Alt Text:
In our recently submitted grants we had to change “traumatic brain injury” to “concussive brain injury” and “male and female mice” to “male and non-male mice” because traumatic and female are now verboten words that can get our grants killed. It’s insanity.
cool to read that you lot use “verboten” as a legit word
Twenty years ago I was sitting in a city council meeting in middle Statesia where the city engineer was giving an estimate of traffic at an intersection. He described a liberal estimate (in this case the higher estimate) but led them that if he called it a liberal estimate they’d ignore it, so he was redefining conservative estimate to mean the opposite of what it does for all of his estimates just so they wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand. And it worked, the dumbfucks on the city council liked the numbers just because he called them conservative.
Had to change the wording in my grants from “biodiversity” to “biological variety”. I work in conservation. This is indeed insanity.
and you cant say global warming is attributed to human related causes, must be something abstract like cosmic raditation.
Instead of “Leftwing” and “Rightwing”, we should just use “Alpha” and “Beta” respectively, just like they wanted. 🤭
A healthy, broadly educated population, which feels safe and secure, are incompatible with, and toxic to, conservative and authoritarian ideologies.
They need you to be sick, stupid, and scared.
list of banned words btw
Activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, enhancing diversity, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, advocates, equity, ethnicity, barrier, barriers, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, BIPOC, Black and Latinx, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, Hispanic minority, community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, historically, implicit bias, culturally responsive, implicit biases, disabilities, inclusion, disability, discriminated, discrimination, inclusive, minorities, minority, multicultural, polarization, political, prejudice, privileges, promoting diversity, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic status, stereotypes, systemic, inclusiveness, discriminatory, diverse backgrounds, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, trauma, underappreciated, diverse communities, Indigenous community, underrepresented, diverse community, diverse group, inequalities, inequality, underserved, diverse groups, inequitable, diversified, inequities, diversify, diversifying, diversity and inclusion, diversity equity, institutional, LGBT, marginalize, marginalized, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, women, underrepresented.
What is the source for this list? What things does this ban apply to?
There is an overlap with this New York Times Article ( archive )
It seems a list is compiled by observing the words in repealed grants
Noam Ross, a computational researcher part of Grant Watch, told The Chronicle that Grant Watch doesn’t know exactly how grants are flagged for termination, but “suspect that these words are part of a search process for selecting them based on [The New York Times article] and other reporting.”
Many of those words are included on this USDA list of banned words from late March. The list also includes many more.
https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/usda-leaked-memo-bans-110-terms-from-agreements/
I like this one since it’s straight from the horse’s mouth. As expected it is less blatantly horrible. No doubt the other words are indeed also tabooed, but it doesn’t surprise me that one’s like “female” are secretly rather than explicitly forbidden.
At least you know what they are
Wow they didn’t need to take the George all real concept of double speak so far
Tell me this: if you were watching a movie and men in black masks were taking people off the street and sending them off, never to be seen again, and those same men were separating children from parents forcibly and locking them all in cages/compounds for months on end…
Would those people in this hypothetical movie, strike you as “good” guys, or “bad” guys?
Because that’s what’s happening, in real life, in the USA, right now.
Cue the “are we the baddies?” meme.
It’s not that meme, they will never have that moment of revelation because they enjoy what they are doing, and signed up for the chance to hurt others
Humanity contains monsters and we need to stop pretending it doesn’t
Many of the German Nazi’s in WW2 believed in what they were doing. Not all of them since there was a nontrivial number that were conscripted, and would have rather not participated in the Nazi thing, but still, it went the other way too.
Mitchel and Webb Look
So…it…it was the conservatives that were snowflakes all along?
I did Nazi that coming.
I think you did
Well that’s doubleplus ungood.
When I was a teenager around my daughter’s age, pre 9/11, this kind of future was the kind of thing you would see in a ridiculous 80s dystopian action movie. We didn’t ever think we’d actually ever allow it to get that far as a society, surely we would rise up to oppose. It’s just wild to my old ass how far we have fallen and how much people just shrug.
I was watching the Netflix hunt for Osama docuseries. And Bin Laden totally won. After 9/11 the US turned on its own people and used the modern technology of the military to set up a mass surveillance system and a way to easily do shit like this. And people allowed it while chanting “USA!” This is all part of it.
On a side note, i can’t wait till The Running Man becomes Reality once Trump starts throwing migrants into a life or death reality show where they’re hunted by neo Nazi ice agents
And Bin Laden totally won.
I’ve been pointing this out for about ten years now and it’s one of the most unpopular comments I can make, but it only gets more true every year. I’ve watched police get more authoritarian for decades now and there doesn’t seem to be anything curtailing it.
100%. He played the long game and boy, it’s a crushing victory
Most powerful nation in the history of mankind and we folded like a cheap suit after some planes flew into some buildings.
It’s important to note that a significant cause of our downfall is due to traitors within, including propaganda networks, that took advantage of that incident.
And I was in high school when 9/11 happened too. Watching this all happen in real time has been a pretty sad affair. I don’t have much faith left in this nation, nor do I have much patriotism left. I just don’t think we’ve earned a continued democracy. We aren’t up to the challenge.
The entire rest of the world could always see how proud you were of your “great democracy” and how fragile and inflated it actually was. Took you all a long time to finally to see it too.
It wasn’t fragile, it took half our politicians to choose fascism and 40+ years of groundwork
Billionaires bent their wealth to ensure this
No nation could survive such bullshittery. Ours certainly won’t.
They got all the best weapons though.
I’ve been thinking there’s possibly a future in which history books (written outside the western sphere) that draw a continuation from nazi Germany to imperial America. As opposed to nazi Germany being the bad guys who were defeated by the allied forces.
Some might say they didn’t fold. They were never the good guys. It’s been good those of us who have been living within their sphere of influence. They have been a ruthless empire that is stepping up to the next level of brutality.
I just want you to know that I have been shouting from the rooftops this exact thing since the Patriot Act was signed into law
And it was people like YOU that shouted me into silence
Fuck you and everyone like you, your revelation came too late and you will never be forgiven for what you did to the messengers
I’m just some indigenous dude watching you guys destroy yourselves
Well considering they’re already denaturalizing citizens how long before the admin targets you?
Also, my great grandmother was Oglala Lakota and I would have been too if some dumbfuck colonizer hadn’t kidnapped her as a kid and erased her culture, so thanks for the all inclusive ‘you’, asshole.
Ironically enough, if they used German words for such, it might just pass the Turd Reich censors. 🤷🏼♂️
Wait I thought it was Woke that was supposed to be policing what language we used?
Something, something, every accusation, a confession
This is why politics and science shouldn’t mix. The truth is the truth, no matter how inconvenient it is to your bottom line.
Politics and Science will literally always mix. Science always exists in a political context. It’s not some platonic ideal.
The research that gets funded, published, advertised. The people that have the privilege to get degrees and academia jobs. Is all inherently political. It’s maybe more obvious now with Trump’s meddling, but it literally always has been this way.
I think it’s dangerous to look at science (especially social sciences, political sciences, economics, sociology, psychology etc.) without considering the political context.
I knee jerk upvoted the parent that this was responding to. Then I read your comment and I did a complete 180. This is obvious in retrospect and very insightful. Thanks
You can upvote good discussion and points that are wrong or you disagree with. I downvote assholes and people who add nothing to the discussion.
Excellent point, and I hope your comment reminds others too. I didn’t go back and change my vote.
That comment wasn’t wrong, in terms of stating an ideal to strive for. I upvoted both it and the response.
I understand that, my point was in an ideal world expert panels and not politicians would get the final say in policy-setting and funding decisions. My main example is the clusterfuck the NIH and health department has become under the lunatic in charge.
I understand that this stuff is inherently political, I had to pivot on the narrative of my own master’s thesis because of the “interesting” results we generated
But
- Who decides who is the experts?
- Who gets the opportunity to become an expert?
- What are the experts taught at school?
- Who picks the experts?
All this is political.
What you’re describing is technocracy. And it has major limitations.
thats fair. I guess there is no such thing as a perfect system, there will always be conflict of interest and bias. I get your point too, just because someone is an expert in their field doesn’t mean their knowledge translates to leadership and good judgement on funding decisions ect.
I was thinking along your lines too, but have to concede the rebuttal as well. But I think we can still aim for the ideal of science proceeding as neutrally as possible once the funding is granted. Getting funding is the political interface. The question of “What should we do?” must be political, but “How should we do it?” can be left to science.
Ya its healthy to have this discussion. I still think the policy-makers should have a background in what they are governing but that is what advisory boards and councils are for. I definitely commented with too broad of a generalization with “no politics in science”, I should have said I dislike when politics oversteps in medicine/healthcare/research… I do see the value however as this comment chain grows.
Who decides who is the experts?
The people that learn enough about a subject to publish their own research
Who gets the opportunity to become an expert?
The people that learn enough about a subject to publish their own research
What are the experts taught at school?
The research that other experts have published
Who picks the experts?
You just rephrased your first one here, so the answer is still “the people that learn enough about a subject to publish their own research” ie peer review.
If you were actually trying to ask, who gets to become a PAID expert, the answer to that question is the people with money.
The entire enterprise is political. You have to claim you’re an authority first by creating an argument and then defending that claim. That is politics.
The time it takes to learn about a subject costs a fair amount of money. The people with money, by and large, aren’t experts. They need to be convinced by the claimant that they deserve the money because they are experts and able to do something valuable with that money. This is politics.
This idealized views of science knowledge creation is a thin investigation into the social and political aspects of science. It makes no room for starts, transitions, different levels of expertise, or old experts, often revered in the field, defending their positions because of their political status in the field.
Addressing these issues at depth take time and is exhausting when dealing with the self assured idealist.
So, you keep saying money this, money that, and I 100% agree that money makes everything political.
Science is not inherently political until you bring money into it, which is why well funded, independent and public research institutions are such a benefit. And why threatening the operating capital of those researchers like we have here is such an insult. They don’t care about these squabbles.
Its political not because of money but because of people.
What if bias start to grow within academic institutions?
What if the public funding to those institutions influences which departments get more/less funding?
I actually am asking genuinely because I would be happy to know we can improve on what we’ve got.
There are well documented processes and methods for removing biases from research, it’s basically 3/4 of the work.
I have faith it can be controlled within the project itself, I think politics has greater influence in the selection of what gets studied in the first place.
Science has a huge shortcoming with desperate scientists wanting funding and making up just enough to keep it. The peer review process works when it’s something that actually gets properly peer reviewed, but there’s not much money in peer reviewing a claim that x molecule lowers your heart rate by 10%.
Science will be great if society ever got to the point of no longer needing money or barter. Which would happen due to science.
That’s just wrong. Everything is politics.
Politics not invading science means horrific human experiments at the extreme end.
Politics must decide where funding should go for public science projects. They must mix for that reason. Politics retaliate in the case of human designer babies in China. And that is considered good by some.
Just because a government is heinously terrible does not mean governing is bad. It just means that they do it badly.
How about instead of burning down the entire house because you saw a spider you, uh, don’t do that. Government grants for scientific research are amazing things because profit need not be a motivator and the research can be shared among everyone, not kept secret and maybe not even used.
This is not a valid form of government, it’s just outright authoritatian tyrrany. There need to be laws protecting instituations from that danger but of course the US has always been much further from the utopia it claims to be than would allow for that sort of thing.
Me trying to get grants for my rat trebuchet
Is it operated by rats or throwing rats?
Trebuchet of the rats, by the rats, for the rats.
I have two pet rats, and I’m pretty confident that they’d love a trebuchet. I could see one of them operating while the other is the ammunition.
Or, both operating with more conventional projectiles. Rats crave destruction and chaos. And also cuddles.
Opposums are rats confirmed?
Lowers binoculars and looks at my fellow Imperial gunners
See them? The rats are up to something.
Brilliant i say Brilliant
If they can drive cars, they can work a trebuchet
Yes
