brain doesn't care what people who studied the subjects their entire career think. The only thing he cares about is getting his [1]anti-vax [arstechnica.com] [2]cronies [cbsnews.com] in office to destroy decades of scientific research and replace it with homepathy.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/06/anti-vaccine-quack-hired-by-rfk-jr-has-started-work-at-the-health-department/
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-vaccine-safety-office-hire-former-head-anti-vaccine-group-founded-rfk-jr/
Sad (Score:1)
The US is going to hell in a handcart!
Re: (Score:2)
Those journal subscriptions are just too expensive, though.
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The statement was retracted yesterday anyhow. The linked article was published afterwards but doesn't include the update on Nature.
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Too late. Already went into the cloaca Jan 21, 2017