To try to ensure that the people working on the project are selected fairly and on merit, rather than unfairly and on personal prejudice.
Anyhow it had nothing to do with the merit of the project or the team which were obviously already being evaluated. It was nothing but an unrelated ideological conformity test added as a requirement.
[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230104150813/https://science.o...
Q: I am only requesting support for one graduate student; do I still need to submit a PIER Plan?
A: Yes, all applications for funding to the Office of Science, with the exception of supplemental proposals, conference proposals, and proposals to the SBIR/STTR Programs (at this time), require a PIER Plan. All applicants are encouraged to consider what contributions they can make to creating more equitable and inclusive research environments. It is expected that the complexity and detail of a PIER Plan for a smaller research project and fewer project personnel would be less than that for a larger research project. [and no we won't provide you an example, it needs to be from your heart]
When you're requiring the greengrocer to submit a personalized statement justifying how each single apple he sells contributes to the project of worldwide socialism you might be risking provoking a reactionary counterrevolution. Americans need to just chill with trying to enforce micromanaged ideological conformity on a continent-sized country of 350 million people. And avoid winding up in a place "eroded by the ideological rituals that the entire power structure depend on, 'that are ever less credible, exactly because they are untested by public discussion and controversy'".
The winner take all, take no prisoners approach worked. Its counteracted evolution, climate science, even reality. Creating your own media outlet, ditching bi-partishanship, has only helped the Republicans.
People here are talking about how MAGA is not the conservative voter. This is a distinction without a purpose, because Maga and the Tea Party movements won elections.
The left and dems must and will follow suit.
You will only see more extreme points, and frankly outright violence. This is only the first 11 days. The impacts of removing fact checkers and the new free speech moderation stance is going to result in a direct uptick of hate speech.
As things get worse, theres going to be even more incitement with utterly fabricated content. This is going to only further entrench the dominance of the media powerhouse that exists.
The greater the animosity, the easier people are going to respond to the perceived threats - and since being disconnected from reality works, it will not matter if its true or not.
All that matters now is winning elections.
Speaking of fabricated content, are you describing the actual future or a simulation of it?
I could add that I've made these calls, since 2008, and they've been predictable.
Thing is, any rando online can claim these things, so I don't know how to answer your comment.
So what would you look for to differentiate between prediction and simulation?
However, that one has the capability sometimes is no guarantee that they can do it at all times, or even on demand.
Consciousness is generally not considered to be a part of the stack, despite it being the majority of it.
Policy, actions, results... that's just a snoozefest for us unfortunately.
If a grad student is funded on the project but gets pushed out because of toxic culture, discrimination, or some other kind of marginalization, then that is a waste of research funds and slows down research. Successful teams need to be able to work together effectively and mitigate conflicts. People are diverse, and conflicts are likely to arise because of this: anyone running a research team needs a plan to manage their team, just as they need a plan to manage their data. Its boring HR stuff that is necessary in a diverse society.
When these things are performative they’re worthless. People who are going to do those things are going to write the statement just the same. Even easier now with ChatGPT.
At least in a micromanagement situation, the PI might have submitted 3 candidates to a reviewer who would have picked one for them. But no.
Now to be fair, the project leads - I expect - usually have no appetite for all this nonsense and try to cut corners everywhere possible (most likely copy/pasting generic stuff for a start and justifying decisions rather then making the "wrong" ones since they still had an interest in the project achieving its goals) but this was still a waste of time and energy from a point of view of science achieved.
When I say "was", it probably still is because most of this current emergency change will be challenged in court and will need to be redone a couple times. So for now, this is MORE waste of time rather than less.
No, Trump brought in a bunch of veterans of Elon’s takeover of Twitter to do the same thing to the federal government. The people at the top have been replaced, and the new agency leaders are focusing on implementing this anti-DEI agenda at the expense of pretty much everything else right now.
The sense I get from friends who work for the federal government is that this really feels like a hostile takeover. These are not changes that people welcome but have been too scared to ask for.
Oh thats an interesting point to make. Were you part of these things? I really like unbiased merit based societies, so I was wondering what your experience was.
Just thought I would recommend some reading about this: "The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?" by Michael Sandel.
Basically, think about what the longer-term, overarching effects on society would be in a perfectly-meritocratic society. It likely wouldn't be all unicorns and rainbows.
Here's a review about it: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/08/montage-michael-sand...
May not change your mind, but we should always try to expand it :)
The point of my question to the poster was whether they had been part of any such processes.
I do appreciate the point on merit, and have a richer view of it than I may have let on.
In other words a perfect meritocracy isn't Gattaca. It's just a place where your rise isn't going to be directly constrained by things outside of your control, like in Gattaca - being directly rejected because of one's DNA.
In a meritocracy a fool who finds and excels at a niche can thrive, while a genius who doesn't exert himself can languish.
When the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act were created, people asked the government to enforces these acts. Whatever you think of merits of DEI, the government decided to create DEI in order to enforce the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities act.
The problem is because they decided that DEI would be the mechanism to do this with, once DEI is rescinded the question is: If you're not going to enforce the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act through DEI, which mechanism do you plan to use to enforce them? According to this take, once DEI is rescinded there is no mechanism to enforce the Civil Right Act and Americans with Disabilities Act anymore.
I'm pretty sure that most leftwing and rightwing people will agree that out of 3 millions government workers it's not entirely unlikely that there would be some some valid cases of discrimination against minorities and those with disabilities. The claim is that, whether DEI sucks or not, there is no avenue to contest racism and discrimination in government hiring anymore.
The Civil Rights Act is exclusively about equality of opportunity and requires affected employers hire without regard to race, religion, and other protected classes. So for instance universities using racial quotas was deemed unlawful precisely because of the Civil Rights Act.
DEI stuff was in a very different spirit that really ran against the ideals of the Civil Rights Act. For instance it compelled affected organizations to specifically endeavour to hire based on the race and other characteristics of applicants. It's not entirely clear to me why it wasn't tossed immediately as being in violation of the Civil Rights Act.
This is why disparate impact tends to cause institutions to drop skills based testing entirely. In theory, proof that the test is relevant to the job is supposed to be a defense against allegations of disparate impact. But in practice the courts have rarely accepted that line of defense.
This part is foundational to the rest, and it's straightforwardly untrue. The government agency which most often enforces these two laws is called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which remains active under the new administration; the new acting chair has given no indication that she intends to stop enforcing the Civil Rights Act or the ADA.
Doesn't "revoking the Equal Employment Opportunity executive order" entail that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will be affected? [0]
EDIT:
Trump also fired the EEOC chair it seems. Can the commision work with just two commisioners if he doesn't hire a replacement?
“These removals leave the E.E.O.C. without a quorum, which hobbles the agency’s ability to protect workers from unlawful discrimination,” [1][2]
[2] https://www.lawandtheworkplace.com/2025/01/eeoc-like-nlrb-la...
The EEOC doesn't depend on a quorum for routine enforcement actions. As the last article describes, what it can't do without a quorum is make new rules or issue new guidance, but the new administration will most likely reestablish a quorum soon because there's some existing guidance they'd like to revoke.
Assuming "was alot of desire" is meant as "widespread support," not just "the President really desired it," that is an absolutely ridiculous interpretation. Fast does not mean strong consensus.
The government has also moved _ridiculously fast_ to
- pardon/commute the vast majority of J6 defendants including those convicted of violence towards law enforcement
- freeze federal aid across the board
- blame the recent aviation crash on DEI
- rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America
- revoke birthright citizenship
Does that mean that there "was alot of desire" to do those things? Absolutely not. It just means that those are things that the President has done unilaterally via executive orders or press release.
To be clear I'm not advocating for or against the govt.
But the idea that the government moving "ridiculously fast" is because there "was alot of desire" is a massive stretch. They are moving fast because they are steamrolling everyone in their path (allies included), and in their desire to "get shit done" they are implementing changes that are riddled with errors, and in some cases, even flat out illegal.
Our constitutional republic is not merely "just blots of ink on paper" but rather alive and well.
If truly being race-blind (or any other way of dividing people that is not strictly merit) is really your goal, and you are aware of unconscious bias, then what are people really objecting to?
"Unconscious bias" is sociological dark matter. It is a kludge used to prop up otherwise ineffective social theories.
Different groups of peoples have different strengths and different weaknesses. This isn't some sort of a problem that needs fixing.
And if one does want to 'fix' it you need to start way earlier than at the e.g. hiring point. Want to beat that kid who's been playing violin for hours a day since he was 6? Ok, then your target demographic is 6 year olds, not professional orchestras.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...
But looking from a sex standpoint blind auditions are responsible for a sweeping change in the ratio of men and women in professional orchestras (though men still outnumber women %60 to %40, but that is from a near %100 a while ago). This is absolutely a case to look at to demonstrate what unconscious biases are, and a wonderfully effective way of fighting it in one specific place.
The change in gender differences is easily explained by more girls pursuing music from an earlier age. More people (as a ratio) from a group competently doing something means you end up with more highly successful outliers from that group.
Blind screening started in the 50s.
Please explain to me how %85 of Fortune 500 CEOs are white men. I don't believe for a moment that white men (myself included) are generically better at being CEOs, or at performing any of the roles that lead up to those positions.
The unconscious biases that the people in those positions choosing their successors to look like them selves is a strong explanation of this, and studies have been show that in controlled situations this sort of things happens all the time. Even by those who want things to be color-blind.
And group differences are not only genetic. Why do you think that, for instance, 70% of American football or NBA players are black, while only 8% of baseball players are?
Go look at an average MBA classroom and know what you'll overwhelmingly see? Pretty much what a sampling of CEOs looks like, especially once accounting for performance.
Unconscious biases can be eliminated through anonymization or adopting objective evaluation criteria. E.g. having an orchestra audition behind a veil is a way to eliminate bias. By contrast, setting quotas on the number of each gender or race achieves equity, but it does so through explicit discrimination.
Some DEI policies act like a veil. Others work like the latter. The recent executive orders ban the latter, not the former.
Don't we make movies of the times someone actually got noticed and was able to enrich our society through their merit?
Perhaps I am wrong.
One does not hope to get noticed - they strive to excel on their own or by bringing others in to help them.
Your merit is not what you might achieve, but what you do achieve.
> The whole concept of 'got noticed' runs entirely contrary to the notion of merit, to an absurd degree in tech. >Your merit is not what you might achieve, but what you do achieve.
Taking it seriously, I can see several situations where these rules do not hold true.
However, that may be me reading in factors you exclude for the purposes of your point.
So let me turn it to you - can you consider circumstances where these statements wouldn't hold true? Or are they absolute in your eyes?
If they are absolute, I would definitely want to understand your defintions, since I can conceive of many obvious cases where these points are violated.
But since they are obvious, I am assuming you haven't overlooked them in the way you envision things.
Let me ask you this, what is the principle or goal you want to achieve? is it more fairness, or more effective systems, or maybe even better conditions for white american men (and to me, this is ok. Its just what you want to optimize for)
Well here’s what you said:
> Considering a candidates suitability for a role based on their race, gender, or sexual orientation is the opposite merit based selection.
> You haven't addressed what I said. You've identified a problem (let's just assume you are correct about the problem for arguments sake). I've pointed out the problem with current "solution": making decisions about individuals based on their race, sexual orientation or gender seems far from good, but you haven't addressed that.
I didn’t think there was anything to address. I think you defined the ideal we are meant to achieve.
If this is a question on whether things should be fair - yes we are in agreement on principles.
I want a fair system, for everyone.
I wonder how his approval will compare with his first term. His final approval rating is the lowest of any president ever: https://news.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ra...
They’ve literally banned efforts to ensure research is free of discrimination. We’re in opposite world, or at least pretending to be.
It would be useful to show the comparison, rather than claim it. Could you be more specific about this, by at least providing the section that you read, or the EO references?
https://archives.federalregister.gov/issue_slice/1965/9/28/1...
Everyone in the US is getting exactly the government we deserve. That's the beauty of democracy! You get government that's precisely as good, or as bad, as you deserve. And you deserve government no better, or worse, than what you get.
Basically, we deserve it.
Why?
Because a homogenous culture of researchers is less effective.
Because you are not just doing research on a topic, you are also training the next generation of scientists and field experts.
And the implication that the old boys club of white dudes is intrinsically the best "meritocratic" outcome is ridiculous. The history of science is full of people who had to fight that norm and succeed despite it.
> This should greatly reduce the overall bureaucratic nonsense in science and help get back to science simply being science without imposing ideological conformity tests.
Sure, sure. Except for the part where they're also censoring any science topics deemed "woke", where all funding now has to meet the president's ideological conformity test on subject and staff as well.
White individuals are significantly under represented (and even more so in STEM) though it's not for any nefarious reason. Science has traditionally been merit > all. And lots of highly skilled individuals from China, India, and so on are pursuing education and work in the US, which makes the competition for these spots very different than a random sampling of Americans.
[1] - https://www.zippia.com/phd-researcher-jobs/demographics/
I was referencing what the current Trump administration deems "meritocratic" and seeks to "return" to, their policy changes are in direct response and opposition to the demographics you describe.
This is the case in biological sciences, for instance, the field I am in: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Scissors-Diagram-Showing...
In a sustainable society every single woman needs to have a bit more than 2 children on average. The 9 months are not so bad though so come with a significant number of side effects and a substantial number of hospital visits, both planned and unplanned.
After birth the real fun begins. At first you'll be nursing every 2 hours, constantly. Over time that changes to every 3-4 hours but that is now the new normal, 8 hours of sleep is a thing of the past. And nursing isn't just whip out a boob and a few minutes later you're done, depending on your baby, his mood, teething, growth spurts and a zillion other factors it could last an hour all the while his hunger for the next window also grows!
And, probably as an evolutionary warning mechanism, the mother will frequently experience vivid nightmare playing out every horrific scenario that could happen, experience anxiety (probably as a result of the former) and so on. That fades over time but never really goes away.
And back to breastfeeding, if a mother doesn't constantly drain her breasts it can lead to infection/mastitis/blocked ducts and all other sorts of fun stuff.
And that's just a sampling of some of the issues (completely ignoring baby himself here) for one child, at which point it's time to get ready for number 2, let alone 3.
This is a multiple years long process that completely consumes your life. Now imagine pairing all this with a 9-5 which in reality is rarely just a 9-5.
There's a reason the West's fertility has fallen well below replacement. This fantasy of doing a great job both as a mother and as a corporate drone, just isn't realistic at all.
I mean have you seen the movie about the black woman needing to go to another office track to go to the toilet?
All of this racist shit is only 70 years old.
Movies tend to exaggerate for a dramatic effect.
Yes, racism existed, segregation existed. The situation you described didn't happen. Katherine G Johnson simply used the bathroom for whites.
Did you miss the last 80 years of anti-communist, pro-capitalist, free-market propaganda? The american government has been the most powerful ideological force in the world for basically all of living memory.
In this case you had things like the Department of Energy requiring Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research plans to even apply for funding.
The two big differences I see is that that is a wholly inappropriate avenue for ideological enforcement, and that it's also exceptionally divisive.
Things are changing in modern times but historically free markets, capitalism, and so on were very widely shared values. The contemporary equality of outcome (versus opportunity) stuff is extremely new and extremely divisive. The government pushing it, and frequently in very inappropriate ways (the military also comes to mind) is just very weird.
> equality of outcome (versus opportunity) stuff is extremely new and extremely divisive
Equality of outcome, in the sense that we should hire unqualified people for research positions, is thankfully an incredibly rare and frankly insane position that almost nobody holds. Also thankfully, that's not what these required plans were. The requirement was that groups applying for grants have a specific and actionable plan for making sure that equality of opportunity was ensured. In fact, advantaging one group over another, such as with quotas, would directly violate DEI policy[1]. Typically, a plan would reference existing enrollment/acceptance policies of the company/university/department making an application, which are designed to make sure employees/students are not advantaged or disadvantaged by immutable or protected characteristics. Common examples would be:
- Make sure that your hiring panel is diverse to avoid bias towards whatever groups are over-represented at your company already. It's a well-studied phenomena that people are inclined to like others who are similar to themselves. Without any other factors in play (skill is randomly distributed in applicants, all of your employees are free of sexual/racial bias), if your company consists of, say, 80% men and 20% women, and you pick your interviewers totally at random, you will continue to hire more men than women. If you use a 50/50 split on your interview panel then your hiring becomes more meritocratic by virtue of factoring out self-similarity biases.
- Implement structured interviews and standardized qualifications-based hiring, rather than relying on interviewer preference.
- Learning about potential subconscious biases helps people account for them. Incorporating bias training can mitigate (though not eliminate) hiring biases. Of course, as you have no doubt experienced, these training courses tend to be pretty boring and patronizing, but that's true of most employee training, so /shrug.
- Diversifying applicant sourcing. If you only look for applicants via one platform, adding some more that tend to be used by different groups to your sourcing strategy.
You have bought into the oft-repeated lie that DEI is some Harrison Bergeron-esque attempt to cripple institutions. You were probably pointed to one or two extremely poor implementations of such policies that were genuinely unfair. The broader movement, and most implementations of it, are about equality of opportunity. The intentional destruction of public perception of these policies and subsequent removal only guarantees that existing self-perpetuating gaps in opportunity will persist.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20241222222206/https://science.o...
Archive link, because of course the new admin took down the page.
> Make sure that your hiring panel is diverse
How do you make sure your hiring panel is diverse without having diversity quotas for it?
I understand that many people say this, but academics routinely understand government DEI initiatives to be racial quotas. See for example https://archive.is/So06G about the NIH FIRST program. I don't think that DEI is secretly aiming to cripple institutions, but I do think that its advocates genuinely feel racial balancing is a good idea and dissemble about this in contexts where it would be illegal.
Racist hiring practices are illegal, and should remain so. If Trump has issued an EO to clarify this point, and language to this effect were added to DEI policies, it would be utterly uncontroversial. I would welcome a case being brought against a professor who actively avoided hiring white people under the guise of DEI to really drive home that such behavior is unlawful and unacceptable.
So no, it was not a witch hunt. Looking back, the "witch hunt" slur seems like gaslighting. "Communists, what communists? You're paranoid and crazy!". The release of the Venona documents is severely damning to the "witch hunt" accusers and vindicating to McCarthy's goals, if not his tactics.
You're aware that dozens of women were hanged in Salem Massachusetts because people believed they were witches? So you're very glibly implying "witch hunts" are not a thing when not only are they a thing, but people in this country, have died due to them.
> vindicating to McCarthy's goals, if not his tactics.
The question was a litmus test for whether you are a person that subscribes to an orthodox perspective of history or heterodox - it is pointless to argue with someone that does not participate in a shared reality.
"Great" isn't how anyone will describe it once the second-order consequences land. (There won't be many who like it once the first-order consequences land.)
Previously, federal funding was controlled by congress, and subject to its collective politics, via long-playing out machinations/compromises/horse-trading, etc, and then to the collective politics of the various enforcement bodies.
It now appears that federal funding is generally subject to the personal politics of the current president. That may seem nice for the specific policies you agree with. But... there are likely to be many policies you don't agree with. Especially since there will be a new president after not too long.
Also, since political purity tests have to be subjectively enforced, they are inevitably subverted to corruption. You can pass the test with the right amount of money delivered to the right people in the right way. That's nice for the people receiving the money, but the corruption quickly becomes horrifically inefficient and costly.
The question isn't whether the previous system was perfect -- it wasn't. The question is whether the new system is worse, and how much worse.
I'm pretty surprised how unaware people seem to be about the power/money grab that is happening. People never seem to learn that you have to look at what people do, not what they say.
I do agree that this is a totally new paradigm, but I would call it more of a popular revolution than a "power/money grab".
I'd also characterize the last system (which you described perfectly btw) as corrupt and ineffective. The most non-political evidence I can offer is the observation that spending decisions only ever went one direction: more spending. This probably seems fair at the "dem vs gop" level but too the taxpayer it was more theft every year.
So this newly emerging system does appear more susceptible to corruption, so I totally agree with you there, but as a taxpayer I am very happy that someone is slowing down spending.
Federal spending went up during our current president's last administration (and down the following administration). It's almost certainly going up again this time. The deficit doubly so.
We can count the billions that the government spends on science, period, through the NSF, DOE, DARPA, and NIH. Thus, the fraction spent on pushing ideology is certainly not "countless billions".
This should greatly reduce the overall bureaucratic nonsense in science and help get back to science simply being science without imposing ideological conformity tests.