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Only About 40% of the Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Woke Science
- bstsb 2y agoDELETE FROM grants WHERE content LIKE '%minority%' OR content LIKE '%diversity%' OR content LIKE '%equity%' OR content LIKE '%inclusion%' OR content LIKE '%cis%' OR content LIKE '%gender%';
- bstsb 2y agoin all seriousness, this is absolutely ridiculous and completely unnecessary. also elon doesn't understand what SQL is, so i'm assuming he's getting his minions to ctrl-f instead!
- fuglede_ 2y agohttps://old.reddit.com/r/PhD/comments/1ihzjsn/keywords_that_can_cause_a_grant_to_be_pulled/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PhD/comments/1ihzjsn/keywords_that_...
- throwawaymaths 2y agoconsider though people are including "the line" because its a requirement of the grant. you can't on the one hand complain that the deletion of science is "politicization of science" when 40% + 90% * 40% of your science grants are awarded contingent on including a political statement. the science is already politicized suppose i was a sickle cell researcher that absolutely was opposed to these sort of "woke" pronouncements on ethical grounds because it taints my science. i bet you I'd be denied the grant.
- duxup 2y ago> the science is already politicized Eh I don't agree with that at all. If I know upper management has some silly catch phrase about say "synergies" and I write up an email advocating for allocating some resources for some RND and I mention synergies... that's all I'm doing, including something that's required. I don't care either way about "synergies", I care about the project. I don't agree with requiring some things be included in a proposal, but everyone trying to persuade does it. That's not political, that's communication. Also the whole "political" line is so empty these days. Because someone found a phrase via ctrl-f doesn't mean anything. "That's political" and such phrases are just empty ways to shout down something without having to give a reason.
- throwawaymaths 2y agook, so you prefer to select for scientists who don't mind playing games instead of focusing 100% of their mental capacity on delivering scientific outcomes.
- duxup 2y agoEveryone plays games, they fill out the grant proposal and forms as instructed and so on. We go to work and say good morning to our boss (I don't want to say good morning some days) and we roll on. I'm all for removing any actual requirement, beyond that I think folks are falling for a flimsy excuse made just to make cuts and keep folks terrified of a boogie man.
- throwawaymaths 2y agothe bogeyman is real. the quality of science is bad, we are having all sorts of crises in the sciences because in large part because the enterprise has selected for keeners who play games instead of honest people who do science. those honest scientists are quickly driven out and do other things with their lives.
- fastaguy88 2y agoIt is hard for me to understand how proposing some minor outreach goal (that would consume <5% of the budget) politicizes the science. Perhaps the outreach was politicized, but outreach is not science.
- throwawaymaths 2y agoif it's not science why is it in the scientific grant?
- orwin 2y agoBecause you want outreach programs to promote science and scientific careers. Marie Curry, arguably one of the greatest scientist of the last century, the only one who got two nobel prize in two different categories, only got into science because of an underground outreach science program in Warsaw (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_University). She then immigrated in france, probably because French "Academie des Sciences" forgot to make a rule about not allowing women to make science, and was only hired to her first scientist job because... Of a science outreach program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_d%27encouragement_pour_l%27industrie_nationale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_d%27encourag...).
- throwawaymaths 2y agoyoure missing the point. if you want oureach, have outreach. dont staple it to a science grant.
- orwin 2y agoIt's the way it has been done since at least the 19th century, but sure.
- throwawaymaths 2y agojust because things have always been done some way doent mean it's right nor even efficient. plenty of societal strategies have been ditched over the millennia.
- fredophile 2y agoI think you overstated the percentage of grants that include these "woke" terms. This dataset is going to be heavily biased towards grants that include lines like that. Without knowing what percent of total grants this dataset represents we don't have a good starting point to see how widespread this is. To get a really good sense of this, we'd need to also look at data from research proposals that didn't get funded.
- throwawaymaths 2y agohave you ever applied for a scientific grant?
- fredophile 2y agoIs that relevant to this discussion? I don't see how it impacts the fact that you're drawing unfounded conclusions based on a cherry picked data set. The percentage of times those phrases appear in this data set tell us very little about the overall situation for grant funding.
- duxup 2y agoThis is an interesting article, I'd like to mention something else: I don't even know what anyone means by "woke" anymore. I recall it having a definition, and then the "internet definition" and then that usage evolved ... and now I see woke now involved if someone just sees a female lead in a movie or something. Meanwhile there are folks who seem terrified of this abstract concept of "woke". Someone on HN created an account to comment to me about how they've had LGBTQ "shoved down their throats" but they couldn't actually say how.
- mtmail 2y agoThere's no equivalent translation into my native language so whenever I read 'woke' I treat it as a USA specific term like '2nd amendment'.
- thrance 2y agoIt's been coopted by far right politicians in my country, and they just use "woke" verbatim. The purpose of the word is made even more clear here than it is in the US, since it's destitute of any prior historical context or usage: "woke" simply means "things I don't like and want to make illegal".
- thrance 2y agoTo Republicans, who use this word the most by far, it simply means "stuff I don't like". Biden is woke, bad movies are woke, science is woke, etc. It's not that deep really, just a scarecrow they brandish everytime they want to discredit something, anything.
- TaurenHunter 2y agoLOL, that is so not true: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/31/774918215/obama-says-democrats-dont-always-need-to-be-politically-woke https://www.npr.org/2019/10/31/774918215/obama-says-democrat...
- TaurenHunter 2y ago[flagged]
- nottorp 2y agoSo give scientists grants to study "minority rights" they'll insert "minority rights" in their research plan. Give them grants to study "the advantages of patriarchy" they'll insert "the advantages of patriarchy". Then they'll go and do the study about the dietary habits of red cockroaches that they intended to do all the time. HN equivalent: Want your pet project sponsored? Insert "AI" every 3 words and have investors pile up to give you money. Then do your pet project and insert random calls to the ChatGPT API to justify the "AI". Like this one, maybe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42999454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42999454
- easyThrowaway 2y agoI'd love to hear what's the clear difference between regular and "woke" science. This sounds like a Temu version of the "Un-American Activities Committee" you had in the 50-70s.
- avs733 2y agoThat’s the goal. That entire second group in this article, is talking about a set of things that relate to one of two NSF review criteria. One is intellectual merit, which is pretty much what you think. The other, is what this is all related to is called or impacts. The broader impact review criteria were developed in the mid 90s on direction from Congress to ensure that science funded by the government, benefits society and the public in a set of particular ways. As with the science, PI’s get to choose what types of broader impact activities they do. As with the science itself, you and I might find some of them an interesting or even to testable, but if they meet the review effectively, the funding is not because of what they do because they met the criteria. There are valid arguments for and against the entire world abroad impacts in NSF research. This isn’t a conversation that is part of that arguments for against. Instead, this is a child who knows nothing about it, screaming and demanding attention over people who do.
- calgoo 2y agoI still don't understand what is wrong with being Woke? Being woke basically means that we see the BS for what it is, BS? Basically, the premise of the movie "Don't look up"? So if someone cares for another person, is that now woke and somehow negative? So how can you even do a analysis of what is woke or not woke (I dont mean the BS stats that Cruz mentioned, i mean more in regards to the article). Its basically an impossible task to identify as it has been setup in a way where anything inconvenient to someone can be blamed as woke.
- hkpack 2y agoYes, you absolutely right. The goal is to identify and suppress people who care about anyone beyond themselves.
- samfriedman 2y agoCorrect, the term comes from Black communities warning one another to “stay woke”, meaning stay aware of the bullshit ways this country tries to screw you. Of course, taking the language of the minority and flipping it to serve the oppressor is a very effective tool as we see here.
- darthrupert 2y agoAlmost nothing is problematic if you look at only the good things.
- unsnap_biceps 2y ago> So if someone cares for another person, is that now woke and somehow negative? Yes, there's been a lot of talk about rejecting the sin of empathy in "Christian" circles. https://wonderingpilgrim.com/2025/01/28/the-sin-of-empathy/ https://wonderingpilgrim.com/2025/01/28/the-sin-of-empathy/ Goes over some of the arguments. The VP, who is a practicing Catholic, has also been pushing a medieval Catholic theology known as "ordo amoris" which was rebutted by the pope himself https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/doc...
- banga 2y agoWhat value is a contract if it can be cancelled on a whim?
- thrance 2y agoNotice how neither the author nor the authorities ever defined what "woke" means to them. It's just more anti-science actions from the party that does not believe in climate change, or vaccines, etc. "Woke" is anything they don't like. Kind of reminds me how the nazis would go after "jewish physics" [1], irrespective of the actual content of the research. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik?wprov=sfla1
- Syzygies 2y agoI'm at a math conference where an amazing speaker brought up this list; she was on it. People eligible for DEI funding are often encouraged to choose that channel over a "regular" channel, in which they might easily have been awarded funding. This inevitable adaptation is what happens when one puts filters on cigarettes, designs tax laws... To cut this funding for existing awardees would be overt discrimination. "Outreach" language is a requirement for NSF grants. I'm surprised that a majority of the grants overall didn't trigger their search filters. It is likely that they restricted their search to these DEI channels. Of course Ted Cruz knows this. What I don't know is if he's actually a bigot, or a maggot who knows his supporters are bigots.
- collinmcnulty 2y ago“We are what we pretend to be.” It’s not necessary for a public figure to be a bigot in their heart of hearts for them to be functionally a bigot in any way that matters to us.
- tlogan 2y agoA clear sign of the politicization of science is the requirement in some grant applications to include sections on DEI or transgender issues, even when unrelated to the research. How many grants have been rejected simply because a scientist refused to shoehorn DEI language into a project that has nothing to do with it?
- duxup 2y ago>How many proposals have been rejected simply because a scientist refused to shoehorn DEI language into a project that has nothing to do with it? I'm all for studding that, but I honestly don't think the current administration actually cares... they care about any excuse for cuts. I'm all for removing any requirement, but I don't agree that slapping a sentence means anything other than someone did what they thought would get them the grant. I put "AI" in a project I'm working on for work, now I got attention, I don't "care" are about AI either way ;)
- xiphias2 2y agoProbably both. The amount of corruption in the name of DEI / Ukraine war / COVID got staggering and government has been overspending money to unsustainable levels (and it looks like half of it was plain stealing). The sad part of overspending is that cuts are often needed for otherwise great things as well.
- thrance 2y agoNone, I'd wager.
- elashri 2y agoThe requirements are showing the broader impact on society outside of the very narrow point of research. This can be anything like what Maxwell told queen Victoria that his equations will be the reason of a lot of taxes England will collect (If the story ia true that this conversation happened). And regarding your questions. Very little if none because the requirement was not what you describe.
- archagon 2y ago
- weare138 2y agoThis funding was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda. Class warfare? Finally one of them says the quiet part out loud because that's what all this 'anti-woke' crap is actually about. Our rights are the 'woke' that they're waging their war against. The culture wars were artificially created to keep us from fighting a class war against our economic oppressors.
- Nasrudith 2y agoThe class warfare fans are no different in their delusion than the goddamn Manson family and racial supremacists who see "the coming race war" as always just around the corner. Normal people don't harbor urges to mass murder but they insist upon projecting their twisted minds and motivations onto everyone else.
- TaurenHunter 2y agoHere is what the article author failed to understand: If a grant for harvesting energy from radio frequency/WiFi mentions any woke point such as "promote equitable outcomes for ..." ...then its approval was tainted by wokeness - it doesn't matter that the main goal of the project itself isn't woke. It means grant money didn't go to another project that might be even more important but didn't pass the wokeness criteria because it didn't add those "kneel to Zod" keywords. You can say it was a "false positive" and throw a tantrum but can't deny that the process was vitiated. Its approval didn't follow the strict goal of advancing science because of that shadow.
- duxup 2y ago>It means grant money didn't go to another project that might be even more important but didn't pass the wokeness criteria because it didn't add those "kneel to Zod" keywords. I think that's something that needs to be proven. The grant process is far more complex than just "included a sentence", they're evaluated by experts too. Meanwhile the solution is to ctrl-f for "things that might mean what I don't like". The solution is more arbitrary, unscientific, and "kneel to Zod" than even the described problem. Also none of this accounts for the possibility that a study might include words like "minority" and actually be of value, but under this kind of ctrl-f style cuts ... it could never be studied. So what are we talking about? Required words bad, banned words good?
- TaurenHunter 2y ago>I think that's something that needs to be proven. No, the burden of proof is on the opposite side. You don't take money from the people and from other projects, to throw at woke projects. There has to be some clean up, even more so since the government spending levels are at a crucial point. And who is doing the Ctrl F cut? Has it happened already? There wasn't any cut yet. Ctrl F would be the very first step in reexamining the entire set - of which the author of the article only looked at a 100. The fact is that these complaints are against transparency and responsibility in this process, which is incoming and much needed.
- 2y ago
- avs733 2y agoI don’t understand the appeal or value of analyzing a bad faith argument as if it were simple error. These grants were funded through normal nsf scientific processes by experts. The report refers to that funding as “diverted” because they don’t like the content, which is just manifestly dishonest. The are implying that the funding was stolen or decisions made maliciously. That report does not have truth or valid data as an intent. His commentary at the end shows where this whole argument, and the larger rationalist movement, fails when it encounters the real world. To him the false positives are errors that affect the data and larger claims. To the people creating this false positives are beneficial because they dishonestly multiply the claims they are making. The tell is that it is so easy to do this analysis and no one bothered. Both this response and the original report also fundamentally misunderstand how grant reviews and broader impacts work. > It reflects poorly on the Biden administration that you could only get a grant to cure cancer if you suggested you might teach an underrepresented minority child about it. Implying that this is specific to the Biden administration is taken as true by this re analysis. It has been a review criteria since the 90s. An honest attempt at this work (I’m not even sure that exists) begins by looking across administrations. But honestly it’s only been in the last few years review panels began to care about broader impacts besides “yup it’s there”. Pi’s pick there own broader impacts work. Most of this is all congressional mandated. Stop taking lying about things as counter argument because it’s not. This is why the rationalist movement will always fail in the face of reality.
- josefritzishere 2y agoDoes this say that STEM is woke? It's a fact that men outnumber women in engineering programs. Your personal politics are irrelevant to facts.