White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants

740 points by esporx 8 hours ago on reddit | 59 comments

thefunkst | 3 hours ago

I remember last year my gf was working on getting grants for their research in cell diversity… didn’t get it because “diversity”

Puzzleheaded-Ring293 | 3 hours ago

That tracks.

Wakkit1988 | an hour ago

Baseball, huh?

TabsAZ | 2 hours ago

There were multiple transgenic mice studies killed by these filters too.

NarrMaster | an hour ago

Grants for work on more efficient transistors too.

Inprobamur | 52 minutes ago

Got to invent tradsistors.

Optimal_Whiner | 2 hours ago

Lol.... Oh man thats funny AND sad

Important-Factor-552 | 3 hours ago

The white house is destroying America and filled with pedo traitors.

Did not have that on my bingo card. Is china the good guy now?

Grimdark-Waterbender | 3 hours ago

No the Astroid is.

LordBalderdash | 2 hours ago

I voted for Giant Asteroid in 2016. Would've saved us all a shitload of trouble.

Heppernaut | 2 hours ago

Humans are the asteroid.

limbodog | 3 hours ago

So scientists should avoid using words MAGA would know

debacol | 2 hours ago

They are. Its mindnumbingly stupid. Elect a clown, get a circus.

fatefulPatriot | 3 hours ago

That’s an awful short list, my friend

limbodog | 3 hours ago

Especially when it has to just be words they use for things they oppose. Like "climate" or "woman" or "diverse"

tigolebigers | an hour ago

They are using words Maga don't know and getting cut. Transgenic mice studies were cancelled bc trans was in it

limbodog | an hour ago

No no. Those are words maga knows, but does not understand. I mean use terminology that means the same thing, so it won't show up in a search.

Or, hell, use Cyrillic characters that look like English letters but won't show up in a digital search to evade the search.

Unique-Coffee5087 | 3 hours ago

"Jewish Science"

"Bourgeois Science"

"Woke Science"

It's all the same authoritarian playbook

sugarbunyy | an hour ago

History shows us that whenever politicians start running Ctrl+F word filters through scientific grant proposals, scientific progress stalls out completely

Unique-Coffee5087 | 31 minutes ago

It is a safety feature. A country that does this weakens itself, and so limits its ability to sustain its destructive actions.

Idiocracy.

SausageSmuggler21 | 2 hours ago

My partner does fund raising for a company in New England that works does education stuff (being purposefully vague for obvious reasons) for children in the groups that MAGA pictures when they say DEI. Last year, they made a list of all the terms they could no longer use when describing their programs. The terms were pulled from the federal government web sites. These lists were created almost immediately when Trump took office and the Trump administration has been actively using these lists to kill funding for programs that would help women or people of color.

Subject-Librarian117 | an hour ago

Did it work? Did your partner notice any difference in funding?

geaster | 3 hours ago

I initially read this as "Waffle House admits ... " and I was genuinely interested in reading that article.

Where_Be_Da_Koosh | 4 hours ago

Stories involving scientific research and public policy tend to be more nuanced than the headline suggests. Curious to read the discussion here.

No1CouldHavePredictd | 4 hours ago

"Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 to screen for projects that ran afoul of the Trump administration’s priorities."

Doesn't seem to be very much nuance there.

Inspect1234 | 4 hours ago

Krasnov is accomplishing so much more than expected, I’m sure.

gaflar | 4 hours ago

While that may be true, if it smells like shit, tastes like shit, and looks like shit, it's probably not a tasty treat made special just for you.

taktaga7-0-0 | 4 hours ago

Oh, get over yourself. The entire story is that nuance very specifically was not used by the people deciding on grant funding.

It is embarrassing that you are calling for restraint and consideration in defense of those who very specifically are in this position because they had none themselves.

DeusCanis420 | 3 hours ago

Nuance? In this administration?

Haha -- no.

grunkage | 3 hours ago

This is not a new story by any means. They were very transparent about their methods and these things started happening right away. This is an update that thing got really fucked up by the incompetence of this administration

PossibilityUsual6262 | 4 hours ago

Not if they are involving rep government, usually answer is simple - evil.

They searched for the word trans and hit delete.

Feisty-Resource-1274 | 2 hours ago

Also diversity