Recently, a young PhD student came to terms with the fact that academia was no longer based on merit. Rather, as a scientific researcher interested in procuring grant funding, he was dismayed to learn that certain terms such as “equity,” “diversity,” and “inclusion” were not only social goals, but now also scientific ones; in other words, they were increasingly being used in descriptions of actual scientific work.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards millions in grants each year and the agency which renders their decision does so on two accounts: intellectual merit and broader impact. It is within the broader impact realm that the aforementioned social terms, among others, were being applied and interpreted. The appearance of particular terms related to identity politics in award abstracts, including “equity,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” “gender,” “marginalize,” “underrepresented,” and “disparity” increased substantially over the last thirty years.
In 1990, only 3 percent of award abstracts contained one of the terms, while in 2020, 30 percent of all award abstracts included at least one of those terms. Notably, the category which changed the most was Education and Human Resources, which went from 4% to 54% during that time span.
The problem with scientific research playing politics means that social causes as a scientific end are being elevated while intellectual merit and other similar criteria are being diminished.
This reminds me of the observation Rasmussen made, that “the more that scientific institutions are viewed as conduits for promulgating ideology, the less capable they will be of swaying public opinion on important issues.” Science and science funding should stick to being concerned with searching for truth among empirical evidence, not social activism.