Comment by robswc

2 days ago

I'm OOTL, but there _is_ a ton of waste when it comes to money we give out.

The article itself even says here:

> [...] the US government has cut scientific grants to academics working on diversity-related topics, halted biomedical grants to international partners, and demanded universities shut down academic units that “belittle” conservative ideas [...]

I'd say it's fair to question if taxpayers should be paying for "diversity related projects." The "belittle conservative ideas" thing is problematic, as that is totally subjective. However, I don't think anyone can say in good faith that most universities aren't incredibly bias. Having been in one circa 2020, it was not a welcoming place if you weren't firmly liberal/progressive. Of course I have to place my disclaimer that I'm not a fan of what Trump is doing, or the man himself for that matter.

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robswc

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driveby20251222  2 days ago

New account because I’m a lazy lurker, but “diversity related” projects could be as simple as trying to balance the number of studies done primarily on white males vs other groups. Especially in biomedical research, the gender of the population studied has a profound effect on the relevancy of results.

By many measures, over 75% of studies have historically focused on white male populations, which for a variety of potential research/treatment areas, is important to control for.

https://www.google.com/search?q=percentage+of+medical+studie...

  • robswc  2 days ago

    Then it's subjective, what they define as a waste of money, this is par for the course when it comes to choosing what to fund.

    You do not trust the current administration to be objective when it comes to cutting funding. I don't trust universities to be objective when it comes to funding.

    I take any claims/studies from universities regarding gender/race with a huge grain of salt. There is too much room for bias and sensationalism. Not long ago there was a study claiming that white doctors were treating non-white babies with less care than white babies. However, the original authors made several mistakes and the study couldn't replicate.

    Funnily enough, if you google percentage of medical studies that can't be replicated, you get 75% too :)

bendmorris  2 days ago

In the previous Trump term "diversity related topics" included things like biodiversity which is an important area of research and should be apolitical. Not because of a shift in focus, but because of top-down orders to not fund anything related to "diversity."

Conservatives in the past have also tried to belittle research grants to justify eliminating them, such as "studying X about fruit flies." It might sound silly to a lay person but drosophila is an incredibly important model organism from which many discoveries have come.

The problem is a highly political, often careless or incompetent, and sometimes blatantly corrupt administration taking a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel to so-called "waste."

[1] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2019...

  • robswc  2 days ago

    > "diversity related topics" included things like biodiversity which is an important area of research and should be apolitical. Not because of a shift in focus, but because of top-down orders to not fund anything related to "diversity."

    Do you have a source for this? How can you prove it was simply because it was "diversity related" and not because it someone, somewhere determined the budget needed to be cut because the spending was wasteful?

    As far as I can tell, the budget never passed, so we have no way to know one way or another the effects.

    I have never seen a government entity claim that cutting their budget wouldn't be catastrophic.