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consider 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 "pol

consider 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 ago
  ok, 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 ago
    Everyone 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 ago
      the 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 ago
It 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 ago
  if it's not science why is it in the scientific grant?
  - orwin 2y ago
    Because 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 ago
      youre missing the point. if you want oureach, have outreach. dont staple it to a science grant.
      - orwin 2y ago
        It's the way it has been done since at least the 19th century, but sure.
        throwawaymaths 2y ago
        just 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 ago
I 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 ago
  have you ever applied for a scientific grant?
  - fredophile 2y ago
    Is 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 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 ago
ok, 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 ago
  Everyone 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 ago
    the 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 ago

It 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 ago
if it's not science why is it in the scientific grant?
- orwin 2y ago
  Because 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 ago
    youre missing the point. if you want oureach, have outreach. dont staple it to a science grant.
    - orwin 2y ago
      It's the way it has been done since at least the 19th century, but sure.
      - throwawaymaths 2y ago
        just 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 ago

I 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 ago
have you ever applied for a scientific grant?
- fredophile 2y ago
  Is 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.