The other day I wrote about the paper below that has now appeared in Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics (click headline to read; download pdf here).
It detailed how, over time, federal grand funding by agencies like the NIH and NSF has gradually required statements from the applicants about how they will implement DEI in their grants or, for group or educational grants, will select candidates to maximize diversity and create “equity” (i.e., the representation of minoritized groups in research in proportion to their occurrence in the general population).
If reading the big paper is too onerous for you, one of the authors (Anna Krylov), along with Robert George (“a professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University”) have published a short précis in The Chronicles of Higher Education, a site that usually doesn’t publish heterodox papers like this. You can read the shorter version simply by clicking on the screenshots below:
I won’t go through the whole argument, but will simply give an example of how each agency requires DEI input to create equity, and then show why the authors think this is bad for science and for society.
DEI statements have been made mandatory for both the granting agency and aspiring grantees, via two federal acts and the federal Office of Management and Budget:
. . . a close look at what is actually implemented under the DEI umbrella reveals a program of discrimination, justified on more or less nakedly ideological grounds, that impedes rather than advances science. And that program has spread much more deeply into core scientific disciplines than most people, including many scientists, realize. This has happened, in large part, by federal mandate, in particular by two Executive Orders, EO 13985 and EO 14091, issued by the Biden White House.
. . . . As the molecular biologist Julia Schaletzky writes, “by design, many science-funding agencies are independent from the government and cannot be directed to do their work in a certain way.” So how do Biden’s executive orders have teeth? The answer: They are implemented through the budget process, a runaround meant, as Schaletzky says, to tether “next year’s budget allocation to implementation of ideologically driven DEI plans at all levels.”
One example of capture of each organization, but the paper gives more details:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA):
For its part, NASA requires applicants to dedicate a portion of their research efforts and budget to DEI activities, to hire DEI experts as consultants — and to “pay them well.” How much do such services cost? A Chicago-based DEI firm offers training sessions for $500 to $10,000, e-learning modules for $200 to $5,000, and keynotes for $1,000 to $30,000. Consulting monthly retainers cost $2,000 to $20,000, and single “consulting deliverables” cost $8,000 to $50,000. Hence, taxpayer money that could be used to solve scientific and technological challenges is diverted to DEI consultants. Given that applicants’ DEI plans are evaluated by panels comprising 50 percent scientists and 50 percent DEI experts, the self-interest of the DEI industry is evident.
Department of Energy (DOE):
In a truly Orwellian manner, the DOE has pledged to “update [its] Merit Review Program to improve equitable outcomes for DOE awards.” Proposals seeking DOE funding must include a PIER (Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research) plan, which is “encouraged” to discuss the demographic composition of the project team and to include “inclusive and equitable plans for recognition on publications and presentations.”
National Institutes of Health (NIH):
The National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) initiative requires applicants to submit a “Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives (PEDP).” By “diverse perspectives,” the NIH explains that it means diverse demographics. In the agency’s own words, “PEDP is a summary of strategies to advance the scientific and technical merit of the proposed project through inclusivity. Broadly, diverse perspectives refer to the people who do the research, the places where research is done, as well as the people who participate in the research as part of the study population [emphasis ours].”
The NIH’s efforts toward advancing racial equity also offer an invitation to “Take the Pledge,” which includes committing to the idea that “equity, diversity, and inclusion drives success,” “setting up a consultation with an EDI [DEI] liaison,” and “ordering the ‘EDI Pledge Poster’ (or … creat[ing] your own) for your space.
Three years ago the NIH tried to incorporate DEI into its most widely-awarded grant, the “R01,” by asking investigators to give their race and then saying they’d fund some grants that didn’t make the merit cut but were proposed by minority investigators. But I guess they decided that awarding grants based on race, and discriminating against white investigators whose proposala had higher merit scores, was likely to be illegal. They quickly scrapped this program, but DEI, like the Lernaean Hydra, always grows a new head. As you see, DEI back again in a more disguised form.
National Science Foundation (NSF):
Scientists applying to the National Science Foundation for what are known as Centers for Chemical Innovation grants must now provide a two-page Diversity and Inclusion Plan “to ensure a diverse and inclusive center environment, including researchers at all levels, leadership groups, and advisory groups.” They must also file an eight-page “broader impact” plan, which includes increasing participation by underrepresented groups. For comparison, the length of the scientific part of the proposal is 18 pages.
Those are the four largest grant-giving agencies in the federal government, and their largesse to science amounts to $90 billion per year.
Why is this DEI practice harmful? The authors give a handful of reasons:
These requirements to incorporate DEI into each research proposal are alarming. They constitute compelled speech; they undermine the academic freedom of researchers; they dilute merit-based criteria for funding; they incentivize unethical — and, indeed, sometimes illegal — discriminatory hiring practices; they erode public trust in science; and they contribute to administrative overload and bloat.
While well-intended, as are nearly all efforts to lend a hand to those disadvantaged by their backgrounds, most of these practices are probably illegal because they practice discrimination based on race or other immutable traits. The only reason DEI stipulations remain, I think, is because nobody has challenged them. To bring the agencies to court, one needs to demonstrate “standing”—that is, the investigator has to demonstrate that they have been hurt by the practices. And, as you can imagine, finding someone like that would be hard, as they’d be forever tarred as racist.
Nevertheless, nobody wants to exclude minorities from science. But the paucity of black and Latino scientists is due not to “structural racism” in science (encoded rules that impede minorities), but to a lack of opportunity for disadvantaged groups starting at birth, which leads to lower qualifications. The way to solve this problem is to create equal opportunity for all, a solution that will solve the problem for good but is at present impossible to implement. Until then, all the granting system should do is cast a wider net, for the more people who apply for money, the greater the chance of finding more diverse people who pass the merit bar. And merit must remain the criterion for funding if we want to keep up the standard of American science. While I continue to believe in a form of affirmative action for college admissions, to me that’s where the buck stops. After that, all academic achievements should be judged without considering minority status.
And that seems to be happening, for in almost every venue, DEI efforts are waning.
Thanks for this
Publicly funded art is not art; it is propaganda designed to please the bureaucrats so that more funds will be granted in the future. This is why publicly funded art sucks.
Publicly funded science is not science; it is propaganda designed to please the bureaucrats so that more funds will be granted in the future. This is why publicly funded science sucks, i.e. replication crisis, record number of retractions, nonsense correlations, etc.
It can be true that all branches of science suffer from nonsensical studies & correlations, unreplicable results, and consequent retractions, without those being a caused by a cabal of sinister bureaucrats. The science research I know well is ~all publicly funded, and its quality is high in spite of the creeping social justice efforts of some science activists. For that I blame the scientists themselves (looking at you, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein) more than the bureaucrats.
I hate to disagree with our host but DIEID efforts (you have to include indigenization & decolonization now) are not waning. My frumpy but much-loved Faculty of Science has finally succumbed to the siren song of affirmative-action hiring. Two departments (not mine yet) will hire “black scholars” next year. The university (specifically the vice president for people, equity, & inclusion) dangles these hires in front of our deans, who can’t resist because we’re in a budget crisis and it’s hard to get approval to fill faculty jobs. Department chairs persuade themselves that they will only fill such jobs if a truly excellent black (or indigenous) scholar applies. But motivated reasoning is a thing, and we’re sure to hire someone once the job is approved and the ad goes out. Those two new black scholars will be permanently marked with the scarlet letter D, and everyone (including the black scholars) will always wonder whether those two folks were really good or merely black enough.
This is happening all over Canada. Not waning, instead things are getting worse.
Apparently there is some resistance in the U.S. to the “braiding” of indigenous knowledge and so-called “Western” knowledge:
“In a highly unusual move, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has dissolved one of its expert committees, which set out to recommend ways to combine Western and Indigenous approaches to understanding the natural world. It also fired two key staffers involved in the now-aborted study.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/study-braiding-indigenous-and-western-knowledge-collapses-amid-acrimony
Not to be a downer, but the first line of that story does call it “a highly unusual move” and not obviously part of a trend. But I agree that’s one bit of good news!
The article is worth reading. It’s like entering Wonderland, everything topsy-turvy.
Top scientists trying to “co-produce” with a bunch of identity activists? These substances do not mix. It’s like trying to plug an electric cord into a milkshake. Of course they fell out and cancelled the project.
Like mixing oil & water, as the saying goes. “Co-production” is a euphemism for mixing chaff back in with the wheat.
One can argue about the choice of subjects that scientists involve themselves with, but the actual investigations must use the best available methods of scientific inquiry.
Since the original goal of this study was to look for solutions to problems at the intersection of society and the environment, I guess I don’t see a problem with including native peoples.
Lab Gurl, why would you frame the issue that way? I don’t think anyone, scientist or otherwise, wants to exclude native people because they’re native people. (Aside from actual racists, of course.)
The issue is not about a group of people. It’s about the methodologies of investigating nature by that group. Does it enhance our understanding of the environment? It seems obvious that the problem in the study group was at the intersection of different methodologies, not different people per se.
When scientific investigation is stymied by “ways of knowing” that rely heavily on references to superstitions, supernatural forces, and legends, I can easily see problems arising among traditional scientists accustomed to a very successful investigative process honed over the past 400 years or so that does not rely on superstitions, supernatural forces, and legends.
Replying to Jon, I have been off line for many days,
I was really thinking about the use of fire by indigenous cultures and how it maintained forest health. “We” ignored it because it was “cultural” and I think that contributed to the dire straights we are in now, especially in the western US. I don’t know how we will ever catch up with prescribed burns.
I don’t think the bureaucrats are sinister, just human same as the scientists. I would say that even though public funding of science only ramped up in the 70s it didn’t have a large corrupting effect until this century and hard sciences are resisting the corruption more than other funding recipients.
I don’t agree with the overly broad brush-strokes laid out here.
You are welcome to your opinions, but as someone benefiting from drugs and therapies discovered and developed through publicly funded science, I disagree. I also enjoyed recently going to see a publicly funded concert in the park where I heard master blues men and women practicing their art. The LA County Museum of art recently had an exhibition of pottery and related arts; I really enjoyed the creative ways one particular potter (name escapes me now) interpreted the Joshua tree desert she lived in and tried to encapsulate in her pieces.
Art is art. Science is science. There’s a whole lot of wrong ways to do them but there is also no right way either.
1+
“Publicly funded art is not art . . . .”
Really? Have you never heard of the FSA photographs funded by the Farm Security Administration from 1935 to 1944? Are the names Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, and Gordon Parks unknown to you? Their photos are much beloved works of art.
Generalize much? Science is science, not propaganda. While there are perverse incentives like publish or perish and problems with peer review, you make it sound like $90B is just wasted. Ummm, no.
I think you’re exaggerating. Think of all the advances that publicly funded science has made, including the Human Genome Project, a lot of research that has ameliorated disease, and so on. Without it, there would be no studies of evolution and none of pure ecology. Citing replication crises and retractions and the like ignores the huge number of papers and advances that haven’t suffered from these issues.
This is a rant, and it’s misguided. Yes, there are issues that you bring up, but you are wrong to dismiss all the endeavors of government granting agencies.
“The only reason DEI stipulations remain, I think, is because nobody has challenged them.”
That’s one reason, at least at the federal level. The other reason—the chief reason—is because we have a Democrat in the White House. Change that, and there would be no need for the courts to get involved.
I’ve wondered whether more Democrats would crossover this election if the Republican nominee were someone like Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Bob Dole. (Doubtful. Party identity is a very sticky thing.) I don’t believe the DEI craze and other Woke pathologies will end in the federal government until the Democrats are crushed at the ballot box. That would, of course, require the Republicans to nominate someone who isn’t toxic to half the country. But if they ever do, then the Independents will deliver the Democrats a very nasty lesson.
But for now, back to our “pick your poison” election follies.
The Republicans nominated someone who is toxic to the whole country but only half realize it. The one who tried to steal the last election, among many other things, is the worst poison.
And yet it is only one of those poisonous movements that, over the last decade, many educated people in the West have been afraid to openly criticize. Even in private, one has had to be careful except among the closest of friends. Indeed, many still give it their tacit or open assent, despite their private misgivings.
But the other movement, condemn away! The louder, the more often, the better. Even when it held federal executive power, hardly a single man or woman feared to condemn it. In their workplace, their social group, among their friends, colleagues, and family. A never-ending chorus of “Down with the autocrat. Look how bravely we speak truth to power.”
It is not elected office alone that grants power, particularly the most important kind necessary for lasting change. It is cultural and social ties. The politics resides downstream from culture. And, not to put too fine a point on it, it is elite culture that matters most in the long run for politics. Few really care about the culture of the store clerks, plumbers, and auto technicians. That is why one movement barely talks to them anymore.
Doug, I think you are painting with a broad brush. I live in a deep red area and I can assure you the “lefties” around here are afraid to open their mouths most of the time. The “F*** Joe Biden” flags fly freely.
Anna, I just looked at what I think is the current NASA Grants and Cooperative Agreements Handbook and do not see such DEI requirements wording. Is it for all agency research grants or just certain offices like STEM outreach maybe? From this Biden administration’s direction in OSTP last year, I don’t question that this could be agency-wide, but historically things don’t go that way…or at least did not over my career….even as we developed a pretty damn diverse and still highly qualified Astronaut Corps.
Jim, follow the links from the long paper to read about the implementation of NASA’s Inclusion Plan (Nahm and Watkins is the most damning exhibit). See also this NASA document, which has 3 pages of DEI requirements beginning on page SoS-35:
https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/viewrepositorydocument/cmdocumentid=983947/solicitationId=%7B600EE5E5-E9D5-FF55-0CAD-764F6D4BEEA9%7D/viewSolicitationDocument=1/ROSES24_SoS_020924.pdf
These DEI requirements are for technical research proposals, not for outreach or education grants.
A friend of mine who is doing computational studies on molecules of astrochemical interest recently went through the grant renewal process with NASA and has experienced these requirements first hand. He ultimately was able to renew his grant, but only after he rewrote his IP plan several times to match their expectations. He also had to attend a voluntary re-education session in which the PIs were educated about subtle differences between diversity and inclusion.
Thanks Anna. Pp sos-35ff are, along with your friend’s experience pretty frightening. Selfishly I am glad to be retired. But I do need to say that back in the mid 70’s as a young engineer, I went to my first “grant, cooperative agreement, and contract mgt training”. As a civil servant, of course my role was technical monitor, not grantee, but I obviously empathized with proposers and grantees over some of the administrative bs even in those days. One of my colleagues in our training class asked why he should pay someone to do work that he could do himself. “Chollie” our good old boy instructor from NASAHq said that NASA, as other S&T agencies, had been directed by Congress to support universities in science and engineering research and did not really care about whether nasa could do the work cheaper or even better in-house. We were directed to spend a certain amount of budgeted money on university research. Then later we were given set asides for hbcu’s. And always, of course, the general technical area of research was circumscribed by the NASAhq division. My point is that there have always been constraints … the worst ones being when NASA would zero out a discipline as all of our aero engineering grants were year to year, unlike nsf grants which have, or at least when I served on nsf review committees, money assigned for three years with renewals. I will admit that these dei requirements really seem to be pretty egregious, but your friend and his/her TM having laid out a successful process, may be able to incorporate it more easily next time. I recall my rationalization was that, requirements aside, at least I was providing several hundred thousand dollars a year to universities for partial support of professors and grad students to carry out basic and applied research in dynamics and control that complemented my own nasa organization’s mission. As long as the research support continues to drive the grant and it does not become driven by sociology, it seems that university science and engineering still come out ahead. If dei starts driving the train, it may be time to drop nasa as a grant source to the detriment of both university science and nasa science. A lot seemed to depend on my nasa procurement officer and how much he or she micromanaged the grant. Thanks for pointing me to the changes…which seem to be an instantiation of some ostp language I first saw a couple of years ago.
In the USSR, the dominance of “progressive Michurinist science” began to wane in the mid-1950s. But the beneficiaries of the roughly 17-year Lysenkovshchina had already been installed in the academic and official establishment. This
probably has much to do with the USSR’s meager contribution to biological knowledge (most glaringly in molecular biology) for the 35 years after official, enforced Lysenkoism began to wane.
Yes, indeed. We commented on this lesson from history in the big paper. An important aspect of Lysenkovism is the role of identity politics–of a Marxist-Leninist type–in propelling him to his position of power.
I’m utterly convinced 99% of people outside science and most of the people working in science have no idea things have gone this horribly bonkers.
Keep up the good work with Anna et al.
If people knew the extent of all this* they’d be appalled.
How has “the left” broadly managed to alienate almost the entire high IQ section of its cohort is amazing.
D.A.
NYC
*Or the actual history of the Pal-Israel problem!
Just curious, because I don’t know, but are there similar activities to promote under-represented groups in fields dominated by females and non-whites? I strongly suspect no, but I’d really like to know if there are outreach programs to try to pull more males into dental hygiene and women’s studies, or non-blacks into African American studies? I’m not saying this cynically with an implied answer, but rather as a question. It would be interesting to know if, for example, if a women’s studies department would be in favor of promoting a man to a leadership position in the department to balance out the existing gender disparity within said department.
Nursing and primary school teaching programs actively recruit men. Perhaps the shortage of men in those fields involves some discrimination, but a lot of men would simply never consider a “woman’s job” like elementary school teacher or nurse.
As I have noted before, a similarly unbalanced sex ratio can be found in some bureaucratic agencies. At the SOM of the University of Washington, the office of Faculty Well-Being (whatever that means) had a f:m ratio of 8:0 last year and now it is 8:1. [An interesting datum. The ratio’s underlying cause probably involves psychological matters which are rarely discussed aloud.] As far as I know, the champions of Diversity and Inclusion have not bestirred themselves about this disparity; one might wonder if it leads in any ways to disparate impacts.
Especially considering the pay gap in those traditional “women’s jobs” vs many “men’s jobs”.
The best solution to the pay gap is for women to aspire and train to do careers that pay better than traditional women’s work. Men avoid feminized professions — and much of medicine is now feminized — because they pay less. So they go into careers or sub-disciplines that women won’t do (or can’t.)
It’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, like white flight from neighbourhoods being demographically transformed. A man who sees his profession being feminized will advise his ambitious son to avoid it. This isn’t to say that men are treated with hostility in feminized professions. It’s just that the feminized professions carry a stigma that if women can do them (and still raise families, is the unspoken codicil) they must not be worth paying very much.
It is mainly about interest. Whether a matter of nature or nurture, those with a higher interest in working with children and working to care for patients in the most intimate of ways tend to be women. Disparities of interest permeate thru the inequities of who is employed where.
“…to maximize diversity and create “equity” (i.e., the representation of minoritized groups in research in proportion to their occurrence in the general population).” – J. Coyne
The general ethical meaning of “equity” is “fairness”/”justness”; and proportional representation is part of social justice, according to the Woke Left. However, strictly speaking, the aspect of proportional representation is more closely associated with the Diversity norm, because the central objective of the Equity norm is equality of resources and outcomes.
“diverse: involving the representation or composition of various social identity groups in a work group, organization, or community.
…
equity: providing resources according to the need to help diverse populations achieve their highest state of health and other functioning. Equity is an ongoing process of assessing needs, correcting historical inequities, and creating conditions for optimal outcomes by members of all social identity groups.”
Source: https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/framework