MAGA anti-science and public dissatisfaction with science - public surveys as input to funding priorities

The GOP/MAGA opposition to science is based on theocracy, class resentment, future shock, social and economic despair, and on not understanding how to use a 2025 phone (which is a bigger problem than you think).

That doesn't mean it's wrong.

I have worked in medical and IT related academia, industry, and government. I have seen important topics go unexplored -- because governmental research funding is driven by politics, tenure goals, avoiding difficult or intractable topics, seeking areas that have short-term opportunities, and a strong aversion to failure.

Osteoarthritis is very common -- but gets relatively little research because we don't understand it. Cognitive disorders, including autism and schizophrenia, are very common but we know little about natural history, longitudinal course, and etiology. Even the very definitions of neuropsychiatric disorders are overdue for review and revision.

And these are only the areas that come quickly to min for a hasty blog post.

It won't lesson MAGA/GOP hatred of science, but there are good reasons to seek public input into research priorities through surveys and interviews.  Public input could, for example, be added as a weighting factor in government funded science -- particularly in health care.

American science has a long road to recovery and it will need support from those who are not utterly opposed to reason. There is an opportunity to make it better.

How to defeat MAGA brutal medicaid access restrictions: fund an AI agent for paperwork completion

In a solid interview with the esteemed Jonathon Gruber K proposes a mitigation for the GOP's reduction of medicaid access through bureaucratic barriers only the most resourceful can overcome: "... is it possible for a few wealthy, decent people to fund a bunch of nonprofit private organizations that will basically do that, that will help people navigate through the system."

Ummm. Sadly, no. K has no personal experience with the world of government disability services, but as very well resourced parents of adults with disabilities we know better. There is no way any volunteer can endure the tedium and mad aggravation of bureaucratic barriers. Famously, scholars of bureaucratic corruption in Africa (who can now apply everything to America) sometimes suggest bribery as the most economically efficient way to bypass these kinds of extractive barriers.

But there is another way.

We could fund an AI agent that gathers the data, stores it, identifies gaps, fills them where possible, asks only for what is needed, accepts voice input, assembles the material, and submits it. Then, when the submitted paperwork or electronic transaction inevitable goes missing, submits it again. And again. And again. Until something cracks on the MAGA barrier and the transaction is completed.

The AI never tires. Never gets sick. Never gets bored. Never wavers. It's effective IQ for this process is the very top of the human scale.

If AI leadership is looking for an opportunity to see the value of agentic AI here it is.