Comment by 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...
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 :)