“All researchers seeking grants through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science will soon be required to submit a diversity, equity and inclusion plan to receive funding,” reports The College Fix:
The Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research Plan, or PIER plan, must describe activities and strategies researchers will incorporate to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in their research projects to be granted funding by the DOE’s Office of Science, the largest federal sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation.
The office operates 28 facilities and annually funds over 28,000 researchers working on projects with the potential to “transform our understanding of nature,” as well as “advance U.S. energy, economic, and national security [interests].”
Upon the new requirement taking effect, PIER Plans “will be evaluated as part of the merit review process and will be used to inform funding decisions,” along with other criteria such as the scientific merit of a proposal, appropriateness of research methods, the competency of the researchers, and budgetary concerns, the agency stated in announcing the change.
Activities that satisfy PIER Plan requirements, as enumerated on a Frequently Asked Questions page, can include “enhanced recruitment […of] individuals from diverse backgrounds and groups historically underrepresented in the research community,” “creating and sustaining a positive, inclusive, safe, and professional research and training environment that fosters a sense of belonging among all research personnel,” and providing “training, mentoring, and professional development opportunities.”
Criteria reviewers are told to use to guide their evaluation of PIER Plans include the extent to which it will lead to increased participation by individuals from underrepresented groups and contribute to “the goals of creating an equitable and inclusive research environment and fostering a sense of belonging.”
Grant applications submitted without the required PIER Plan “will be considered an incomplete application and will not be evaluated.”…. Lawrence Krauss, world-renowned theoretical physicist and frequent critic of DEI in STEM, took a strong stance against the development in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:
“Are we at a point where the heart of the nation’s scientific research enterprise is to be held hostage to ideology? Will the U.S. government refuse to fund major national-laboratory initiatives to explore forefront fundamental and applied science because scientists show insufficient zeal for fashionable causes?”
Published Oct. 12, the headline read “Now Even Science Grants Must Bow to ‘Equity and Inclusion’: Forget the Higgs boson and neutrinos. The Energy Department wants to know your diversity plan.”
This is part of a larger corruption of science and medicine, being perpetrated by other government agencies, such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In “The Corruption of Medicine,” Heather Mac Donald describes how many American scientific and medical institutions bowed to race-based attacks on merit, which will lower the quality of medical research and medical care, and thus eventually cost thousands of lives:
Funding that once went to scientific research is now being redirected to diversity cultivation. The NIH and the National Science Foundation are diverting billions in taxpayer dollars from trying to cure Alzheimer’s disease and lymphoma to fighting white privilege and cisheteronormativity. Private research support is following the same trajectory. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is one of the world’s largest philanthropic funders of basic science and arguably the most prestigious. Airline entrepreneur Howard Hughes created the institute in 1953 to probe into the “genesis of life itself.” Now diversity in medical research is at the top of HHMI’s concerns. In May 2022, it announced a $1.5 billion effort to cultivate scientists committed to running a “happy and diverse lab where minoritized scientists will thrive and persist,” in the words of the institute’s vice president….If an applicant’s “happy lab” plan fails to ignite enthusiasm in the diversity reviewers, however, his application will be shelved, no matter how promising his actual scientific research….
The fight against cancer has been particularly affected. White and Asian oncologists are assumed to be part of the problem of black cancer mortality, not its solution, absent corrective measures. According to the NIH, leadership of cancer labs should match national or local demographics, whichever has a higher percentage of minorities.
Cancer grant applications must now specify who, among a lab’s staff, will enforce diversity mandates and how the lab plans to recruit underrepresented researchers and promote their careers….an insufficiently robust diversity plan means that a proposal will be rejected, regardless of its scientific merit. Discussions about how to beef up the diversity section of a grant have become more important than discussions about tumor biology, reports a physician-scientist. “It is not easy summarizing how your work on cell signaling in nematodes applies to minorities currently living in your lab’s vicinity,” the researcher says. Mental energy spent solving that conundrum is mental energy not spent on science, he laments, since “thinking is always a zero-sum game.”
A lab’s diversity gauntlet has just begun, however. The NIH insists that participants in drug trials must also match national or local demographics. If a cancer center is in an area with few minorities, the lab must nevertheless present a plan for recruiting them into its study, regardless of their local unavailability. Genentech, the creator of lifesaving cancer drugs, held a national conference call with oncologists in April 2022 to discuss products in the research pipeline. Half of the call was spent on the problem of achieving diverse clinical trial enrollments, a participant reported. Genentech admitted to having run out of ideas….
In May 2022, a physician-scientist lost her NIH funding for a drug trial because the trial population did not contain enough blacks. The drug under review was for a type of cancer that blacks rarely get. There were almost no black patients with that disease to enroll in the trial, therefore. Better, however, to foreclose development of a therapy that might help predominantly white cancer patients than to conduct a drug trial without black participants.
This is just a small excerpt. Much more at this link: https://www.city-journal.org/the-corruption-of-medicine
