As one can imagine, I have some thoughts. Here’s a thread no one asked for: 1. SCIENCE IN THE US IS POLITICAL. No matter how much you want to ignore that fact, it is supported by taxpayer dollars and is therefore, political by nature. 2. BUT it has had bipartisan support for decades, which…
The Atlantic is a right-wing publication. The right-wing is automatically anti-science due to its inability to reckon with reality. Fundamentalist religious fervor, conspiratorial thought patterns, business ties to harmful industries, and just for power are all reactionary qualities.
Disagree. Scientists need to stay away form policies that become political. DEI has become political, science in academia need to leave it. DEI also breaks the 1964 civil rights act, and is or will be struck down by SCOTUS. Scientists, like anybody else, should not break laws.
DEI is only "political" because fascists want to idiotically claim it's "reverse racism". Do, no, DEI does *not* break the Civil Rights Act. At all. The 6/9 of SCOTUS that may shoot it down are political fascists (see first line).
And when they pass laws that say it's illegal to do science? Or teach it? What then? Should we wither away?
Seems unlikely that this will happen. Remember the Scopes trial? Is culture steers in that direction, you can either live in and wine, or leave it, until the next revolution comes.
I'm sure you're right, they probably wouldn't even dare to start setting any sort of internal rules about what types of scientific research are acceptable to carry out, or pass laws at the state level to forbid teachers from mentioning certain topics...oh wait.
True. And then they are overturned because they are unconstitutional. Are you always this rude to people you don't know?
I'm sorry you mistook a sarcastic tone for rude demeanor. But I don't think we should bury our heads in the sand in the face what is repeatedly happening and what the stated anti-science intentions are.
"I mistook". Im the blame, eh? LOL. In every society we will have challenges to our culture. As long as the laws support our cultural narrative, then we are fine. If it changes (we become a right-wing theocracy) than you can leave it or begin a revolution. Activism now only fuels the right, IMO.
"Activism now only fuels the right"? So all the 'woke' liberals are to blame for the march towards fascist theocracy? I don't think that's who shoulders the responsibility. Unless what you're trying to say is that they're not doing enough.
What I should have said (apologies) is activism from scientists fuels the right. If this continues, the result will be a shut down of research in academia when you have a republican president. That will end all NIH research, even when you have dem's in charge, because projects are often multi year.
That's still "victim blaming". So, no, our activism cannot make someone a fascist. They choose that.
I appreciate the clarification, and you raise an excellent point about multi-year research, and you might even be right about how they're going to respond to scientists engaging an activism, but they started politicizing science and cutting funding even when scientists weren't being activists.
Scopes'Trial is probably not the most illustrative example - it was a completely contrived publicity stunt; John Scopes was a substitute teacher who agreed to let the ACLU use him.
Ah yes, reverse discrimination, that thing that doesn't exist. Hope you're better at your day job than you are with civics. But you're right about one thing - if, by some inexplicable circumstances, are employed as a scientist, you should definitely stay out of politics. 👍
Ah yes, an academic virtual signaler, sucking up to gain favor with admin and keep the gravy train rolling on an unethical narrative. Hope you are better at teaching/research then interpreting civil rights law, but I suspect you are equally bad at all three. Cheers.
"Virtue signaling" is a phrase tossed out by Cons who will only ever do good when others can see it and praise them thinking everyone else is as horrible as they are.
You are clearly a liberal ideologue. No point in responding.
You clearly don't understand DEI
You dont understand how it works in the context of a faculty hire.
I absolutely do. Having served on *several* faculty hiring committees.
You are a nasty little thing. And wrong. No point in anything you do really.
And ready to discuss legislation in detail & the relevant judicial case history for said legislation as well. Yep, you're better off sitting this one out.
You too. No point in debating an ideologue who cannot think rationally and ethically.
YOU are the one reframing DEI in ideological BS.
I haven't stated a single irrational or unethical comment yet. Keep swinging, I can do this all day.
Virtue signaler...🙄 I'll take it. 👍 Because you know who else was a virtue signaler? Every civil rights & social reformer in history, going back to your favorite Jewish carpenter. Feed the hungry Protect the most vulnerable of your society Love everyone regardless of nationality Pay your taxes
DEI is how middle-America was able to get science funding. what now? As every scientist here knows about sample diversity in your scientific studies, it also applies to the scientists conducting the research, teaching, what not. It turns out, $ was going to elite schools in the east/west coast. 1/2
Really? I am aware of where the NIH funding goes, and there are plenty of uni's not on the coasts that receive funding (including J Berg's Pittsburg, Duke, Northwestern, etc) will before DEI came about. If NIH funds scientists based primarily on their sex or race and not merit, that's illegal.
Past reviewer. Usually the handful of tier 1, maybe tier 2 were part of that first bucket of majority funding - that includes Northwestern, Duke, etc. Farm country. Middle America. Rust Belt. Bible Belt. Those got $ on DEI. Again, to level the playing field. Think about why for a second.
Tier 3 gets grant money (U WY, U KY), as well as PUI's throughout the country. They got money before DEI, so you are apparently wrong. My guess the money they got is in proportion to the amount of good idea's they had. DEI tried to up end that by giving money based on race and sex. Think about that.
Again, I have actually reviewed multiple years. A younger naive me actually made the same reasonable but incorrect guess on applied meritocracy. There is also an assumption that those ‘stronger’ ideas were well articulated, and thus ‘stronger’ to begin with, sadly no.
You may have reviewed multiple years but I suspect with great bias, as you appear to be resentful of institutions that get a lot of grant money based on ideas of merit. Its not a perfect meritocracy and there is a lot of fraud in the system (pubpeer) but suggesting to fix it by...
...awarding primarily based on race and sex to achieve quotas is highly unethical, and, in my opinion, reprehensible, and make things a heck of a lot worse than they already are.
Awarding was NEVER primarily based on race or sex. And, nowhere did I say that.
Sorry, again, you seem to make a lot of assumptions. We all go through intensive training prior. I’ve been explaining how funding allocations actually work to keep the allocations as equitable (the E in DEI) as possible. And, for the record, I degreed multiple times at 2 elite schools.
You clearly need to improve your ability to explain yourself, hence why you may not get grants instead of what you think: where you are located, race, or sex.
Earned enough grants. Thank you.
Pulling the "are you aware of who I am?" thing, eh? No one gives a shit where you got your degrees from. What the school cares about you have good ideas, not the name on your silly degrees.
Final comments. Government ‘grants’ come from taxpayers dollars, the majority of which come from ‘richer’ states, which happen to have more of those elite schools. How do you help young scientists in middle America who comes from a state or school with fewer resources? DEI.
You dont help them by saying "oh hey, its a woman or underrepresented minority in the middle of nowhere, so let's give them money!" Extremely unethical. I am for limiting the number of RO1's that a PI can receive but what you are suggesting is reprehensible.
You seem to be equating gender or underrepresented minority to DEI. Again, that’s incorrect.
You appear to have a definition of DEI that most do not have, and for this reason you've done a good job sowing confusion or are hiding your true intentions.
DEI was applied to the schools in the interior of America to level the playing field. 2/2
troll account. mute and move on everybody
Nope. Just expressing my views.
There is no apolitical science. In the very moment you ask a question, you are political in the sense that you consider this question worth researching. Is nano technology worth researching? Or the question if a policy is beneficial for men and woman and black, brown and white people alike?
Don't make the same mistake Dr. Fauci made. Time to start fighting www.thedriftmag.com/the-case-aga...
Powerful
“they run the risk of advancing the argument they want to fight” What a goddamned stupid take. Yes, I DO want to fight! I will fucking fight any fucking person that takes away my profession, something I have thrown half my life at and sacrificed much of my youth, my marriage, and future for.
The anthropologists have been waiting for the rest of academia to join them for decades. Indigenous populations & their ancestral lands have been systematically targeted, exploited & decimated since Columbus; justified by eugenics, economics & a corrupt version of Christianity. Sound familiar?
oh good grief.. any scientist worth anything can't help but be an activist.. or else they are useless..
Hey @timothysnyder.bsky.social we are out here defending institutions! Can you help amplify @standupforscience.bsky.social? We’ve got a new quack-o-gram campaign…
Scientists should have started getting political years ago when the Republicans openly embraced science denialism in terms of our climate crisis.
Back in the sixties science faculty were evenly split btw reps & dems. Industrial types were more rep leaning. Nixon & the Vietnam War was a watershed.
Even the liberals in academia have been muzzled from speaking up in defense of science because they've been too worried that speaking up would harm their ability to obtain funding. I heard that over and over again when I worked in the Ivory Tower as a research scientist.
2. has made doing science ~feel~ apolitical. We’ve not really ever HAD to fight because everyone could agree this was a good ecosystem to maintain. 3. NUMBER 2 IS NO LONGER TRUE. Sorry, it’s just not. This means we have to do things a little bit different, which can feel uncomfortable 🤷🏻♀️
Science has always been political even where some scientists pretend it isn't
4. THE STAKES ARE FUCKING HIGH. Every. Single. Day. Someone asks me “but why would they do all this? People are going to die!” Yes. Exactly. It’s eugenics. It’s Lysenkoism. It’s what happens when a group of ppl in power want to reestablish a class system that has been threatened by evidence.
Totally agree, except that it's Gleichschaltung, not Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism was a well-connected individual persecuting his perceived rivals in one corner of science. Gleichschaltung was a systematic effort to bring the entire system of knowledge production under Nazi control.
(Also in a very flat-footed sense it can't be both eugenics and Lysenkoism since the basic scientific claim of Lysenkoism was that Mendelian genetics and Weissmanian inheritance are false)
1. RFK Jr is a KENNEDY with LAWSUITS OUT AGAINST VACCINE COMPANIES lmao. 2. Read this: kieranhealy.org/files/papers... by @kjhealy.co to understand how I approach science activism.
We can maybe understand RFK and Bhattacharya using the Lysenko comparison. But once you include NSF, EPA, NOAA, Smithsonian; the EOs on gender ideology, scientific integrity, "Gold Standard Science"; and the extortion campaigns against higher ed, it clearly goes well beyond those two individuals.
Please go look at the work my org @standupforscience.bsky.social is doing. I deeply understand the moment we are in rn, rest assured.
Not sure how leading an advocacy org establishes your expertise in HPSTS, but okay
Jesus christ. Who cares if the wrong verbage was used? The message is still loud and clear and undersrltood!
Because they worked in very different ways at very different scales and had very different consequences. Using an analogy that doesn't actually fit the present moment is more likely to lead to bad decisions.
4. Cont. The MAGA war on science is happening because a symptom of the cancer of fascism is dismantling every institution that provides evidence against their core tenants (e.g., men and women are equal, one race isn’t genetically better, disabled ppl can live rich lives).
The cancer of fascism is a dismantling of evidence, historiography, knowledge, and argument, as such/per se.
5. SO, YEAH. YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO PUT YOUR ACTIVIST SHOES ON. Unless you want to be a bystander while millions die because MAGA has wielded pseudo-science bullshit to prop up fresh eugenic flavored policies. Again, this isn’t comfortable. We aren’t used to this. It’s not our “culture”. And yet…
Kudos for speaking out Colette. Yes, a key issue is that it's hard to step outside of usual roles--as a scientist, as a doctor, as a public official, as educators etc etc. But if ALL who believe in science and democracy do not stretch now we will lose our democracy and lose our science.
There isn’t a middle ground. You DO have to get political. It IS going to mean “looking like you’re taking a side” because…you do have to take a fucking side. There are lives at stake, a democracy at stake, and the collapse of our society at stake. Reimagine yourself as an activist.
Thank you!!
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Follow @standupforscience.bsky.social for ways to get involved. Time to get off the sidelines, dorks. We have a democracy to save. ✊🏼❤️
Tbh 1 has been field-dependent. Climate science and stem cell research has been politicized for decades. And I can tell you from my days at NIH the support was far from bipartisan. Just ask Rand Paul or Andy Harris.
Science is about what is true and what is not. And whenever what is true causes someone with power harm, it becomes political. The fascist "truth matters less than power" is opposed to uncontrolled science.
Even us Engineers (Civil, Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical, and others) need to stand up for science. We do the field research to help with "practical physics and chemisty", like water and wastewater treatment that helps to reduce pollution and cancer. We get grants for NSF and the EPA.
Disagree on characterizing anything that is taxpayer-funded as political. They may be politicized by the likes of Trump and his minions, but among many things, police and fire departments, public sector healthcare, infrastructure, defense, and science are not political per se.
AMA firefighter, I get to watch budgeting for my department done by the county board based on a vast number of factors having little to do with fire protection (like developers wanting a new station _close_, but not so close the noise bothers residents). Tell me more about how this isn't political.
To say nothing about the collection of state and federal grants we rely (well, have historically relied) on for equipment, training, and community preparedness (like the community narcan project) some of which have been cut and more of which probably will be.
Not political? Tell that to the republicans that stopped us from funding stem cell research, to those that wanted us to stop teaching evolution.
All of these things require votes by politicians to get funded by tax dollars and written into law. If that’s not political, idk what is? Not to mention science influenced policy, policy influenced science. Etc etc.
I agree the public sector is being politicized now to an unprecedented level. But I don't think this was ever the intention of the founders. Once the votes are cast and agencies become law, their functioning isn't supposed to be political; eg, in science and healthcare, whether it's NIH, FDA or CMS.
I think part of the problem has been giving the executive branch far too much power. This happened decades ago. Under normal circumstances, with mentally stable presidents, this doesn't lead to major issues. Under Trump, however, it does. He's maniacally political, impulsive, vengeful, and reckless.
Old NSF web page "...incorporation of the National Academy of Sciences. Wilson brought the bill to the Senate on February 20, 1863, where it was passed on March 3. It was passed by the House of Representatives later that day, and was signed into law by President Lincoln before the day was over."
The old NSF page was "sanitized" Here's the Wayback Machine web.archive.org/web/20111005...
My bad National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
As a former reviewer for said ‘unpolitical’ funds. Guess what, the guidelines given were political.
It’s ALL political! Our governor recently fired the head of our forestry department because the guy didn’t make sure our petulant jerk of a governor’s farm didn’t burn during the recent wildfire outbreak here in Oklahoma. Half the state was on fire that day, but yeah, Kevo was sad about his stuff.
Who do you think decides what roads are built, which schools get funded/repaired, which bridges get maintained, who gets permits to build giant data centers near neighborhoods, who gets kicked off their land to build turnpikes, who gets healthcare, how much we pay for water/electric? POLITICIANS.
And in publicly funded science, the vast majority of projects - even economic ones focused on things like equality - aren't political. They're objective pursuits aimed at knowledge accretion; sometimes with policy implications. But the latter aren't political unless researchers cite a political goal
In the age of a pathological liar psychopath president, anti vax loon RFK jr in charge of health, the war on universities, etc EVERYTHING has become political. And that is tragic. Things we thought were apolitical and "basics of functional society" type stuff? Now all entirely politicized.
Vaccines are "woke", international trade is "woke", climate change is "woke", electricity is "woke", accurate reporting of jobs numbers is "woke". Go down the list. We let the lying psychos win, and now everything is political and deeply screwed up.
"The police aren't political" is VERY questionable
Also defense, like, the debate about the size and purpose of the military has always been a part of every country since the country existed
Fire departments, should we have them? Do they only fight fires or do they also do fire prevention? Very contentious and also mostly a modern debate we've only really had since the turn of the century!
AGREED! "The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients." -Federalist 9
Come to Canada 🇨🇦
Science has also become a national security issue, due to foreign interference and influence campaigns spreading dangerous, extremist, fringe and populist antiscience and science denial disinformation. And that the institutions that uncover and protect from this must be strengthened not dismantled.
📌
There's nothing wrong with scientists being activists. They should be activists in advocating for the benefits of funding basic research, and activists in advocating for policies that they are most informed about -- global human-caused climate disruption and mRNA vaccines, for example.