Category: science publishing

Nature Human Behavior is back, this time touting “allyship”

February 24, 2025 • 12:15 pm

In the summer of 2022, the journal Nature Human Behavior put out a notice that it could reject articles that were “stigmatizing” or “harmful” to different groups, regardless of the scientific content. The problems with this stand, which were immediately called out by Steve Pinker, Michael Shermer, and others, is that what is seen as stigmatizing or harmful is pretty much a subjective matter, and, as Pinker tweeted:

I think the journal and its editor were taken aback by this and similar reactions to their statements, and on Day 2 of our USC conference on Science and Ideology in January, the Chief Editor of the journal, Stavroula Kousta, walked back their statement a bit in here 24-minute talk (go here to here her talk; it’s the first one on the video).

But the walking-back didn’t mean that Nature Human Behavior was becoming less woke. Indeed, it just published a ridiculously repetitive and trite paper about how science needs “allyship” to produce a “diverse, equitable, and inclusive academia.” It’s not that STEM isn’t seeking a diversity of groups and viewpoints—though, inevitably, “diversity” in their sense means “diversity of race or sex”—but that this article says absolutely nothing new about the issue. What the journal published now is a prime example of virtue-flaunting that, in the end accomplish nothing.  You can read it by clicking on the screenshot below (it should be free with the legal Unpaywall app), and you can get the pdf here.

The piece begins with the usual claim of “harm”: the same issue that the same journal discussed before:

In academia, despite recent progress towards diversity, biases and microaggressions can still exclude and harm members of disadvantaged social groups.

The person who sent me this article wrote “No citations are given for this claim about bigotry and discrimination at the most liberal, open, welcoming institutions that have ever existed in human history. Amazing.”

The article then gives these figures, which are baffling because one would expect younger women to drop out more rather than less frequently. But they may be correct; I am just not sure that they reflect misogyny:

Such patterns of marginalization are not specific to students. Among US faculty members, for example, women are 6%, 10% and 19% more likely to leave each year than their men counterparts as assistant, associate and full professors, respectively.

I suspect that these departures have little to do with ongoing “structural bias” against women academics, not only because no instances of inbuilt structural bias are actually given, but also, at least for women, a big and recent review by Ceci et al. found either no bias against women’s achievements in academic science or a female advantage—save for teaching evaluations and a slight difference in salary, about 3.6% lower salary for women.   However, the authors do not dismiss the possibility and importance of bias against women.

At any rate, if you haven’t heard come across this advice about “allyship” before, and are an academic, you must be blind and deaf. I’m not going to reprise the paper for you, as you’ve heard it all before.

I’m assuming that well-meaning people agree with me that marginalized scientists should be treated just like everyone else.  But how many times do we need to hear that? At any rate, this paper rings the chimes again, singling out six areas where we’re told how to behave. These are direct quotes.

1.) Listen to and centre marginalized voices.

2.) Reflect on and challenge your own biases (I guess you determine them by taking an “implicit bias” test, a procedure that’s been severely criticized

3.)  Speak up to include and support disadvantaged groups

4.)  Speak out against bias when it happens

5.)  Advocate for institutional initiatives to promote equity and inclusion

6.)  Dismantle institutional policies and procedures of exclusion

#4 and #6 are no-brainers, though, speaking personally, I don’t know of any institutional policies and procedures of exclusion in biology.  The rest are ideological statements assuming that everyone except for the marginalized is biased, and that the way to achieve inclusion is to promote “equity” (do they even know what “equity” means?) And, of course, the entire program reflects the tenets of DEI, which are on the chopping block in the U.S.

Now this article isn’t as bad as ones on feminist glaciology or ones maintaining that Einstein’s principle of covariance supports the view that minorities have an equal claim to objectivity..  No, it’s just superfluous, a farrago of what decent human beings already do, misleading assertions about bias, mixed with patronizing advice that we already follow. It accomplishes nothing save further erode the credibility of editor Kousta.

Here’s the conclusion:

For allyship to be effective in academia, it must be grounded in a deep commitment to DEI. This means recognizing that allyship is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process of learning, reflection and action. Moreover, it needs to go above and beyond symbolic or superficial acts (performative allyship) to demonstrate substantial and meaningful support that is recognized as beneficial by those it is meant to serve (substantive allyship). It is noteworthy to understand and accept that we will make mistakes along the way. No one is perfect, and as explained above, allyship requires a willingness to engage in humility and self-reflection. When mistakes are made, it is important to listen to feedback from disadvantaged groups, take responsibility for any harm caused, and commit to doing better in the future.

In conclusion, everyone can engage in allyship and work to challenge and dismantle systemic bias, creating a more just, equitable and inclusive academic community for all.

At least they used “equitable” properly, meaning “treating people fairly.”  But couldn’t the whole article have consisted of just that sentence?

More on the “three-societies letter” about sex

February 10, 2025 • 11:00 am

Here’s a quick update on my critique of a letter issued by three organismal-biology-society Presidents claiming that sex isn’t binary—not in humans and, indeed, not in any species. The signers were the Presidents of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the letter is archived here.

That letter implicitly claimed to represent the opinion of all 3500 members of these societies, even though they were never polled about their opinions.  I know many members, and I also also know that a lot of them do NOT agree with the letter and its misguided contentions.  While I am no longer a member of the SSE, I of course disagree with the letter: that’s why I wrote a long critique.

The three-society letter gives the email addresses of two Presidents, and I expect that disaffected members may make their dissent known, for I’ve been contacted by several of them. But, as always, I urge readers to make known their feelings whatever they are.

Just two comments.

First, three past Presidents of the SSE have already publicly disagreed with the letter and its claims. One of them was me, but here are comments on my post made by two others:

I would think this would give the three officers who signed that letter some pause, as Presidents are elected by a poll of all SSE members. And I would suggest that the three societies backtrack and poll their members to say, anonymously, if they agree with the letter. It’s not right that they claim to represent the consensus view of their membership, much less a majority view.

Second, how do the Presidents regard sex in their own research? Before I give some information on that, I wanted to relate the issue to something I discussed in my first book, Speciation, co-written with Allen Orr. In the first chapter and Appendix, we describe the many competing definitions of species, and suggested that the best one for motivating research on the problem of speciation—why nature comes in discrete groups rather than existing as a continuum—is the Biological Species Concept (BSC), which regards species as groups of organisms that have reproductive barriers preventing or impeding gene exchange with other groups.

The interesting thing to me was that although people have argued fiercely in the literature about what a “species” is, when it comes to speciation, the process whereby species are formed in nature, virtually every paper equates speciation with “the origin of reproductive barriers.”  That is an implicit admission that yes, species are groups separated by genetically-based reproductive barriers (these barriers need not be absolutely complete). To me, this validates the BSC, for when people actually do research on the origin of species, they research the origin of reproductive isolation. Your research is where the rubber meets the road, and says a lot about how you regard definitions and concepts.

That prompted me and one other person to look up whether the authors of the “sex isn’t binary” letter regard sex as binary in their own research.  The answer is “yes.”

I didn’t have to look hard before I found this feature on the website of the ASN President, whose lab sells stickleback fish to other researchers. They sell two types: males and females. What about the other sexes? After all, there should be more, right?

But if you go back through President Bolnick’s own research papers, you will see clearly that he mentions just two sexes, males and females. Here’s one of his research papers (from Nature Communications), but I can’t be arsed to look at them all. Click on the title below to go the paper, which mentions “male” or “female” 171 times.

The abstract and a table: the sexes were studied in two species of fish as well as in mice and HUMANS. And—you guessed it—in all these species only two sexes are mentioned in humans! Curious, no? Red lines in the articles below are mine:

From a table in the paper. Men and women in humans, fish and mice? Is that all they used? Why did they divide up the species that way?

 

And Emma Hilton at the University of Manchester saved me the trouble of having to investigate the work of the SSE President.

Finally, again you don’t have to look hard to see that the SSB President also divides species into males and females in her research. Here’s one paper that mentions males or females 40 times.  I again put an extract below (click on title to go to text):

You can amuse yourselves, if you wish, by doing similar searches, but you will find the same thing: when the three Presidents are considering sex in their own research, there are always two, males and females.  Are you going to tell me that doesn’t say anything about a sex binary?

More wokeness in biology

January 28, 2025 • 12:15 pm

I thought I was clever when I decided that an alternative word for a woke person could be a “Passive Progressive”, but then was told that woke people aren’t passive because they create a lot of noise and kerfuffle. I still like my new term, though, as by “passivity” I meant “performativeness”.  That is, a woke person espouses progressive Leftist ideals but does not do anything to enact them, ergo the passivity.

But I digress. While poring through some scientific literature yesterday, I came upon an issue of The American Naturalist from July 2022. This used to be one of the go-to journals for publishing evolutionary biology, and I was a corresponding editor for a while, but in my view it’s slipped a bit. This issue, with its special section on “Nature, data, and power” is about as ideologically captured as you can get. And this was three years ago! Well, capture started well before that. If you want to read any of these articles, just click on the screenshots below (there are two because the section is so long. There are other real science papers not soaked in politics, but I haven’t put them down.

Which paper is your favorite?

 

Bonkers paper of the year

December 3, 2024 • 11:00 am

This paper in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics (click title below to read, or find the pdf here) is a strong contender for Bonkers Paper of the Year. The author, Ewelina Jarosz, is a Polish professor from Kraków—not a scientist, but an assistant professor of Media and Cultural Studies (of course).

Ewelina Jarosz

  • University of the National Education Commission, Krakow; Department of Media and Cultural Reseach, Kraków, małopolskie, Poland

Below is the abstract, which promotes “hydrosexuality” and denigrates “settler science”. If you had a shot of tequila for every buzzword in this abstract, you’d be stinking drunk at the end:

The article aims to transform narratives surrounding Utah’s Great Salt Lake, often referred to as “America’s Dead Sea,” by reimagining how brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) are perceived in science, culture, and art. It introduces the concept of hydrosexuality to bridge these realms, thereby enriching feminist blue posthumanities and feminist biology through art-based practices and queer advocacy. By navigating the environmental narrative of the GSL, the hydrosexual perspective challenges settler science by exploring the connections between the reproductive system of brine shrimp and the economy, ecology and culture. The article provides a framework for integrative cultural analysis that bolsters arguments about the multilayered exploitation of the lake and amplifies voices that recognize the brine shrimp as vital to the survival of multiple species and to the GSL as a unique ecosystem. Furthermore, this cultural analysis draws inspiration from low trophic theory and Queer Death Studies. This multifaceted approach is exemplified by two case studies in the arts, which gradually alter white humans’ perceptions and understandings of the brine shrimp, helping to reimagine the GSL in the context of rapid climate change.

If you want an analysis of what the paper actually says, read and give credit to Colin Wright, who read it and analyzed it on his site Reality’s Last Stand (click below to read):

Colin’s introduction (I can’t believe he read the entire paper, apparently without gastric distress, but he did):

In the annals of academic absurdity, there are moments that make even seasoned critics pause in awe. “Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Posthumanities to Reimagine the ‘America’s Dead Sea’” is one such moment. This is not a parody—though it reads like one—but a “serious” paper, or so the author insists. In what is best described as a surrealist love letter to brine shrimp, the author, Ewelina Jarosz (she/they), wades through a soup of critical theory, environmental activism, and performance art, asking the reader to reconsider their relationship with brine shrimp—not as mere crustaceans but as symbols of queer resilience, ecological ethics, and, somehow, hydrosexual love.

This paper is part of a growing tradition of postmodern scholarship that prioritizes ideological signaling over intellectual rigor. Following in the footsteps of infamous works like the 2016 “Feminist Glaciology” paper—which posited that glaciers are gendered—“Loving the Brine Shrimp” sets a new standard for academic ridiculousness. Its culmination in a cyber wedding to augmented reality brine shrimp makes feminist glaciers seem like a grounded scientific pursuit by comparison. But before we arrive at the nuptial climax, let’s examine how this spectacle unfolds.

There was performance art involved: a marriage of two Polish academics to brine shrimp at the Great Salt Lake of Utah:

The paper reached peak woke in a section titled “Loving the Brine Shrimp,” which recounts a performance art piece called Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp. This event, staged on the receding shores of the Great Salt Lake, involved artists, scientists, and augmented reality brine shrimp. Participants made vows to the crustaceans, marched in a procession, and capped it off with a communal bath in the lake. The author describes this as “making love to the lake,” a phrase that may haunt frequent swimmers of the Great Salt Lake for the rest of their lives.

Here’s a photo and article found by Malgorzata at the right-wing website David Horowitz’s The Front Page. Just read it for the lolz:

On September 14, 2021, two Polish female professors headed to the Great Salt Lake in Utah to marry some brine shrimp in an ecosexual wedding.

Presided over by Bonnie Baxter PhD, a biology professor at Westminster University in nearby Salt Lake City, the two Polish professor brides in clinging wedding dresses approached holding hands and together with the rest of the wedding party which included a sexologist and Elizabeth Stephens, the chair of UC Santa Cruz’s Art Department, who helped create the ‘Ecosexual’ movement, went into the lake to marry the shrimp through an exchange of psychic vows.

The 12-minute video of the wedding vows and the postnuptial swim in the lake, “Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp”, can (and must) be seen at Colin’s website.  

One thing is clear: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics lacks even a scintilla of academic rigor. In fact, when the journal publishes a paper, replete with buzzwords, that’s indistinguishable from the “hoax papers” of Alan Sokal or of Boghossian, Pluckrose, and Lindsay, you know that something has gone badly wrong with scholarship. Is there any contribution to knowledge here? I can’t detect any.

Yes, it’s all hilarious, but only in the sense that academics become lunatics in their effort to promulgate social justice, or, in this case, “environmental justice.” As Colin says at the end of his herculean reading of the paper:

In an era where intellectual rigor often takes a backseat to performative absurdity, it’s important to keep a sense of humor about the bizarre trajectory of academic publishing. After all, what else can we do when purportedly serious scholars convene weddings for brine shrimp or ascribe nonbinary identities to water?

Alas, these are the times we live in.

h/t: Ann

A fake paper published in a peer-reviewed journal?

November 24, 2024 • 12:30 pm

I presume that the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports is a real, peer-reviewed journal rather than a complete fake, as this paper is listed in PubMed Central and the journal in the University of Chicago online journals. You can see the paper by clicking on the weird title below, or download the pdf here; if the paper disappears just ask me for it.

I suspect that this was written by AI given the quote below, which sounds stilted, but perhaps the authors, from France and Germany respectively, may just write English that way. Either way, you be the judge.

It is not an April fool joke as it was published in September, and although the introduction (below) mentions that the Saturnians, who came from Earth, introduced both the terrestrial systems of private and public healthcare, my notion that this paper would really contrast them here and take a position was dispelled.

The references and authors’ locations

The first part of the three-page letter:

We practice Neurosurgery on SATURN in a country called « ILLUSIONLAND ». 60 million homo sapiens sapiens who live in this country migrated 30 years ago from the Earth. According to anatomical data, there is no difference between terrestrial and Saturnian homo sapiens sapiens. Modern medical and surgical technology has also been imported from Earth. The Saturnians of earthling descent of the earth-lings have roughly kept the same way of life, society, habits, etc. they inherited from their earthly ancestors.

In our country, ILLUSIONLAND we have two health systems. Private independent doctors and government-employed doctors who practice in hospitals. We present two clinical cases of the practice of Neurosurgery on SATURN. The main difference between the cases on Saturn with clinical cases on Earth is that on Sa-turn, both doctors’ and patients’ clinical cases are simultaneously presented.

1.1. Saturnian clinical case 1

1.1.1. First part

Doctor D.P. 52 terrestrial-year-old male (Saturnian 1 year 10 months old), obtained his doctoral degree of specialization at the age of 29 and was recognized as the second for its promotion in Medical School. As a young neurosurgeon, he is as active as when he was a resident and passed his fellowship. He operates every day, visits many patients during the day, and stays late at the hospital. He always offers to cover his colleagues’ on-call shifts if they have difficulties. He holds three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. He writes medical papers. He attends different congresses and seminars. As an example, he takes the Saturnian rocket to participate in the annual conference of the world Saturnian Federation of Neurosurgeons which takes place in “Utopia” the country located 200,000 km from his workplace. He is curious and wants to know everything about everything in his profession, especially about new surgical techniques. He asks his hierarchy about their experiences. He wants to participate in all the surgeries. In general, he stays in the hospital until 10 p.m. To have time to read an article or two, he quickly grabs a sandwich for lunch instead of going to the canteen. At home, even in bed, he thinks of cases he has seen during the day (Saturnian day which lasts only 10 h 30). When his secretary or a colleague from the emergency room calls him for a patient, he says: “Add them to my patient’s list. I’ll see them” so the consultation which officially lasts 4 h lasted 6 h sometimes 7 h. His colleagues know that they can count on him to take a night’s call or take care of an additional patient because he does this with joy.

Today, 23 years after (10 Saturnian months) Professor D.P. realizes that he is married and has two children, but he knows nothing about them. He does not even remember any details of his marriage. He just remembers that reading medical papers on his own was the best moment of his rare holidays with his wife. Today, he realized progressively that surgery makes him more tired, physically, both mentally. Today, unlike 20 years ago, when there is a new addition to the consultation list, he grumbles and answers the secretary with this leitmotif: “Is it really urgent? Is it a matter of neurosurgery? or as usual the guy has boo-boos and he comes to piss us off!”

Any explanations from readers?

Addendum by Greg Mayer

The paper has already drawn attention on PubPeer. The following query was posted:

Could the authors and the journal explain the rationale behind the publication of this ‘case study’?

The authors replied, beginning with

This paper possesses a symbolic nature.

and went on from there, including the statement that “science” encompasses “human sciences”, which are not restricted to

the study of molecules, statistical figures, false negatives, false positives, clinical trials, biological aspects, or specific p-values such as 0.003, as well as percentages, meta-analyses, or observations made under a microscope.

Another commenter, tongue firmly in cheek, applauds that

At least informed consent was obtained from all participants. No violations of research ethics on Saturn.

The authors, in a second reply, say their paper focuses on situations that are “fictitious.” You can’t make this stuff up, folks!

I think the paper is neither a fake (intended to get the authors publication credit for nonsense), nor a hoax (seeing what nonsense can get published), nor a parody (making fun of someone else’s nonsense by mimicking it). Rather, it is akin to science fiction, using an imaginary situation to explore real world situations. A case report journal, though, is certainly an odd place for such fiction!

The journals Science and Nature politicize science over the recent election

November 14, 2024 • 9:30 am

It is surely within the ambit of scientific journals to take stands on issues that affect the fields they cover, but endorsing political candidates is a dangerous matter. In 2020, for example, Nature endorsed Joe Biden for President (a first for them). It did not change the readers’ views of Biden, but it eroded the credibility of both the journal and science in general. This is according to a study by Floyd Zhang published in Nature Human Behavior, and is summarized in a later issue of Nature:

Overall, the study provides little evidence that the endorsement changed participants’ views of the candidates. However, showing the endorsement to people who supported Trump did significantly change their opinion of Nature. When compared with Trump supporters who viewed Nature’s formatting announcement, Trump supporters who viewed the endorsement rated Nature as significantly less well informed when it comes to “providing advice on science-related issues facing the society” (Fig. 1). Those who viewed the endorsement also rated Nature significantly lower as an unbiased source of information on contentious or divisive issues. There was no comparable positive effect for Biden supporters.

Zhang also found that viewing Nature’s political endorsement reduced Trump supporters’ willingness to obtain information about COVID-19 from Nature by 38%, when compared with Trump supporters who saw the formatting announcement. This finding echoes other work on how partisanship influences interest in scientific information5. Furthermore, Trump supporters who viewed the endorsement also rated US scientists, in general, as much less well informed and unbiased than did Trump supporters who viewed the formatting article. There was no comparable positive effect for Biden supporters.

This lesson was apparently lost on Nature‘s American competitor, Science, which (like the new Nature article below it), is calling for scientists to hold Trump to account on things like climate change, pandemics, and so on.  That’s fair enough, but then they politicize the whole thing by demonizing Trump from the outset, doing exactly the thing that will erode confidence in the journal and its pronouncements.

The article was written by Science‘s editor, Holden Thorp. He considers himself “progressive,” and has debated my partner in crime, Luana Maroja, on the role of politics in science (see also this video).  Thorp also devoted a column in his journal to criticizing a paper on which both Luana and I were coauthors, a paper on “In Defense of Merit in Science” by Abbot et al.

Click to read:

Here’s the way it starts, guaranteed to alienate Republicans:

The reelection of Donald Trump for a second, nonconsecutive term as US president—mirroring only Grover Cleveland’s 22nd and 24th presidencies after the Civil War—underscores a reality: Although his success stems partly from a willingness to tap into xenophobia, sexism, racism, transphobia, nationalism, and disregard for truth, his message resonates with a large portion of the American populace who feel alienated from America’s governmental, social, and economic institutions. These include science and higher education. Winning back this disaffected group will require science leaders to foster and promote a more inclusive scientific landscape for all Americans and lay out how science can be successful under Trump.

How willing will readers be to take these lessons to heart if they are Republicans? (Granted, most readers, who are budding scientists, will be Democrats, but then they don’t need these lessons.) Who wants to be implicitly told that they are xenophobes, racists, sexists, and nationalists?

And there’s a statement whose first part is tautological and the second part is debatable:

Make no mistake, the political assaults on science stem largely from those who seek to undermine the truth for political gain, and this dynamic is the major contributor to declining trust in science.

Some of the declining trust in science is also due to scientists’ changing their views, as during the COVID crisis, but much of that was simply due to the acquisition of new information and is not the fault of scientists. We are supposed to change our minds when new data undercuts our previous stands. But that erosion is not due to scientists “undermining the truth for political gain”. There is no mention of Nature’s contribution to declining trust in science by simply endorsing a candidate in 2020.  Other erosion of trust occurs when scientists or journals make statements like “human biological sex is a spectrum,” something that is flatly wrong and contradicts what people already know.

The article above, then, is not only bound to do precisely what it’s decrying—eroding trust in science by politicizing it—but is also disingenuous by neglecting the causes of distrust in science that come from progressive politics, as well as from the infusion of politics in science.

The rest of the article is anodyne, urging scientists to change their minds when they’re wrong, not to engage in falsifying results (duh!), and not to blame “their students and postdocs for problems” (duh again!).  The article ends by taking another swipe at an administration that hasn’t yet begun:

The attacks [on science] are going to keep coming and probably accelerate for the next 4 years. As painful as that will be, it’s up to the scientific community to respond in a way that makes those blows less successful.

The “four years” implies that the Trump administration will be bad for science. That may well be true, but we don’t know yet! Here we have journals playing Chicken Little.

Nature, already stung by its endorsement of Biden in 2020, didn’t endorse anyone in the last election, but might as well have endorsed Biden if you read this article. The piece also contains a survey showing that nearly 40% of  Nature readers in the U.S. would consider moving out of the country if Trump won. I wonder how many actually will move?

At any rate, the new Nature article below also evinces fear of the Trump administration, but does so in a fear-mongering way that I wouldn’t employ were I editor. It also gives anodyne advice. But it’s not as bad as the Science article:

A few excerpts:

When Donald Trump was first elected to the US presidency in 2016, Nature advised scientists to constructively engage with Trump. We said that the incoming president’s contrary approach to evidence, among other things, had no place in modern society. We added that the science community had a responsibility to step up and work with the president and his new administration so that they govern on the basis of research and evidence.

. . .The United States has now re-elected Donald Trump as president. Many researchers have told Nature that they are in despair, seeing the election result as a step backwards for facts, reason, knowledge and civility.

Last week, Nature said that the United States needs a leader who respects evidence. The incoming administration must embody this principle. On behalf of the research community, we will hold it to account if it falls short.

We hope that the incoming administration will govern in the best interests of the United States. That means holding on to the best of what the previous administration did, and not returning to some of the policies of the first Trump presidency.

Is it journalism to cite the “many scientists who are in despair” without mentioning that some scientists (granted, a minority, given our political leanings) are happy?  This is a slanted take.

The article then calls out the Trump administration (properly) for its weakness on recignizing climate change and for threatening to defund the World Health Organization.  But then it becomes anodyne like the Science article above, and ends on a lame note:

The research community must engage with the new administration with courage, tenacity, strength and unity. At the same time, scientists in the United States must know that they are not alone. The research community is a global one. We need to stand together and stand strong for the challenges that are to come. And that will mean continuing to speak facts to power.

“Stand together” clearly means “stand together against the Trump administration,” and I think that’s obvious to any reader with eyes.

Readers here know that I abhor Trump, but even more than that I abhor the ideological erosion of my beloved science. In four years Trump will be gone (hopefully to be replaced by someone who’s not mentally ill), but any damage done to the reputation of science by journals rushing to take sides will last a lot longer.

Shorter version of the ideological capture of science funding by DEI

July 26, 2024 • 10:00 am

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.