A major challenge will be keeping researchers from simply treating the requirement as another box to tick or fobbing the work off on minority scientists, Hodari

A major challenge will be keeping researchers from simply treating the requirement as another box to tick or fobbing the work off on minority scientists, Hodari says. “That’s often people’s first ask,” she says, “to find anyone they think can help them and ask, ‘Do this for us.’” Hodari, who is Black, says she experienced such treatment when she was a postdoc. Much has been written about what actually succeeds in promoting diversity, she says, but it’s the researcher’s responsibility to read the material and take it seriously. “You just got to do your homework,” she says. “I don’t expect someone in middle school to walk into a quantum field theory class and understand tensor math, right?” How do we end up with someone who was subject to the behaviour we want to avoid, coming up with a set of policies that can be gamed in the way we want to avoid?