The party that swears there are only Two Genders really seems to only believe in One.
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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In our recently submitted grants we had to change “traumatic brain injury” to “concussive brain injury” and “male and female mice” to “male and non-male mice” because traumatic and female are now verboten words that can get our grants killed. It’s insanity.
Cede conservatives a fraction of an inch and they will take a hundred miles.
First they came for...
There are two genders. Male and political.
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under His eye
This is why politics and science shouldn't mix. The truth is the truth, no matter how inconvenient it is to your bottom line.
Politics and Science will literally always mix. Science always exists in a political context. It’s not some platonic ideal.
The research that gets funded, published, advertised. The people that have the privilege to get degrees and academia jobs. Is all inherently political. It’s maybe more obvious now with Trump’s meddling, but it literally always has been this way.
I think it’s dangerous to look at science (especially social sciences, political sciences, economics, sociology, psychology etc.) without considering the political context.
I understand that, my point was in an ideal world expert panels and not politicians would get the final say in policy-setting and funding decisions. My main example is the clusterfuck the NIH and health department has become under the lunatic in charge.
I understand that this stuff is inherently political, I had to pivot on the narrative of my own master's thesis because of the "interesting" results we generated
But
- Who decides who is the experts?
- Who gets the opportunity to become an expert?
- What are the experts taught at school?
- Who picks the experts?
All this is political.
What you’re describing is technocracy. And it has major limitations.
thats fair. I guess there is no such thing as a perfect system, there will always be conflict of interest and bias. I get your point too, just because someone is an expert in their field doesn't mean their knowledge translates to leadership and good judgement on funding decisions ect.
I was thinking along your lines too, but have to concede the rebuttal as well. But I think we can still aim for the ideal of science proceeding as neutrally as possible once the funding is granted. Getting funding is the political interface. The question of “What should we do?” must be political, but “How should we do it?” can be left to science.
Ya its healthy to have this discussion. I still think the policy-makers should have a background in what they are governing but that is what advisory boards and councils are for. I definitely commented with too broad of a generalization with "no politics in science", I should have said I dislike when politics oversteps in medicine/healthcare/research... I do see the value however as this comment chain grows.
Who decides who is the experts?
The people that learn enough about a subject to publish their own research
Who gets the opportunity to become an expert?
The people that learn enough about a subject to publish their own research
What are the experts taught at school?
The research that other experts have published
Who picks the experts?
You just rephrased your first one here, so the answer is still "the people that learn enough about a subject to publish their own research" ie peer review.
If you were actually trying to ask, who gets to become a PAID expert, the answer to that question is the people with money.
The entire enterprise is political. You have to claim you're an authority first by creating an argument and then defending that claim. That is politics.
The time it takes to learn about a subject costs a fair amount of money. The people with money, by and large, aren't experts. They need to be convinced by the claimant that they deserve the money because they are experts and able to do something valuable with that money. This is politics.
This idealized views of science knowledge creation is a thin investigation into the social and political aspects of science. It makes no room for starts, transitions, different levels of expertise, or old experts, often revered in the field, defending their positions because of their political status in the field.
Addressing these issues at depth take time and is exhausting when dealing with the self assured idealist.
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I knee jerk upvoted the parent that this was responding to. Then I read your comment and I did a complete 180. This is obvious in retrospect and very insightful. Thanks
You can upvote good discussion and points that are wrong or you disagree with. I downvote assholes and people who add nothing to the discussion.
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That comment wasn't wrong, in terms of stating an ideal to strive for. I upvoted both it and the response.
Science has a huge shortcoming with desperate scientists wanting funding and making up just enough to keep it. The peer review process works when it's something that actually gets properly peer reviewed, but there's not much money in peer reviewing a claim that x molecule lowers your heart rate by 10%.
Science will be great if society ever got to the point of no longer needing money or barter. Which would happen due to science.
That's just wrong. Everything is politics.
Politics not invading science means horrific human experiments at the extreme end.
Politics must decide where funding should go for public science projects. They must mix for that reason. Politics retaliate in the case of human designer babies in China. And that is considered good by some.
Just because a government is heinously terrible does not mean governing is bad. It just means that they do it badly.
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I went through some of my papers partially supported by US grants and all of them use a bunch of forbidden words. This is basically pure maths, and you are not allowed to use "equality" as in the relationship between one expression and another is an equality? It is so increadibly stupid. Look:
A dangerous sign of wokeness
A dangerous sign of wokeness
Me frantically going through all my Maths papers to replace the equal sign with “Is Equivalent to”
I presume you used base ten, which is dangerously non-binary.
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That’s so fucking asinine
Fascism is completely based on lies. The denial of math should be no surprise. It's a direct continuation of the ideology.
See also the conclusion of "1984". There's a good reason why it was about 2+2=?. Some things never change.
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Wait I thought it was Woke that was supposed to be policing what language we used?
Something, something, every accusation, a confession
So.....it......it was the conservatives that were snowflakes all along?
I did Nazi that coming.
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So it now includes non-binary mice!
When I was a teenager around my daughter’s age, pre 9/11, this kind of future was the kind of thing you would see in a ridiculous 80s dystopian action movie. We didn’t ever think we’d actually ever allow it to get that far as a society, surely we would rise up to oppose. It’s just wild to my old ass how far we have fallen and how much people just shrug.
I was watching the Netflix hunt for Osama docuseries. And Bin Laden totally won. After 9/11 the US turned on its own people and used the modern technology of the military to set up a mass surveillance system and a way to easily do shit like this. And people allowed it while chanting “USA!” This is all part of it.
On a side note, i can’t wait till The Running Man becomes Reality once Trump starts throwing migrants into a life or death reality show where they’re hunted by neo Nazi ice agents
Most powerful nation in the history of mankind and we folded like a cheap suit after some planes flew into some buildings.
It's important to note that a significant cause of our downfall is due to traitors within, including propaganda networks, that took advantage of that incident.
And I was in high school when 9/11 happened too. Watching this all happen in real time has been a pretty sad affair. I don't have much faith left in this nation, nor do I have much patriotism left. I just don't think we've earned a continued democracy. We aren't up to the challenge.
And Bin Laden totally won.
I've been pointing this out for about ten years now and it's one of the most unpopular comments I can make, but it only gets more true every year. I've watched police get more authoritarian for decades now and there doesn't seem to be anything curtailing it.
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The entire rest of the world could always see how proud you were of your "great democracy" and how fragile and inflated it actually was. Took you all a long time to finally to see it too.
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Well that's doubleplus ungood.
Had to change the wording in my grants from “biodiversity” to “biological variety”. I work in conservation. This is indeed insanity.
Tell me this: if you were watching a movie and men in black masks were taking people off the street and sending them off, never to be seen again, and those same men were separating children from parents forcibly and locking them all in cages/compounds for months on end....
Would those people in this hypothetical movie, strike you as "good" guys, or "bad" guys?
Because that's what's happening, in real life, in the USA, right now.
Cue the "are we the baddies?" meme.
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list of banned words btw
Activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, enhancing diversity, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, advocates, equity, ethnicity, barrier, barriers, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, BIPOC, Black and Latinx, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, Hispanic minority, community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, historically, implicit bias, culturally responsive, implicit biases, disabilities, inclusion, disability, discriminated, discrimination, inclusive, minorities, minority, multicultural, polarization, political, prejudice, privileges, promoting diversity, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic status, stereotypes, systemic, inclusiveness, discriminatory, diverse backgrounds, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, trauma, underappreciated, diverse communities, Indigenous community, underrepresented, diverse community, diverse group, inequalities, inequality, underserved, diverse groups, inequitable, diversified, inequities, diversify, diversifying, diversity and inclusion, diversity equity, institutional, LGBT, marginalize, marginalized, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, women, underrepresented.
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wake up babe, new politically correct has dropped
literally PC culture gone mad
And we should definitely call it "Politically correct" speech, because that's what it is. They liflke to accuse the left of being politically correct, so let's turn it back on them.
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Conservatives are fucking morons lmao
Yup.
Knuckledragging fools that are dragging us down with them.
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I watched an interesting video recently on "Lysenkoism".
In short, it's a horrible example of what happens when party politics are more important than correct science. And it should all feel very familiar to what's happening in the US right now.
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A healthy, broadly educated population, which feels safe and secure, are incompatible with, and toxic to, conservative and authoritarian ideologies.
They need you to be sick, stupid, and scared.
Yeah that's what happens when "science" is based on capitalism, fascism, etc. It's just more explicit now.
Anti-Woke stuff is ridiculous.
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