Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

As context, the NSF requires grant writers to include a “broader impacts” section [1] in every grant proposal. This includes things like improving education, national security, economic competitiveness, and also inclusion - for example, ideas to attract more talent from underrepresented groups. So every NSF proposer works hard to satisfy the NSF on this requirement. I happen to think that these are worthwhile goals (we shouldn’t be wasting our limited talent due to historical crankiness) and simultaneously I believe the sections ends up being a bit performative. If the NSF were to change its criteria for grants going forward I might disagree with that approach but it would be consistent with what I’ve heard from these folks, ie they think “DEI” is getting in the way of science. However: the current approach is just destructive: if involves asking researchers to augment their proposals with these goals, and then retroactively refuses to pay already-awarded grant recipients who did what they were asked to.

I will leave the question of whether this is constitutional to other folks. I will even leave aside the question of whether we can afford to defund science in our current crazy geopolitical environment. The real point here is that this is just plain wrong.

[1] https://new.nsf.gov/funding/learn/broader-impacts

I'm a bit confused, or maybe I've been doing it wrong. DEI-related things don't usually go in Broader Impacts, do they? When I've written grants, Broader Impacts was just generally for "how is your research going to help society?"; it was the Broadening Participation in Computing section that was oriented toward DEI.

You're right, and also it's both. Broader Impacts covers "increasing and including the participation of women, persons with disabilities and underrepresented minorities in STEM" as an option, but BPC covers this more explicitly. I really doubt that the people implementing this policy care that much.

I think broader impact section is good. Whether it should be weighted as high as it was is up to debate. I personally think it was becoming too important for the success of the proposal.

But obviously the new administration is not interested in any sort of nuanced debate, but rather ideological purge.

I agree that the goals are worthwhile, and also feel that requiring every proposal to include this is not efficient and/or very effective. They should take all the funds and time spent on this every year as part of every award, and just fund programs specifically designed to attract inner-city kids to science, or funnel talented, low-income, high school students to be mentored, taught advanced classes, etc.

I would be happy to spend time mentoring URM, etc. But it'd work a lot better if others managed such a program, thought about how to attract them, etc. Specialization is good.

That seems like a reasonable middle ground to me. But I didn't have any problem with DEI. If you have inner-city kids underrepresented by 50% then fund according to %population * %underrepresnted -- if 25% population then 12.5% of funding for programs to increase participation (don't think it would be that high). Maybe divide that by N if you have N different groups you would like to be more represented (eg rural kids). Performance is just that. Funding would be more effective. I expect anti-DEI folks would like the funding effort even less than the performance effort. It's obvious they believe diversity itself is part of the problem (whether admitted or not).

> they believe diversity itself is part of the problem (whether admitted or not).

they admit it. President Trump stated unambiguously that the recent crash and tragic loss of life is due to DEI hires, even though all the pilots and air traffic controllers involved were able-bodied white (presumably heterosexual and cis-gendered) men.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvmdm1m7m9o

> Asked by a reporter how he could blame diversity programmes for the crash when the investigation had only just begun, the president responded: "Because I have common sense."

>They should take all the funds and time spent on this every year as part of every award, and just fund programs specifically designed to attract inner-city kids to science, or funnel talented, low-income, high school students to be mentored, taught advanced classes, etc.

Or just have pay for decent, functional K-12 schools in non-rich districts without housing bubbles?

>just fund programs specifically designed to attract inner-city kids to science, or funnel talented, low-income, high school students to be mentored, taught advanced classes, etc.

And how do you find out which programs successfully do that without studying them?

The magic of "just" in a suggestion I guess.

Do you have any thoughts (which you feel comfortable sharing) on the actual effectiveness or otherwise of these initiatives? Setting aside the dogma on both sides, do they achieve their stated aims?

It's difficult to isolate the effects of DEI - there are far too many confounding factors interfering. You might use effective masking when analyzing a submission that removes your own personal biases, but, after the hire, there is no way to hide the difference that could have impacted your assessment.

Keeping biases in check is a daily exercise. I am aware of many of my own biases and I have to continuously fight back. There are people whose company I enjoy more than others, but I can't let that interfere with my professional judgment.

I agree that there's not much information to be gathered from a small sample, but there ought to be some tangible effects at the macro level. Is academia actually becoming more equal due to these initiatives? Are researchers who are hired as a result of inclusivity programmes as effective as researchers who are hired outside those programmes? These are things we ought to be able to measure.

Brazil has some long running DEI programs for public colleges and universities and the general conclusion is that minority students who performed worse in admission tests but were enrolled based on quotas show very similar academic performance to the students who came from wealthier backgrounds. Some data hints that they perform better than their non DEI colleagues.

I work for a university. I know that for several undergraduate degree programmes (not by any means all of them, but several) we've measured and there's no evidence of any correlation between the academic achievements in related subjects prior to study and the eventual degree classification.

Since apparently there's no point in testing them for "aptitude" or we don't know how to do so, it makes sense to have other criteria such as broadening participation.

Or, you know, enrol the ones who'd be better on your sports teams, or who look prettier for prospectus photos, or something - just don't fool yourself that you care about some sort of pre-existing "talent".

SAT/ACT scores are the best predictors of undergrad GPA as well as probability to have high income in the future, largely independent on the socio-economic background [1].

[1] https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/S...

> Since apparently there's no point in testing them for "aptitude"

That's a weird conclusion, but I don't have the data you're looking at. What out-of-the-box testing have you tried?

For the project managers, it's probably wrong both ways (in wasted time, efficiency, competence) plus wrong some more at every change. Don't throw away your paperwork: much of the current change will be challenged in court so proposals might need changing a couple times. And then again in 4 years.

When this administration says "DEI", then mean "anyone who isn't a cishet white male".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com