Nixon’s assault on science did not begin overnight. In early December 1968, the President-Elect appointed CalTech presid

Narcissists like to test people, and it strokes their ego when people do anything to please them. Don’t accommodate them. If they need you to do something for them, even if it’s small or no trouble at all — don’t do it. Try to refuse them with the least amount of fuss possible.,On December 17, 1968, before Nixon took office, DuBridge answered a question about anti-ballistic missile systems by claiming he didn’t have enough information to formulate an opinion — admirable fence-sitting, to be sure. Only a few months later, a single, two-paragraph item in the Times cut DuBridge in half and placed a piece on either side of that fence:,When we share details of our lives, we create a bond and an intimacy, which isn’t what you want with a narcissist as their motives come from selfishness, not genuine interest.,DuBridge apparently attempted to walk that fine line between cheerleading and scientific rigor, just like his predecessors did and most successors would — in one case, on an issue that has in some ways held the science advisor hostage as long as it has existed.,Narcissists need people to be enthralled by them so that they can feed off the attention and reverence. But once the facade has worn thin, and you start to see the narcissist for who they are, how do you get out from their grasp.,This demonstration did not go as planned. DuBridge’s tenure started innocently enough, with pushes for increases in federal funding for science (a miss; funding continued to drop precipitously), support to reduce the amount of secret military-funded science done at universities (a hit; by May 1969 only four percent of university-held government contracts were secret, down from eight percent two years before), among other priorities.,The incoming president had long sought acceptance from the country’s intellectual elite, and tapping Kistiakowsky’s West Coast “high priest of science” counterpart probably seemed a good first step. As the Times put it, “Mr. Nixon is thought to be particularly eager to demonstrate that a Republican President need not be alienated from scholars and scientists.”,Narcissists have an excessive need for attention; if they’re not the center of attention at all times, there’s a problem. It would be impossible to be around a narcissist with their overwhelming need to be center stage if they weren’t so charming and captivating.,Any personal information you may give a narcissist immediately becomes ammunition, which can be used against you. They’ll file that information away, only to be used at a later date.,Know that the more you do for the narcissist, the worse it will get. Toxic behavior escalates quickly for a narcissist and taking advantage of people is one of their talents.,However, narcissists aren’t like you or me. If you have to deal with one or witness one on the news, it’s a good idea to be able to identify their narcissistic behavior, know how to deal with it so that you’re not affected, and how to handle their manipulative ways until you can get them completely out of your life.,If you have worked with NextJS, then you know just how awesome Fast Refresh is. Fast Refresh is a replacement for React Hot Loader. Its big advantages include amazing performance and state preservation on component reload. It’s definitely a great addition to Create-React-App.,In spite of DuBridge’s willingness to jump on board the ABM train in Nixon’s White House, it didn’t take long for his usefulness as science advisor to come into question. In July 1970, a “prominent science historian” told the Washington Post that science had been all but disappeared from “the high councils of the Nixon administration.” The previous year, the Times reported on a growing “groundswell of dissent” among scientists around the globe; work stoppages normally associated with workers pressing for better wages had spread all the way to — believe it or not — entire countries’ collections of astronomers. A group of scientists at M.I.T. arranged another stoppage and released a statement that read in part:,Sure, the details of those plans might have been different, but this was no fluke. Generally speaking, the scientific community has shot down as unfeasible, too expensive, or otherwise unwise virtually every large-scale missile defense idea of the last seventy years. But time and again, the scientist at the president’s right hand has found himself defending — or, at times, aggressively supporting — these plans in spite of their dubious technical feasibility. It is perhaps the best example of the disconnect that the advisors have all been forced to confront — science for science’s sake, or science for the president’s sake.,It’s the narcissist’s ability to draw you in and fascinate you where the real danger comes in. Once they’ve got you hooked, it’s hard to get out of their web. And if you think the narcissist is just going to let you be, you’re wrong.