NIH insiders reveal process stalling grants

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.

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

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.)

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).

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?

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.