5 ms·

NIH insiders reveal process stalling grants

90 points by SubiculumCode 2y ago

mmooss 2y ago
The key cog is disinformation - see the outline of tactics in the OP thread, where it references using X to gain public support: One side has an effective machine, the other side has surrendered to the point where they won't even acknowledge the information warfare. In the normal human social and political world, people respond negatively to this kind of behavior, and the leaders (elected officials and appointed ones) lose their power, careers, and reputations. But with the disinformation machine, and with no effective opposition denouncing it or stopping it or offering effective countermessaging, the people conducting bad behavior can say whatever they want and get support, regardless of the absurdity or consequences - climate change; millions dying due to lack of health care (vaccines, pandemic, USAID programs, etc.); end of democracy and freedom; cruelty and brutality and brazen immorality; greed, fraud, crimes, etc. Almost everyone I know has surrendered about disinformation; they embrace victimhood - i.e., because they are 'victims', any behavior is justified. James Carville, the leading Democratic political consultant, recently wrote a NY Times op-ed which counselled Democrats to literally roll over, do nothing, and the opposition - Trump, the GOP - will destroy itself. It's as bizarre as the things their opposition claims; it's also been an explicit strategy of the Democrats going back to at least Hillary Clinton's campaign - it's a proud embrace of cowardice (usually people hide it!). Who follows or listens to cowards and victims, who revel in their cowardice because it's justified by victimhood - who is inspired by it? Who votes for that? It seems like a disinformation campaign has taken over them too; that is the kind of psyops used in war against opposition troops (I'm not saying that's the case, but how insane it is that the Dems and others adopt the outlook that psyops tries to impose on their enemies). Without effective messaging, there's nothing to do. If you put down all your guns (edit: metaphorically; i.e., your information warfare guns), you can't shoot back. Good people have enormous advantages in messaging: truth and goodness and decency; humans strongly prefer those things and can differentiate them to some degree - you can't fool all the people all the time. They aren't absolute advantages at all. You can still lose, you have to fight hard. If you don't fight, you're going to see what we see today. If you want to stop them, take away their messaging and IMHO everything else falls.
- worik 2y ago
  I love what you say. I agree there must be a fight back. This has been cast as left/right - Ok. I can work with that. > If you put down all your guns, you can't shoot back. No. I urge those on the left, those who give a fuck, to fight back with with love and hope. The perpetrators of the coup in the USA got there spreading fear and hate. The temptation is to fight back with violence. But fascism thrives on violence and will only get stronger if you feed it. Love, and hope. That is what got a Obama elected - it works
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    The answer is community. It's why Republicans in some states are trying to ban collective bargaining. Invest in your communities and in each other.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      How do you build community, or influence others, without effective messaging and effective resistance to disinformation about your community? If you gain any power, they'll come after you and smear you, and create a mob to attack you, and then what?
      - 9283409232 2y ago
        I'm not saying you are wrong about building effective channels of communication. The few leaders remaining of the dems agree with you but, knowing what to do after you build those channels of communication is important.
        mmooss 2y ago
        Yes, I agree completely.
  - SubiculumCode 2y ago
    I agree for now, but there may come a time where fire must be fought with fire. WWII would not have ended well without opposing armies.
SubiculumCode 2y ago
Politicians decry politicians supposedly directing science funding, so politicians direct science funding. Ignores that NIH inclusion polices is the result of scientists correcting scientific deficiencies (e.g. early assumptions that health researchers studying only male animal models was sufficient, because erroneously thought that treatments that work in men always work in women.)
freehorse 2y ago
Similar to when they removed the accessibility guidelines for government websites in the anti-DEI crusade there, they now direct banning grants that include the word "diverse" as in "transdisciplinary", and probably quite a few more that offer any faint hint of what could be DEI. This is a common pattern in general in authoritarian regimes: censors tend to be overzealous because the cost (to them) of false negatives (not banning sth that they should) is much higher than the cost of false positives (banning sth they should have not). The more people will be involved in this bureaucratic censorship assembly line the more strict the result will be.
- immibis 2y ago
  Other Hacker News commentators have sternly informed me this is not an authoritarian regime and I am just irrationally angry because my preferred candidate, equally good as all the others, didn't win.
  - freehorse 2y ago
    Oh, my sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding! Clearly, I must have been mistaken in thinking that any form of censorship or restriction on academic language could be seen as authoritarian. It's just my irrational anger speaking, obviously.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  [flagged]
sega_sai 2y ago
That's freedom for you -- you have a word 'diversity' in your grant -- no money.
- Spivak 2y ago
  I really do wonder where we lost the plot and where the opposition for diversity programs became legitimately insane. Like even if I agreed with them, and on some parts I do, I've never hated anything in my life with the intensity currently on display. Not the least of which because the group implementing these programs might be called naive or misguided, but are in good faith trying to improve things. I don't particularly care for most of the implementations of diversity programs but I'm not so blind as to not see POSIWID and that you have to actually look at the outcomes to identify cases where systems aren't as fair as they might seem on paper.
  - sega_sai 2y ago
    I agree with this view completely. I think some of the programs probably went over the top in my view and I would not mind the pendulum swing back a little bit. But the current government seemed fixated for some reason and just want to kill it all and happy to act like a totalitarian state if you disagree.
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
      There's a contemporary belief amongst a large number of people that they're being persecuted. They've decided to "take charge" and become the persecutors themselves and think this is somehow reasonable. They weren't being persecuted in the first place, they're just delusional. Convincing them that they're delusional, of course, is not easy.
      - QuercusMax 2y ago
        They think people saying "your ideas are bad and we don't want to listen to you" is violence, and their idea of freedom of speech is that they should be able to force you to listen to them.
cytocync 2y ago
Imagine if we built a software tool for healthcare that lets doctors code without a single bug, tracks patient data like a GPS, and somehow also makes research grants move faster than an express train? We’d be the NIH of the future. Is this the NIH we want?
- mmooss 2y ago
  I don't understand the point of this question. We'd also like carbon-free, cost-free energy; etc.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Just make sure your grant says your research is designed to help white males and you’re golden. No seriously the whole reason you need diversity in HSR is to correct inherent biases in the data due to under-representation of certain demographics, not to mention the fact that there are actual physical differences between demographic groups (sex, age, race, etc) which must be accounted for if you want the science to be generally applicable. Diversity in science is _not_ about giving a leg up to underprivileged persons (though that’s a good thing).
- inciampati 2y ago
  Genetic diversity is a scientifically measurable feature of an organism or population, often diversity is stylized as π. I've heard of grants that mention this diversity in terms of mouse populations which are currently frozen. The solution is to talk about 1-π, or "purity". Scientifically the same. Politically acceptable. lol

90 points by SubiculumCode 2y ago

The key cog is disinformation - see the outline of tactics in the OP thread, where it references using X to gain public support: One side has an effective machine, the other side has surrendered to the point where they won't even acknowledge the information warfare. In the normal human social and political world, people respond negatively to this kind of behavior, and the leaders (elected officials and appointed ones) lose their power, careers, and reputations. But with the disinformation machine, and with no effective opposition denouncing it or stopping it or offering effective countermessaging, the people conducting bad behavior can say whatever they want and get support, regardless of the absurdity or consequences - climate change; millions dying due to lack of health care (vaccines, pandemic, USAID programs, etc.); end of democracy and freedom; cruelty and brutality and brazen immorality; greed, fraud, crimes, etc. Almost everyone I know has surrendered about disinformation; they embrace victimhood - i.e., because they are 'victims', any behavior is justified. James Carville, the leading Democratic political consultant, recently wrote a NY Times op-ed which counselled Democrats to literally roll over, do nothing, and the opposition - Trump, the GOP - will destroy itself. It's as bizarre as the things their opposition claims; it's also been an explicit strategy of the Democrats going back to at least Hillary Clinton's campaign - it's a proud embrace of cowardice (usually people hide it!). Who follows or listens to cowards and victims, who revel in their cowardice because it's justified by victimhood - who is inspired by it? Who votes for that? It seems like a disinformation campaign has taken over them too; that is the kind of psyops used in war against opposition troops (I'm not saying that's the case, but how insane it is that the Dems and others adopt the outlook that psyops tries to impose on their enemies). Without effective messaging, there's nothing to do. If you put down all your guns (edit: metaphorically; i.e., your information warfare guns), you can't shoot back. Good people have enormous advantages in messaging: truth and goodness and decency; humans strongly prefer those things and can differentiate them to some degree - you can't fool all the people all the time. They aren't absolute advantages at all. You can still lose, you have to fight hard. If you don't fight, you're going to see what we see today. If you want to stop them, take away their messaging and IMHO everything else falls.

worik 2y ago
I love what you say. I agree there must be a fight back. This has been cast as left/right - Ok. I can work with that. > If you put down all your guns, you can't shoot back. No. I urge those on the left, those who give a fuck, to fight back with with love and hope. The perpetrators of the coup in the USA got there spreading fear and hate. The temptation is to fight back with violence. But fascism thrives on violence and will only get stronger if you feed it. Love, and hope. That is what got a Obama elected - it works
- 9283409232 2y ago
  The answer is community. It's why Republicans in some states are trying to ban collective bargaining. Invest in your communities and in each other.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    How do you build community, or influence others, without effective messaging and effective resistance to disinformation about your community? If you gain any power, they'll come after you and smear you, and create a mob to attack you, and then what?
    - 9283409232 2y ago
      I'm not saying you are wrong about building effective channels of communication. The few leaders remaining of the dems agree with you but, knowing what to do after you build those channels of communication is important.
      - mmooss 2y ago
        Yes, I agree completely.
- SubiculumCode 2y ago
  I agree for now, but there may come a time where fire must be fought with fire. WWII would not have ended well without opposing armies.

SubiculumCode 2y ago

Politicians decry politicians supposedly directing science funding, so politicians direct science funding. Ignores that NIH inclusion polices is the result of scientists correcting scientific deficiencies (e.g. early assumptions that health researchers studying only male animal models was sufficient, because erroneously thought that treatments that work in men always work in women.)

freehorse 2y ago

Similar to when they removed the accessibility guidelines for government websites in the anti-DEI crusade there, they now direct banning grants that include the word "diverse" as in "transdisciplinary", and probably quite a few more that offer any faint hint of what could be DEI. This is a common pattern in general in authoritarian regimes: censors tend to be overzealous because the cost (to them) of false negatives (not banning sth that they should) is much higher than the cost of false positives (banning sth they should have not). The more people will be involved in this bureaucratic censorship assembly line the more strict the result will be.

immibis 2y ago
Other Hacker News commentators have sternly informed me this is not an authoritarian regime and I am just irrationally angry because my preferred candidate, equally good as all the others, didn't win.
- freehorse 2y ago
  Oh, my sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding! Clearly, I must have been mistaken in thinking that any form of censorship or restriction on academic language could be seen as authoritarian. It's just my irrational anger speaking, obviously.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
[flagged]

sega_sai 2y ago

That's freedom for you -- you have a word 'diversity' in your grant -- no money.

Spivak 2y ago
I really do wonder where we lost the plot and where the opposition for diversity programs became legitimately insane. Like even if I agreed with them, and on some parts I do, I've never hated anything in my life with the intensity currently on display. Not the least of which because the group implementing these programs might be called naive or misguided, but are in good faith trying to improve things. I don't particularly care for most of the implementations of diversity programs but I'm not so blind as to not see POSIWID and that you have to actually look at the outcomes to identify cases where systems aren't as fair as they might seem on paper.
- sega_sai 2y ago
  I agree with this view completely. I think some of the programs probably went over the top in my view and I would not mind the pendulum swing back a little bit. But the current government seemed fixated for some reason and just want to kill it all and happy to act like a totalitarian state if you disagree.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    There's a contemporary belief amongst a large number of people that they're being persecuted. They've decided to "take charge" and become the persecutors themselves and think this is somehow reasonable. They weren't being persecuted in the first place, they're just delusional. Convincing them that they're delusional, of course, is not easy.
    - QuercusMax 2y ago
      They think people saying "your ideas are bad and we don't want to listen to you" is violence, and their idea of freedom of speech is that they should be able to force you to listen to them.

cytocync 2y ago

Imagine if we built a software tool for healthcare that lets doctors code without a single bug, tracks patient data like a GPS, and somehow also makes research grants move faster than an express train? We’d be the NIH of the future. Is this the NIH we want?

mmooss 2y ago
I don't understand the point of this question. We'd also like carbon-free, cost-free energy; etc.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Just make sure your grant says your research is designed to help white males and you’re golden. No seriously the whole reason you need diversity in HSR is to correct inherent biases in the data due to under-representation of certain demographics, not to mention the fact that there are actual physical differences between demographic groups (sex, age, race, etc) which must be accounted for if you want the science to be generally applicable. Diversity in science is _not_ about giving a leg up to underprivileged persons (though that’s a good thing).

inciampati 2y ago
Genetic diversity is a scientifically measurable feature of an organism or population, often diversity is stylized as π. I've heard of grants that mention this diversity in terms of mouse populations which are currently frozen. The solution is to talk about 1-π, or "purity". Scientifically the same. Politically acceptable. lol