More ideology in science: DEI infects the process for handing out scientific grants

July 22, 2024 • 9:40 am

I held the same National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for about 30 years, renewing it under a competitive process every three years. It was onerous (I took six months to write each renewal application), but at least you could be sure that the proposals were judged on merit. Sure, you had to check a box with your “race” (the NIH considers that a social construct), but that was for record-keeping purposes only  and, during the times I sat in on evaluation committees, ethnicity and identity were never even discussed when ranking proposals.

That has now changed, not only with the National Institutes of Health, but with all the major funding agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).  All of these agencies, though legally forbidden to take into account the ethnicity of those who apply for grants, or to boost those of minority status, have found ways around that restriction, adhering to today’s DEI Zeitgeist.  This of course devalues scientific merit in proposals—a dangerous strategy if the aim of science funding is to promote the understanding of nature (with health benefits to humans in the case of the NIH). Giving grants based on minority status rather than merit also reduces the public’s trust in science.  The situation has become so fraught that I am positively elated that I no longer have to write grants, as I’m not sure how to write a diversity statement, and am opposed to them in general.

A new paper in SSRN (“Social Science Research Network”) calls attention to the pervasive attempts to circumvent race-based funding in the federal government, and outlines the problems that such attempts produce. You can go to the paper’s website by clicking on the screenshot below, or you can download the pdf here (go to “download without registration” at the upper right).

You’ll probably recognize a couple of names among the authors:

If you want a short take, you see below a summary and preview by Krylov and Tanzman from Heterodox STEM (click headline to read).  But I’ll be citing excerpts from the long paper itself.  It has not escaped my notice that the government’s attempt to circumvent restrictions on race-based funding parallel those now used by universities after the Supreme Court ruled out race-based admissions.

I’ll summarize the paper’s main points, indenting quotes and putting the main points under headers of my devising. All bolding is mine.

What is DEI?

While no reasonable person can oppose the morality of trying to to give every American equal opportunity to become a scientist (and that starts with birth), the mandates that condition federal funding call not for equal opportunity, but for equity—“equal outcomes” so that minoritized groups—not just races, but LGBTQ+, the disabled, women, and anybody said to be disadvantaged because of oppression—are represented in proportion to their occurrence in the general population. Here’s the authors’ construal of DEI as it is actually implemented by the government:

Actual DEI policies do not promote viewpoint diversity, equitable treatment of individuals based on their accomplishments, or equal opportunity for individuals regardless of their identity (e.g., race, sex, ethnicity). It can scarcely be questioned (Krylov and Tanzman, 2024) that DEI programs today are driven by an ideology, an offshoot of Critical Social Justice1 (CSJ) (Pluckrose, 2021; Deichmann 2023). DEI programs elevate the collective above the individual. They group people into categories defined by immutable characteristics (race, sex, etc.) and classify each group as either “privileged” or “victimized,” as “oppressor” or “oppressed.” The goals of DEI programs are to have each group participate in proportion to their fraction of thepopulation in every endeavor of society and to obtain proportionate outcomes from those endeavors. Disproportionate outcomes (with respect to science, such outcomes as publications, funding, citations, salaries, and awards), or disparities, are axiomatically ascribed to systemic factors, such as systemic racism and sexism, without consideration of alternative explanations (Sowell, 2019, 2023). Claims, such as “The presence of disparities is proof of systemic racism” and “Meritocracy is a myth” are propagated widely despite the vagueness of the claims and their lack of support by concrete data. Similarly, tenets that are central to DEI ideology—such as diversity is excellence, diverse teams outperform homogenous teams, and the advancement of women is impeded by biases—lack a robust evidence base, particularly when applied to science (Abbot et al., 2023; Krylov and Tanzman, 2023; Ceci et al., 2021, 2023).

Note that several important claims, including the assertion that underrepresentation of minoritized groups is due to ongoing systemic racism (which would be illegal) and that diverse scientific teams consistently outperform more homogeneous ones. Neither claim is supported by evidence.

My own opinion (and that of the authors; see below) is to give as many people as possible the opportunity to do science, and choose for advancement those who do the best work.  That might not result in equity, but it does allow equal opportunity. I recognize, of course, that we’re a long way from giving different groups equal opportunity, which must begin at or even before birth. But equal opportunity is the only permanent way to solve the problem of disproportional representation in science (or any endeavor). Effecting that will be hard, and requires immense effort, money, and empirical tests of educational systems, but once it’s in place, unequal representation would reflect other things, like behavioral differences or differential preferences among groups.

How do funding agencies employ DEI? This takes place through the use of required statements and plans to enhance diversity that must accompany grant proposals. Here are two examples; the first is from an HIH program:

Recruitment Plan to Enhance Diversity (NOT-OD-20-031):

The applicant must provide a recruitment plan to enhance diversity. Include outreach strategies and activities designed to recruit prospective participants from diverse backgrounds, e.g., those from groups described in the Notice of NIH’s Interest in Diversity. Describe the specific efforts to be undertaken by the program and how the proposed plan reflects past experiences in recruiting individuals from underrepresented groups.

New applications must include a description of plans to enhance recruitment, including the strategies that will be used to enhance the recruitment of trainees from nationally underrepresented backgrounds and may wish to include data in support of past accomplishments.

Renewal applications must include a detailed account of experiences in recruiting individuals from underrepresented groups during the previous funding period, including successful and unsuccessful recruitment strategies. Information should be included on how the proposed plan reflects the program’s past experiences in recruiting individuals from underrepresented groups.

For those individuals who participated in the research education program, the report should include information about the duration of education and aggregate information on the number of individuals who finished the program in good standing. Additional information on the required Recruitment Plan to Enhance Diversity is available at Frequently Asked Questions: Recruitment Plan to Enhance Diversity (Diversity FAQs).

Applications lacking a diversity recruitment plan will not be reviewed. [Emphasis ours.]

And one from NASA:

The assessment of the Inclusion Plan will be based on […] the extent to which the Inclusion Plan demonstrated awareness of systemic barriers to creating inclusive working environments that are specific to the proposal team. [Emphasis ours.]

But to those of us in science, there are no systemic (codified) barriers to advancement, although of course there is still some racism. But those who make the claim of systemic barriers have to ignore the ways universities are falling all over each other to recruit qualified women and members of minority groups.

Why are these requirements bad for science?  Besides taking up an enormous amount of time confecting such statements, which are surely often deliberately misleading, they are palpably illegal, violating civil rights laws:

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 illegal discriminatory hiring practices, they erode public trust in science, and they contribute to administrative overload. “Diversity,” which is sometimes described as “diverse backgrounds” or “diverse views,” actually refers to select underrepresented identity groups (Honeycutt, 2020; Brint and Frey, 2023; Brint, 2023).

. . .The demand to provide an inclusion plan without evidence that there is a need for one is compelled speech and an intrusion of ideology into the conduct of science. Forcing scientists to “acknowledge” and “show awareness of” systemic racism and “barriers to participation” in their institutions and teams (Nahm and Watkins, 2023), even if none can be documented, misrepresents reality, is an offense to scientists who have worked hard to establish fair and transparent hiring practices in their institutions, and is inconsistent with scientific professional ethics and, indeed, the very vocation of the scientist.

The paragraphs below identify what’s illegal. I’m fairly convinced that these DEI requirements do indeed violate civil-rights laws, and that the only reason they persist—just as DEI requirements for job applications in academia persist—is that nobody has challenged them in the courts. To do so, you need “standing”, that is, you must demonstrate that you have been injured by these requirements. And anybody doing that would be forever demonized in academia, not to mention tied up in legal battles that would last years.

The interaction of DEI with the legal system is troubling. First, the demands that PIs “acknowledge” systemic racism and “barriers to participation” in their institutions (Nahm and Watkins, 2023), and insert land acknowledgements in their scientific publications (NSF, n.d.(b)) raise grave legal concerns. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States strictly forbids compelling people to say things they do not believe are true. The circumstances under which government may condition grants or benefits on attesting that one holds a certain belief (e.g., “acknowledges” the truth to be this or that with respect to a contested matter), though somewhat obscure, are certainly limited (Supreme Court, 2013). At a minimum, government’s engaging in such conditioning on contested questions raises significant civil liberties concerns and is in tension with core First Amendment values.

Second, there are strict laws against discrimination on the basis of race and gender, both at federal and state levels. Thus, invoking DEI explicitly attempts to circumvent existing laws. Any actual “barriers” or “systemic discrimination” can be prosecuted under existing anti-discrimination statutes, following due process.

Third, even more worrying is that successful applications require principal investigators and their home institutions to engage in practices that are likely illegal.  For example, DEI “equity”-based plans for equal gender or racial participation can, in practice, only be implemented by gender- and race-preferential hiring. This is strictly illegal under civil rights employment law (Title VI; Title IX; EEOC, n.d.).

How do funding agencies get around the illegality of this process?

Funding agencies attempt to circumvent the laws prohibiting them from basing funding decisions on race or ethnicity by cloaking DEI requirements in nebulous language (NIH, 2019; Renoe, 2023) and by disguising racial preferences and even quotas as “diversity of backgrounds” and unequal treatment as “broadening participation of underrepresented groups.” The determination of which groups to treat as underrepresented and worthy of special treatment is highly subjective, as Americans hold many identities and can be split up in a multitude of ways. In practice, implementing equity-focused DEI programs means preferring members of some groups over others (Kendi, 2019). To paraphrase Orwell, all groups are equal, but some groups are more equal than others (Orwell, 1945).

The evaluations of submitted DEI plans are not open to public scrutiny. Agencies run diversity-focused programs but refuse to give guidance on how to determine eligibility for them; they are careful to state that compliance with all applicable employment laws is the responsibility of the host institution. However, DEI metrics, which must be reported annually to the funding agency, are criteria for renewal (NIH, 2023b). It remains unclear how a principal investigator is supposed to be nondiscriminatory in hiring and at the same time fulfill de facto DEI quotas for renewal. In this way, programs are developed that are de jure “open to everyone,” but de facto allocated according to identity metrics, reminiscent of the pre-civil rights era in the U.S.

Why is this happening?  The proximate reason for DEI requirements is government regulations (see below), but the ultimate reason is the “racial reckoning” taking place in America, a reckoning speeded up by the death of George Floyd and extending now to many minority groups save those who have done well, like Jews and Asians.  The paper doesn’t mention ultimate causes, but does show several federal requirements that gave rise to DEI mandates:

In fact, the mandate that funding agencies implement DEI comes directly from the White House. Executive Order 13985, titled “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” directed all federal agencies to allocate resources to DEI and to incorporate “equity” into their decision making as a principle (EO 13985).

. . .If “consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals” means equality of opportunity and equitable treatment of people’s accomplishments based on their merit, we’re all for it. However, the Order goes on to make clear that the goal is not to achieve equal opportunity and equitable treatment, but to achieve equal outcomes for identity groups. The Order conflates racism in the past with disparities in the present and equitable treatment with equal outcomes. It attributes unequal participation in the present to alleged discrimination in the present. It charges the Domestic Policy Council with the task “[of] remov[ing] systemic barriers,” thus implicitly asserting the existence of such barriers in the present. It calls for “redress[ing] inequities,” “affirmatively advancing equity,” and “allocating Federal resources in a manner that increases investment in underserved communities, as well as individuals from those communities.” Whatever is to be said about such goals in relation to, say, social welfare programs, we question their value and appropriateness for science funding.

The authors note that in this executive order “merit,” “excellence” and “achievement” are not mentioned at all.

There is one more federal order:

The goal of promoting “equity” in science is reinforced in Executive Order 14091 (EO 14091). Titled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” it explains how equity is to be implemented in various domains, and specifically calls for the “promot[ion] [of] equity in science.” It lays out specific DEI requirements for federal agencies, including NASA and NSF, such as the following:

The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Director of the National Science Foundation […] (agency heads) shall, within 30 days of the date of this order, ensure that they have in place an Agency Equity Team within their respective agencies to coordinate the implementation of equity initiatives and ensure that their respective agencies are delivering equitable outcomes for the American people.

Both of these are orders are enforced by the government’s Office of Management and Budget, which monitors agencies to ensure that they meet DEI concerns.

What is to be done? The purpose of scientific research is not to be a lever for creating social justice. That’s the job of the government, but the government cannot violate the law to effect the change we need. In lieu of creating new law, they have to effect desired change within existing legal boundaries.  My own view, which is echoed by the authors, is to hold scientific merit as the overweening criterion for funding research.

At the same time, it would be churlish to ignore the palpable inequality in American society, an inequality that deprives some groups of simple access to doing science, often because their backgrounds and the existence of past racism or bigotry. This leads to the need for equal opportunity, something that Americans apparently lack the stomach for. Equity has become  a quick fix, a way to tell us that we’re good people, but it’s neither a permanent fix nor, in science, a way to best advance the field.  So ditch the DEI requirements mandating equity and do this:

Systemic disparities in opportunity, especially those related to socio-economic status, are real and well documented. Solid family structure, access to healthcare, good nutrition, an environment free from violence and drugs, high-quality preschool and K–12 education are necessary to nurture the next generation of scientists, but they are not equally available to all Americans. Rather than attempt to institute “equity” by mandating proportional participation through the manipulation of grant funding, we believe that increased efforts should be made to promote equality of opportunity as early in people’s lives as possible so that young people who aspire to standing in any field, including scientific fields, can succeed on merit (Abbot et al., 2023; Abbot et al., 2024; Loury, 2024).

It is sad that to write something like that, or the paper itself, is an act of courage in today’s political climate. But if you’re committed to advancing science, with equality of opportunity as a moral ancillary, then one must judge science on merit alone while working politically to eliminate differences in opportunity.

In the end, DEI statements should be no more than this: “This project will not discriminate against anybody on the grounds of race, religion, disability status, gender, or sexual identity or orientation.” End of story.

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 22, 2024 • 8:15 am

Send ’em in folks; we seem to be facing a chronic shortage of photos. I believe I have two batches left after this. Today’s photos come from Uwe Mueller, whose IDs and notes are indented. Click on his photos to enlarge them.

These were, as Uwe notes, “Taken near my place in the Bergisches Land, Germany.”

This adorable small bird is a Eurasian coot (Fulica atra). They look really sweet with their black outfit and their distinct white headplate and white bill.

But don’t let their appearance fool you. These are fierce little birds and very territorial. Another fellow coot gets in their way? They react immediately and forcefully:

They also don’t shy away from attacking bigger birds. This European herring gull (Larus argentatus) circled for quite some time over our local pond, waiting to see if it could grab a careless chick that got too far away from its mother. The coot yelled a warning…:

… and then went for it. The little chicken on the left side is not a coot (anyone got an idea what it is?), however it could call itself lucky to have been close to the adult coot:

Seagulls are known for their tenacity when it comes to chasing potential food. But this one finally had to fly away empty-handed. Every time it came down several coots went after it:

Another bird whose presence is not appreciated by other birds is the Common buzzard (Buteo buteo). We see them quite regularly circling through the sky. But as soon as he lands on a tree, the Eurasian magpies (Pica pica) will gather around him and watch him from close distance (which could mean even less than 3 feet). The magpies know exactly that the buzzard is too slow to catch them, so they come really close to him:

Their preferred game to annoy him is to fly from one branch to the other directly in front of his nose. He knows he can’t do anything about it because they are too quick for him:

So at one point he just gives in and leaves:

Magpies are pestering the buzzard with their little fun games, but they don’t attack him (at least not that I am aware of). Crows do, however. Here’s one Carrion crow (Corvus corone) divebombing a buzzard:

Monday: Hili dialogue

July 22, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the beginning of a new “work” week: it’s Monday, July 22, 2024, and National Mango Day (didn’t we just have one of those?)  I believe it’s mango season in India now, but it’s too bloody hot to go there. Here is what we are missing—and mangos are my favorite fruit.

SnapMeUp, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Onion Rings Day (I love ’em!), International Ragweed Day, National Chocolate Eclair Day, World Rainforest Day, Pi Approximation Day (see also March 14), as 22/7 is a good approximation of Pi, and Ratcatcher’s Day, also celebrated on June 26.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz.

This was all written before Biden’s resignation yesterday. Everything’s shaking out right now and I don’t have much to say. My own favorite, Gretchen Whitmer, said she won’t be running, and everyone else seems to be anointing Harris as Biden’s successor.  It’s considered almost heresy to want, as I would do, for an open primary in which the candidates debate in a group, and then again, and then the electors choose the candidate. But it’s almost too late for that to happen. I also find it telling that in the rush to endorse Harris, Barack Obama remained silent. The NYT says that’s not because Obama is anti-Harris, but wishes to remain an elder statesman in the party:

“We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead,” Mr. Obama wrote in the post. “But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”

Republicans interpreted that as a snub. But people close to Mr. Obama, who has positioned himself as an impartial elder statesman above intraparty machinations, said not to read too much into it — and had no alternate candidate in mind when he made the decision not to immediately endorse Ms. Harris.

At any rate, there’s a lot to come in the next few months (for one of them I’ll be in South Africa), and perhaps a few surprises. Stay tuned.

*The NYT discusses how Biden’s age problem, and the questions it’s raised in the minds of Democratic voters, may be endangering Congressional Democrats as well. The problem is that candidates who endorse Biden are seen to be tainted by that endorsement.

Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat seeking re-election, has noticed voters returning to the same question in recent days as she crisscrosses her state to make the case for her campaign: Does she think President Biden can win in November, and should he even try?

“Typically, I’ll go to an event; I’ll share my remarks,” Ms. Baldwin said in an interview on Friday at a newly opened campaign office in southwestern Wisconsin. “And then people come up one by one and — at first in a whisper — are really concerned.”

A soft-spoken two-term senator who has carved out a reputation for her cross-party appeal, Ms. Baldwin easily cruised to victory in 2018, and her race this year was never expected to be ultracompetitive, even in this crucial swing state. But rising concerns about Mr. Biden’s age and fitness to run have introduced new risks for Democratic candidates like Ms. Baldwin just 100 days out from Election Day, imperiling even seats that were once considered relatively safe for the party.

That has left Democrats already anxious about losing the White House to former President Donald J. Trump contemplating the prospect of widespread losses in Congress that could leave the party locked out of power altogether during a Trump presidency and well beyond.

In recent days, as Democratic leaders have privately pressed Mr. Biden to step aside, two other senators up for re-election, both in the tightest races in the nation — Senators Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio — have called on Mr. Biden to step aside. It comes as Democrats have received polling suggesting that voters distrust elected officials who vouch for Mr. Biden’s mental capacity and endorse his candidacy.

This is a problem because such candidates are in a bind: they want to look loyal to the sitting administration but have their own seats to worry about.  I guess if I were one of them, I would be honest and talk to Biden directly, but tell voters something like, “I’m concerned and I’ve discussed it with President Biden.”

*Even though the Republican God almost lost his life to a shooter armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, you know Republicans aren’t thinking twice about banning those weapons, or even fully automatic weapons, from the street.  Yet they have been successfully banned in my own state.

Assassination attempts against U.S. presidents have led to major gun laws, but the July 13 shooting at a rally for former President Donald Trump appears unlikely to be a pivotal moment in the divisive U.S. gun debate.

In the days since Trump narrowly escaped a bullet fired from a would-be assassin’s rifle, the two sides in America’s argument over gun rights remain at odds over whether firearms are the major problem leading to such violence.

President Biden and some of the nation’s leading gun-control groups last week increased calls for a nationwide ban on AR-15s, the gun used in the assassination attempt at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally. Republicans and gun-rights groups pushed back, saying that the issue wasn’t the gun but rather a massive security failure. Both Trump and his vice presidential running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, left gun policy out of their convention speeches.

The assassination attempt at Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally has reignited the debate over gun policies. PHOTO: JEFF SWENSEN/GETTY IMAGES

Attacks on American presidents, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life, have led to some of the biggest overhauls to gun laws in the country’s history. But in this hyperpartisan era, now in the midst of a contentious campaign, few expect that Trump and his party will waver in their robust support for gun rights.

“Everybody gets into a ruckus, but by the time they get around to doing anything, it all falls by the wayside,” said Jerry Henry, executive director of GA2A, a prominent gun-rights group in Georgia. “This is not going to be a watershed moment.”

The Republican National Committee’s platform this year made only passing reference to Second Amendment rights and took no specific policy positions regarding firearms, a move that sparked concern from gun-rights groups. With the exception of 2020, when the convention didn’t adopt a platform during the pandemic, RNC platforms for decades included discussion of gun policies and positions.

The Second Amendment’s call for a “well regulated militia” is now deeply outmoded, but try taking the guns out of the cold, dead hands of the GOP.  These weapons have no use in private self-defense, and are prized by shooters like Thomas Matthew Crooks.  Clearly no legislation can take place on the national level (the GOP House would never allow it, but Illinois recently and successfully banned assault rifles, including the AR-15, and the Supreme Court left the law in place.  Thus there’s no issue about the Constitutionality of such a ban; all it takes is the will of the people. Sadly, that is lacking.

*The Times of Israel reports on Israel’s strike on Yemen—a strike following a Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv that killed one person—in greater depth than before.

The Israeli Air Force on Sunday released footage showing its airstrikes a day earlier against the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida in western Yemen, which came following a deadly drone attack on Tel Aviv Thursday overnight carried out by the Iran-backed group.

The video showed missiles launched by IAF fighter jets striking four large container cranes at the port used to unload shipments.

The IAF also released footage showing fighter jets being refueled amid the operation, dubbed “Outstretched Arm,” as well as the arrival of some of the aircraft back at Israeli airbases following the strike.

You can see some of that footage at the site.

The strike, carried out by dozens of Israeli aircraft, targeted fuel depots and energy infrastructure at the port, in addition to the cranes.

The Israeli strike group included F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter jets, reconnaissance aircraft, and refueling planes — the latter of which was due to the target being some 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) from Israel, making it one of the farthest-ever actions carried out by the IAF.

According to the military, the strike on the fuel depot was a major blow to the Houthi economy, and the cranes being taken out of service prevents the group from bringing in more Iranian weapons via the port that have been used to target Israel, along with commercial and military ships in the Red Sea.

Saturday’s strike on Hodeida Port used more force than the IAF needed, aimed at sending a message of deterrence as well as causing financial damage to the Iran-backed group and impeding its ability to import weapons.

Strikes carried out by an American-led coalition in Yemen have only targeted Houthi military infrastructure, and not sites that are also used by civilians, such as the Hodeida Port, which is also used to bring in humanitarian aid to the war-torn country in addition to the Iranian weapon shipments.

The Israeli rationale is that this is not a civilian target, but, by virtue of bringing in Iranian weapons, is a huge boon to the terrorists (apparently 6 civilians were killed in the massive bombing). And of course the Houthi are attacking not just Israeli ships, but seem to be targeting ships willy-nilly with respect to their nationality, all to prevent traffic through the Red Sea. Given the nexus between Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza, I despair of these hostilities ever coming to an end. And remember that Iran will soon have nuclear weapons. . .

Here’s a map of the area and where the strikes took place. It’s from the Wall Street Journal:

*On her Substack site “The Truth Fairy,” Abigail Shrier informs us of a new law in California, and when the news of it gets around Gavin Newsom can kiss a Democratic Presidential nomination goodbye (h/t Rosemary). The piece even has a preface by Shrier about why she considers this story so important, but you can read that yourself (it’s free, but subscribe if you read often).

The “SAFETY Act,” AB 1955, signed by California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, legally forbids schools from adopting any policy that would force them to disclose “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent.” Schools may not, as a matter of policy, inform parents of a child’s new gender identity unless the child volunteers her approval. The law also prohibits schools from punishing any school employee found to have “supported a pupil” hurtling down a path toward risky and irreversible hormones and surgeries.

The law effectively shuts down the local parents’ rights movement in California by eliminating its most important tool: the ability to organize at the community level to stop schools from deceiving them. No longer can families hope to convince their school boards to require schools to notify parents that their daughter, Sophie, has been going by “Sebastian” in class; that her teacher, school counselor, and principal have all been celebrating Sebastian’s transgender identity; that they’ve been letting her use the boys’ bathroom and reifying the sense that she is “really a boy.”

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the law supports the priming of minor children for a secret life with a new gender identity. This includes having school-aged children participate in sexualized discussions and make identity declarations with school faculty, which are often actively hidden from the child’s parents. Elon Musk called the law “the final straw” for families and announced his intention to move both SpaceX and X, two of California’s most prominent tech companies, out of the state as a result. “The goal [of] this diabolical law,” he tweeted, “is to break the parent-child relationship and put the state in charge of your children.”

While researching my book, Irreversible Damage, and in the four years since its publication, I have talked to hundreds of parents whose daughters suddenly identified as transgender. Many of their daughters were encouraged in this revelation by school counselors and teachers in school districts across America. One parent told me a California school counselor had given her son the address of an LGBTQ youth shelter and suggested he emancipate himself from parents who were loving but skeptical of his sudden transgender identity. Another recent California law, AB 665, would have made reclaiming that young man from the youth center all but impossible because he was over the age of twelve.

In California, instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity has been mandatory for all public school students K–12 since the passage of the Healthy Youth Act in 2016. Because such instruction typically occurs within the required “anti-bullying curriculum” rather than the sex education curriculum, parents cannot elect that their children opt out of what is, in practice, a full-bore indoctrination into gender ideology.

When a child then predictably decides in class that she too may be nonbinary or transgender, this revelation will often trigger schools’ gender support plan, effectively a school-wide conspiracy to promote the child’s new name and gender identity without tipping off Mom and Dad. Official documents and emails and report cards are sent to parents to preserve the child’s birth name and pronouns, concealing the social transition from parents.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think the parents do have a right to know. After all, this is crucial information about their child that a parent would want and need to know. Further, it makes the schools complicit in “affirmative care”, and parents are left out of the loop. That seems to me unfair given that minors may not have the maturity to make such a decision.  Schools simply cannot act in loco parentis in such cases.  Shrier adds:

Recent polling shows that voters across the political spectrum believe that schools should be required to inform parents if their children are using different gender pronouns at school than they are at home.

But California Democrats appear ready to drag their party down with them. Parents’ best hope may be federal legislation mandating parental notification before a school can reassign a child’s name and gender. Candidates for president and vice president ought to be asked whether they would support such a bill.

Indeed they should! This is exactly the kind of action that is costing Democrats any chance to keep the Presidency, much less the Senate.

*An emotional support alligator—the only one in the world—was kidnapped by pranksters, and animal control mistakenly released the gator into the wild. This was in May, and here’s a video from the time. Here’s a story:

In ordinary times, the social media accounts devoted to Wally Gator document the nearly six-foot-long emotional support alligator’s adventures around Pennsylvania: visiting nursing homes, splashing around in Philadelphia’s Love Park fountain, meeting with the mayor and smiling contentedly in his red harness as various admirers hug and hold him.

In recent days, however, they’ve been overtaken with pleas for help: Wally is missing in Georgia, where his owner Joie Henney says he was kidnapped, recovered and released into a swamp.

Henney and Wally were visiting friends in Brunswick when someone took the gator from his pen in the early morning hours of April 21, the Wallygator Facebook page posted on Saturday.

“Wally was stolen by some jerk who likes to drop alligators off into someone’s yard to terrorize them,” the account posted the following day. “Once discovered they called [Department of Natural Resources], DNR then called a trapper. The trapper came and got Wally and dropped him off in a swamp with about 20 other alligators that same day.”

A short news video:

This is very sad, and, as I just found out by an Internet trawl, Wally still hasn’t been found.  But the gator is chipped, so he could be identified. But who’s going to go into the water and check the gators for chips?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn. Yes, the mole was saved and returned to the wild.

Hili: Szaron brought a baby mole to the verandah.
A: Is it alive?
Hili: Yes, it holed up behind the basket.
A: I’m running to save it.
In Polish:
Hili: Szaron przyniósł małego kreta na werandę!
Ja: Żyje?
Hili: Tak, schował się za koszykiem.
Ja: Już biegnę go ratować.

And a photo showing both Szaron and Baby Kulka (Kulka to the right):

*******************

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor:

From Things With Faces:

For some reason I can’t embed this video tweet from Masih, but if you click on the shot below, you can see it on “X”:

Two marine tweets from my feed:

From Malcolm, the wonderful reflexes of cats:

A lovely scene, retweeted by Ricky Gervais, from his fantastic series “After Life.”  Here Gervais visits his dad, who has dementia, in his care facility, and dad has a moment of recollection in which he recognizes Gervais as his son,

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, cats scatter during a thumderclap:

A lovely photograph from Mars:

Biden has pulled out of the Presidential race!

July 21, 2024 • 1:22 pm

From the NYT (click to read), but first I’m gonna say that yes, I was right again:

Excerpt:

President Biden, 81, abandoned his bid for re-election and threw the 2024 presidential contest into chaos on Sunday, caving to relentless pressure from his closest allies to drop out of the race amid deep concerns that he is too old and frail to defeat former President Donald J. Trump.

After three weeks of often angry refusals to step aside, Mr. Biden finally yielded to a torrent of devastating polls, urgent pleas from Democratic lawmakers and clear signs that donors were no longer willing to pay for him to continue.

There’s more, but the race has suddenly become interesting. Will Kamala Harris replace him as the default candidate? (I hope not; I’m a Gretchen Whitmer fan.) Will Gavin Newsom throw his hat into the ring? Or will some dark horse emerge from the convention and go on to trounce Trump?

At this late date it’s probably too late to defeat Trump, but suddenly I feel hopeful again.

So who do you want to run?

Christina Buttons on “affirmative therapy” and social justice

July 21, 2024 • 12:55 pm

In this 45-minute video, Christina Buttons, an independent journalist who used to write for The Daily Wire but now has her own Substack site, discusses the gender fracas with the Triggernometry crew.  As you know, the Cass Review in the UK has considerably rolled back “affirmative care” for those pondering gender transition, and several European countries adhere to many of its recommendations. But the U.S. obstinately rejects the Cass Review. In fact, the Biden Administration has gotten the powerful and affirmative-care-supporting WPATH organization to eliminate minimum age limits for dispensing hormones or performing surgery.

The problem is, as Buttons argues, that there is really no evidence supporting the efficacy of “affirmative care”.  Yes, there are transgender people who have been happy with their transitions, and that’s great, but that’s not the same thing as testing the efficacy of affirmative care on young people who are troubled, weighing it against an alternative: normal, objective therapy that, in many cases, allows gender dysphoric adolescents to come out as gay. (Buttons notes that about 70% of young people with gender dysphoria come out as gay without affirmative therapy.) No surgery or hormones required there. And, as Andrew Sullivan has emphasized, the affirmative-care crew have even come out as opponents of the gay-rights movement, perhaps because they think that gay kids really should be transitioning.

Buttons’s explanation of why this medical brouhaha is so pervasive in the U.S., despite the lack of evidence that it works, is convincing, but I’ll let you listen yourself. And her own experience with mental distress as a teenager spurred her passion for ensuring that children like she was aren’t put onto a conveyer belt leading to hormone therapy and surgery. Her personal experiences, describing a desperate search to understand what was happening to her, explain why so many young women latch onto the “I’m-in-the-wrong body” explanation.

In the last five minutes, Buttons describes her detransitioning from being a Social Justice Warrior to an objective journalist who is horrified when ideologues twist or reject the facts.

Here are the YouTube notes:

Formerly a Democrat, Christina’s primary focus is gender transition, detransition and the lack of evidence supporting the gender-affirming model of care. She is passionate about debunking pseudoscience, and her articles are informed by experts in gender medicine research and adhere to the principles of evidence-based medicine (EBM). She also writes about ‘Social Justice’ ideology, mental health disorders, autism – she has Asperger’s Syndrome – and critical thinking.

h/t: Rosemary

Now the botanists have come for “offensive” Latin binomials for plants

July 21, 2024 • 11:30 am

I’ve written quite a bit about the brouhaha over species names of plants and animals considered offensive to biologists and laypeople.

Remember first that every species has two names: the Latin binomial that is standard for the scientific literature (e.g., Passer domesticus), and the “common” name, which varies among countries (e.g., “House sparrow” in English).  Along with the present climate of trying to purify the world from words considered offensive and hurtful, scientists have been trying to purify species names, too, changing common names to conform to modern ideology.

They’ve had mixed success with animals.  Common bird names, for example, are being purified, especially when birds are named after “bad people”, like John James Audubon. Anybody who had a connection with the slave trade is toast.  In fact, some have suggested that we simply ditch all common names derived from people’s names, and use descriptors of the bird’s appearance and location.  But even that has its drawbacks. Reader Lou Jost, for instance, pointed out that there is substantial benefits to conservation to name organisms after people, both in Latin binomials and common names:

. . . .  naming species after people has always been a powerful tool that biologists have used to thank their patrons, recognize their field assistants and honour their colleagues or loved ones. This is the highest honour that an individual biologist can bestow on a person; we have very little else at our disposal. In recent years some biologists have also used the naming of species to raise funds for research and, especially, for conservation. Guedes et al. mentioned the auctioning of names by the Rainforest Trust. Fundación EcoMinga2 —an Ecuadorian non-governmental organization that is managed by some of us — was the beneficiary of two naming auctions for species new to science3,4. With these funds the foundation was able to pay for journal publication fees so that the resulting articles would be open access as well as pay for some of the logistics of the investigations. Most importantly, we were able to use the funds to help to directly conserve many hundreds of hectares of the habitats of these very same species. In many megadiverse countries of the tropics, funds for these purposes are otherwise scarce or non-existent.

And of course common names vary from language to language, so the purification process occurs only in Anglophone countries.

The debate over the Latin binomials for animals has already been settled by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), which decided that ANIMAL bibnomials will not be changed, for those Latin names are standard throughout the literature, and changing them now would seriously screw up the literature. The ICZN did suggest, however, that Latin names proposed for newly described species not be such as “would be likely to give offense on any grounds. But that is only their suggestion, not a rule.  So you could still name a species like the blind cave beetle Anophthalmus hitleri (yes, it was named in der Führer’s honor), though I doubt anybody would do that now.  As for common names, the ICZN has no authority over them, and no recommendations.  I agree with their decision not to give new Latin names to already-described species, as this would seriously confuse the scientific literature. And of course what’s considered “offensive” changes as our morality and ideology changes. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, for instance, were slaveholders, and any Latin binomials with their names would be seen as “offensive”; as should “Washington, D.C.” site of the ill-named “Jefferson Memorial.”

But the ICZN decision goes for animals only. The botanists, on the other hand, have just decided that offensive Latin names for plants already given can be changed, and some will be changed. Click below to read the article in Nature:

Excerpts (bolding is mine):

For the first time, researchers have voted to eliminate scientific names of organisms because they are offensive. Botanists decided that more than 200 plants, fungi and algae species names should no longer contain a racial slur related to the word caffra, which is used against Black people and others mostly in southern Africa.

he changes voted on today at the International Botanical Congress in Madrid mean that plants such as the coast coral tree will, from 2026, be formally called Erythrina affra, instead of Erythrina caffra.

“We throughout had faith in the process and the majority global support of our colleagues, even though the outcome of the vote was always going to be close,” says Gideon Smith, a plant taxonomist at Nelson Mandela University (NMU) in Gqeberha, South Africa, who proposed the change along with fellow NMU taxonomist Estrela Figueiredo.

Their proposal takes species names based on the word caffra and its derivatives and replaces them with derivatives of ‘afr’ to instead recognize Africa. The measure passed in a tense secret ballot, with 351 votes in favour against 205 opposed.

Alina Freire-Fierro, a botanist at the Technical University of Cotopaxi in Latacunga, Ecuador, says it was good that the ‘caffra’ amendment was passed, because of the offence it causes. But its passage could open the door for other similar changes, she says. “This could potentially cause a lot of confusion and problems to users in many fields aside from botany.”

And that’s the rub! I can barely agree with the notion of changing “caffra” (a derivative of “kaffir”, a deeply insulting term for a black African—the African equivalent of the n-word), but only because changing “caffra” as the species name to “affra” will not cause much confusion. But in general I think the botanists, do what they will with the common names of plants (“Trumpet vine” may have to go), should go along with the ICZN, and leave Latin names of plants alone, both new and old. The damage to the scientific literature is potentially large. Yet the International Botanical Congress also seems to be vetting all newly suggested Latin names as well:

A second change to the rules for naming plants that aimed to address problematic names, such as those recognizing people who profited from the transatlantic slave trade, also passed — albeit in a watered-down form, says Kevin Thiele, a plant taxonomist at the Australia National University in Canberra, who made the proposal.

Scientists attending the Botanical Congress Nomenclature Section voted to create a special committee to deal with the ethics of names for newly described plants, fungi and algae. Species names — usually determined by the scientists who first describe them in the scientific literature — can now be rejected by the committee if deemed derogatory to a group of people. But this applies only to species names given after 2026, not to historical names that Thiele and others would like to see eliminated.

Still, this opens the door to Pecksniffian policing of plant names. I am not comfortable with someone vetting all suggested new binomials for offense, as “offense” is a slippery word, and a mere suggestion (like the ICZN’s) should suffice for guidance.  As for changing older names, well, the botanists have created a slippery slope here. If they can change one name, they might change others, as was suggested by Thiele in an earlier article:

Kevin Thiele, a plant taxonomist at the Australia National University in Canberra, expects that, if his proposal to create a mechanism to remove offensive names is approved, a relatively small number of species names would change. It’s likely that the argument for stability in species names would be outweighed only in cases in which plants are named after “sufficiently egregious” individuals, he says.

One change Thiele would like to see is to a genus of flowering shrubs, most of which have yellow blooms and are found in Australia, called Hibbertia, with new species routinely discovered. They are named after George Hibbert, an eighteenth-century English merchant who profited from the slave trade and fought abolition. “There should be a way of dealing with cases like Hibbert,” he says.

You know how these things go.  Once “caffra” is changed to “affra”, people like Thiele will create a movement to change older species names not derived from “kaffir”, because, after all, opposing changing the names of plants named after those in the slave trade (or who did other bad things) would be considered racist, and who wants to be called a racist? (Note that even the vote for “caffra”—>”affra” was pretty close.)  It is the loudest people, even when they’re in the minority, who ultimately win in this kind of endeavor.

These acts are performative only, for offensive species names don’t seem to affect whether people go into botany or zoology because of offensive Latin binomials (I haven’t heard of a single case). The Botanical Congress should simply make a suggestion to avoid offensive Latin binomials and then keep its sticky fingers off names that botanists suggests for new plants. And, after making the “caffra” change, they should vow that this one change will be the only older species name to be changed, and will also be the last one.

h/t: Ginger K.

Doctors Without Borders Accused of violating its own policy of political neutrality to impugn Israel, and my cessation of donations

July 21, 2024 • 9:40 am

A while back I was a big fan of Doctors without Borders (or “MSF”, for “Médecins Sans Frontières”).  It was put in my will to get a big bequest, and when I auctioned of a copy of Why Evolution is True, autographed by many famous scientists and nonbelievers, and illustrated and illuminated by Kelly Houle, every penny of the $10,000+ we got on eBay went to MSF.

Then I heard that the organization was anti-Israel (this was well before October 7 of last year). Checking up on the Internet, I found some confirmation of that claim, including several reports that MSF refused to cooperate with Israeli medical teams working in the same location. This, from the article below, may be what I remember (Rossin is named as “secretary general of MSF in the 1970s”)

Rossin recalled his experience in 2010 on a mission to Uganda when an MSF Holland contingent refused to interact with a fellow Israeli medical NGO team dispatched to help. Rossin remembered it as an episode of “one-way empathy,” where prejudice had poisoned the MSF team’s ability to cooperate with Israel in their shared goal of helping civilians.

(See also here, though MSF denies all these allegations.)

I subsequently wrote MSF asking them if they ever used Israeli doctors in their relief efforts.  I got no reply, even though in the letter I told them I was a donor. Their ignoring me after the dosh I’d given them was, well, uncharitable.

Now I can’t really criticize MSF’s humanitarian efforts: they’ve done a great deal of wonderful medical work during crises all over the world.  No, here I’m pointing out an article in Canada’s National Post that documents a pervasive anti-Israel—a former MSF secretary calls it “antisemitic”—attitude on the part of the organization, an attitude reflected in its refusal to criticize Hamas for the terrorist’s group own blocking or hijacking medical aid and turning Gaza hospitals into terror centers.  In the piece below, quite a few former directors and employees of MSF, not to mention donors, weigh in criticizing the organization on this account.

My own decision, based on what I’ve read over the years, is to stop donating to MSF, and I’ve taken them out of my will, replacing them with other humanitarian organizations (and that is a fair amount of dosh!).  Read the article below for yourself (click on the headline) and decide if you want to support them.  The article is free, and you can also find it archived here.

I’ll simply give a number of quotes from the article. According to its charter, MSF is supposed to be politically neutral and impartial, but former executives, donors, and employees say that when it comes to Israel, that’s not the case.

Former leaders and a major Canadian donor of Doctors Without Borders are distancing themselves from the venerable aid organization after its employees celebrated the October 7 atrocities, gave aid to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, ran a one-sided social media feed and internally circulated articles accusing Israel of creating Palestinian “death worlds.”

“To be frank, I was very, very, surprised because it’s not the MSF I knew,” Alain Destexhe, the secretary general of the organization, popularly known by its French acronym MSF, from 1991 to 1995, told National Post.

Destexhe said MSF’s messaging throughout the Israel-Hamas war is markedly different than past conflicts.

“We used to make statements, you know, in Bosnia and Rwanda, but not taking sides like this,” he said. “We always took into account the political context, but not to take sides from one group to another. In the Gaza War, I really got the feeling that MSF was totally biased.”

From a donor:

Destexhe wasn’t the only MSF loyalist to have an October 7 wake-up call. One major Canadian Jewish donor told the Post he urged his mother to support the group despite pushback from family members cautioning him against MSF’s reputation of being institutionally biased against Israel.

“I think most people know that they have a history of not being the friendliest towards Israel,” the philanthropist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Post.

He said he reassured his mother, following conversations with MSF Canada’s leadership, that the organization was duty-bound to be apolitical and strictly adhere to its mission of providing aid and observation. However, the inconsistencies between their initial promise and their treatment of Israel reached a boiling point in November 2023 when the patron confronted MSF Canada’s executives.

“I will be honest,” the donor told then-executive director Joe Belliveau in an email shared with the Post, “the more I review MSF public communications (Instagram, specifically), the evidence is overwhelming that the MSF stance has a pronounced bias. There is still not one single mention of the 200+ civilian hostages; not one mention of Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire into civilian centers, both of which are war crimes and violations of the Geneva conventions,” he wrote in late November.

. . . and a former MSF executive:

The donor’s November 2023 email rattled Byron Sonberg, who’d proudly served as MSF Canada’s treasurer for two years. He’d begun to sense the organization straying from its principle of impartiality, especially after he was copied on the donor’s email chain expressing growing frustration with the group. But the final straw came in mid-February 2024 when he, and hundreds of MSF global leaders, were forwarded an article: “Israeli necropolitics and the pursuit of health justice in Palestine.” [JAC: I found some of that article here; just read the “summary box”]

It was shared by Ruby Gill, president of MSF Canada’s board of directors, to provide “more insight” into the ongoing conflict. It argued that “framing Palestinian violence on October 7 as provocation and Israeli violence as response is ahistoric and indicates indifference to the everyday violence experienced by Palestinians.”

In other words, Israel “had it coming” on October 7. And the article was apparently sent out by MSF!  More:

Hamas receives a single passing reference in the piece, while Israel is cited nearly eighty times to bolster the claim that the Jewish State’s military response is unjustifiable. It accuses Israel of creating “death worlds” for Palestinians. The ideas expressed in the article, and the silence of MSF’s leadership, disturbed Sonberg, a self-described political moderate.

This concentration on Israel and complete neglect of Hamas is distressing in light of the fact that Hamas repeatedly impedes medical efforts in Gaza, including highjacking medical supplies, turning hospitals into terror bases, and even shooting Gazan civilians.

From another former MSM executive:

Richard Rossin, who served as secretary general of MSF in the 1970s and later co-founded Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), said that he perceived a tone shift within the organization several decades ago.

“I think it was perceptible around the beginning of the ‘80s,” Rossin told the Post by phone from his home in southern Israel. Antisemitism within MSF “began under the cover of anti-Zionism.”

See the quote from Rossin in the opening paragraphs.

One of the most distressing parts of this narrative is that MSF blamed Israel for the attack on the al-Ahli Hospital on October 17 of last year, an “attack” that did not involved Israel at all, but came from a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad that landed in the hospital’s parking lot, with the casualties greatly exaggerated by Hamas. MSF never retracted its accusation, which has been abandoned by everyone familiar with the evidence, including the Associated Press (no fan of Israel), which summarizes the evidence. (there’s also a telling conversation between two Hamas operatives saying the rocket was “from us).

By comparison, after the al-Ahli Hospital blast on Oct. 17, 2023, MSF rushed to blame Israel.

“We are horrified by the recent Israeli bombing of Ahli Arab Hospital in #Gaza City, which was treating patients and hosting displaced Gazans. Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed. This is a massacre. It is absolutely unacceptable,” MSF International wrote on X on the day of the explosion.

Although the blast was the result of a misfired rocket from Gaza, likely launched by a Palestinian group, MSF never corrected the record. The post, as well as several Instagram posts published by major chapters — including Spain, Canada, Brazil, and France – remain active. No apology or correction has been issued.

To a scientist, refusal to retract an accusation like this is shameful. But that’s MSF. Here’s their tweet, still up on X, but with “context corrections”:

More:

After Hamas invaded and killed over a thousand people, MSF did not release a single post addressing the worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust and it has not called for the return of kidnapped Israelis. Five days after the terrorist attack, the group issued a statement drawing a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. [JAC note: I think the link is meant to go to the MSF “X” feed, not to just one post.)

“We are horrified by the brutal mass killing of civilians perpetrated by Hamas, and by the massive attacks on #Gaza now being pursued by Israel,” MSF International wrote on Oct. 12. The remainder of the thread denounced Israel for “indiscriminate violence and the collective punishment of Gaza.” Two days later, the group called on Israel to “show humanity.”

The tone set by MSF International trickled down to its chapters across the globe.

By Oct. 17, MSF Canada wrote, “unconditional humanity needs to be restored in Gaza,” calling Israel’s response “unimaginable” and “inhumane.” The statement made no reference to Hamas or their invasion, which ignited hostilities.Before October 7, several nations facing humanitarian issues were highlighted in MSF Canada’s social feeds – including Malawi, Venezuela, Sudan, Haiti and Burkina Faso – but its coverage following the Hamas attack veered near-exclusively to covering Israel. At one point, in early November 2023, MSF Canada’s Instagram account was blanketed with six red-bolded calls for an immediate ceasefire, something not previously done as part of its advocacy for Sudan or Ukraine.

No calls on Hamas to “show humanity,” not just towards Israel but to civilian Gazans?

Despite the fact that the Gaza Ministry of Health, run by Hamas, is known to exaggerate death tolls, which have been revised strongly downward by even the UN, MSF continued to use them. Another comment from MSF’s former secretary-general:

MSF’s relationship with the Hamas-run Ministry of Health was another major reason why Destexhe lost faith. Their failure to admit “health facilities (are) being used by Hamas and by soldiers,” he told the Post, left him “really sad, and then I became angry.”

More:

MSF International’s Instagram page was comparatively muted in February 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling the situation “extremely worrying.” Within a month, the organization’s focus had quickly shifted to Libyan refugees, midwives in South Sudan, and social workers in the Palestinian Territories.

The messaging inequality was studied by Gerald Steinberg, founder and leader of NGO Monitor, a watchdog organization based in Jerusalem, who combed through MSF’s X feed. He found over a hundred tweets between the Hamas invasion and late November, “not one (solely) mentions Israeli victims.” There were five instances when Israelis were mentioned, but always alongside Palestinians.

Steinberg has grown accustomed to this discrepancy. “MSF is both a humanitarian and advocacy organization, and on Israel and the Palestinians, the partisan dimension is dominant and destructive,” Steinberg told the Post by email. He recalled the group showing similar favouritism during an earlier flare-up in 2009.

Finally, there are further claims in the article that a sizable percentage (a third) of MSF staffers celebrated the October 7 massacre, that some MSF employees have been linked to terror groups, and that MSF had donated to Gaza’s Ministry of Health but refused to respond when asked how MSF ensured that medical supplies weren’t getting hijacked by Hamas.

And a final comment by another former secretary general of MSF:

Rossin, a former secretary general who predated Destexhe, remains pessimistic that MSF can take a more balanced approach to Israel and Gaza moving forward.

“It cannot be fixed,” he said, exasperated. “How can you fix antisemitism, which is not an opinion but a mental disease?”

Although I long ago decided to give no more money to MSF, but divert it to organizations that have a “more balanced approach”, readers may wish to have a look at this article.  I was angered by MSF’s failure to even respond to my email about Israel, despite Kelly Houle and I having given them a substantial lump of money. (I haven’t asked Kelly for her opinion on this article.)

If you’re looking for reputable organizations that do good humanitarian health work without constantly impugning Israel and making unretracted false claims, I’d suggest you do what I did: go to Peter Singer’s list of reputable charities called The Life You Can Save. It shows a number of charities (not all involved with health), all of which have been vetted by Singer’s uncompromising criteria of providing the most assistance for the least money. The second time Kelly and I did an eBay auction of an autographed and illustrated book, my Faith Versus Fact, we deep-sixed MSF and gave all the money to Helen Keller International, a charity that prevents blindness and death in children by giving them inexpensive vitamin A supplements. The charity provides a lot of bang for the buck.

And you can bet that in my rewritten will, the part that goes for children’s health and poverty (the other parts go for wildlife conservation and purchasing lands for reserves) isn’t directed to MSF, but to Singer’s charities.