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Comment by ruytlm | Hacker News Reader

This is some serious cherry-picking at work.

Look at the NIH grants listed, which by dollar value far outweigh the NSF grants listed: https://grant-watch.us/nih-data.html

Which part of preventing the spread of HIV is "left wing politics"? Or better understanding radiation exposure? Or developing anti-viral countermeasures?

Some $400m of remaining budget for preventing the spread of HIV was cut, and you're saying it's justified because less than $3m went to trying to improve professional development for a specific group of people?

I mean even look at the specific example you picked - $2.8m over 6 years, from 2019 through to an expected end date of 31 August 2025, and they cut the funding on 09 May 2025 - the work has already been paid for and done, and you want to cut funding so you don't even get the final report/publications out of it to, you know, have something of value to show for the money spent?

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Absolutely not cherry picking, almost every single one of these has to do with race, diversity, equity etc

“Amplifying Diverse Voices in STEM Education”

“Research Initiation: Long-Term Effect of Involvement in Humanitarian Engineering Projects on Student Professional Formation and Views of Diversity and Inclusion”

“Conference: Future Faculty Workshop: Preparing Diverse Leaders for the Future, Summers of 2022-2025”

“RCN: LEAPS: Culture Change for Inclusion of Indigenous Voices in Biology”

“CAREER: When Two Worlds Collide: An Intersectional Analysis of Black Women's Role Strain and Adaptation in Computing Sciences”

“EAGER: Collaborative Research: Promoting Diverse and Inclusive Leadership in the Geosciences (GOLD-EN)”

It goes on and on like that. Millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

>already been paid for and done, and you want to cut funding so you don't even get the final report/publications out of it

Yes, correct. This is tax payer money funding racist politics. It’s garbage pretend science and this stuff is done spreading.

Finding the ones that aren't DEI-related is difficult. At first I found "CAREER: Understanding the Interdependence of the Microenvironment and Nuclear Organization in Stem Cell Aging" that looks neutral from its title, and the first part of its description was, but then there's this sentence in the middle that sticks out like a sore thumb: "The primary educational objective of this project is to develop a series of stories that focus on introducing concepts of stem cells and genomics to under-represented minority (URM) students in K-3." The rest of the details is neutral, however. It's so unusual that one wonders whether who wrote that was actually pro-DEI, or merely compelled to put in something to that effect in order to appease someone.

Former academic here. That kind of stuff looks within the normal range of a Broader Impacts section. Since the 80s, if you do some obscure fundamental research, then you have to say how it's going to benefit people. Say you think there's a risk that it's not good enough to say "we will understand this natural process and there's a lot of ways that can be carried forward and then that will make it easier to figure out what to research in field X and then maybe that can be used to cure cancer or make guns." And there's always such a risk, with proposal acceptance rates being low. Then you add a sentence about how you'll also educate kids about that thing -- promising to spend a Wednesday afternoon visiting an elementary school sounds like a small price to pay for increasing the acceptance probability of a multi-year grant by 1%.

In the last few years, you had to say something about underrepresented minorities. If your university is in an urban environment where it so happens that the local elementary school is full of URMs, then you don't even need to change anything about your plan.

> The rest of the details is neutral, however. It's so unusual that one wonders whether who wrote that was actually pro-DEI, or merely compelled to put in something to that effect in order to appease someone.

This is how it usually works:

You want public money so you can research your pet interest. But the public wants to know how your research will benefit the public before they will give you public money to do your research. But for some (many) academics, they are loathe to think of anything aside from their direct special interest research topic that they can't even articulate how their research can benefit the public. So they go with the lowest effort idea "I will teach local kids about my subject in a creative way".

Frankly I'm concerned so many people here want to give money to researchers without them having to articulate how it will benefit society. That's what "broader impact" statements are all about.

And for the people who get that money, guess who they will be voting for and donating to political campaigns for, etc.

"Always look for the hidden agenda."

> It’s garbage pretend science

The scientists are not to blame for the appalling incentives of the grant system here.

Wait a few years and we'll get the same thing again except the titles of the bad science will be:

* An economic analysis of rehoming manufacturing to underepresented states

* a study of price inelasticity of Greenlander's real estate?

* benefits of the politically disenfranchised attacking the senate as compared to archaic senate law making.

I just took the first one from the list. The list the article gave. I didn't cherry pick anything. The general theme of the titles of the research grants makes me think that the ones with more innocuous sounding titles are actually just more of the same stuff, just disguised a little better. But I could be wrong. I'd love to see an example of some indisputably important research being cut.

And I dunno if you're being pollyannish or what but HIV research is often very tied up in left wing politics. It may or may not be in this case. For example: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/new-california-law-r...

It’s very unclear what point you’re trying to make with the linked article.

First of all, it’s not an example of HIV research, so what could it have to do with links between left wing politics and HIV research?

Second, there isn’t anything “left wing” about the changes to California law made in 2017. It’s not a core tenet of right wing political philosophy that the penalty for knowingly exposing someone to HIV has to be higher than the penalty for knowingly exposing someone to any other communicable disease. It’s entirely possible to hold right wing political views but reject unjust laws passed at the height of homophobic AIDS panic in the 80s.

If you look into the details of prosecutions under the relevant laws, you find that many were patently silly and unjust. For example, HIV positive prostitutes were convicted merely for soliciting, without any evidence that unsafe sex (or indeed any sex at all) had subsequently taken place.

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/HI...

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