The Left’s Grip on Science Tightens by Strangling Education, Conference Planning, Research
Climate cultism overtakes UCSD and “Nature” publishes two DEI-infused articles.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall my piece on a GenZ doctoral student aiming to be an “outer space anthropologist” who asserted that human space exploration is “imperialist.”
This space cadet also painted a chilling vision of what wokeism has in store for serious research as it plans to tighten its grip via “science and technology studies.”
Science and Technology Studies is a small field that teaches us that science and technology are socially constructed entities. In other words, when we work on a scientific project or create technology, we don’t do so in an unbiased way. Science and technology are created with intention, cultural motivation, and political influence. Space projects are no different — they typically have a motivation or intention behind them, even if it’s not always explicit.
Now comes the chilling news that one of the more prestigious science institutions in this country plans to indoctrinate students into believing the “climate crisis” is real. The school has now implemented a graduation requirement for students: a course in climate change.
Courses must cover at least 30% climate-related content and address two of four areas, including scientific foundations, human impacts, mitigation strategies and project-based learning. About 7,000 students from the class of 2028 will be affected this year.
“The most important thing is that UC San Diego wants to make sure we’re preparing students for the future that they really will encounter,” says Sarah Gille, a physical oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who was part of the committee to create the new plan.
The requirement won’t add any time to a student’s graduation schedule – it’s designed to be integrated into existing classwork. Forty one-quarter courses meet the goal, including “The Astronomy of Climate Change”, “Gender and Climate Justice”, “Indigenous Approaches to Climate Change” and “Environmentalism in Arts and Media”. Many of the classes that fall under the climate requirement overlap with courses that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, the school says.
I have spent considerable effort providing solid science related to geologic history and solar research that counters all of these claims. I am pretty confident neither of the subjects nor serious fact-based counterarguments will be provided in these classes.
Rather than teaching young scholars how to approach science…
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) October 18, 2024
…UCSD is going to teach them what to think. I am glad I got my Master of Science degree in chemistry there when I did.
UCSD costs about $40,000 each year to attend. Yet, this senseless requirement has now diminished the value of any degree issued by the institution. Is it any wonder many GenZ Americans are reevaluating whether a college degree is worth the money?
I hypothesize a massive preference cascade is building for trade schools and apprenticeship programs.
Next on the list of woke insanity is an article in the science publication Nature demanding inclusion by using season-neutral language when issuing invitations to science conferences. The author asserts that to be properly inclusive, organizers should remember that summer in the northern hemisphere is winter in the south.
Extra points: The article also encompasses the “Indigenous peoples” angle.
And it’s not just a matter of temporal accuracy — many parts of the world experience wet and dry seasons that are not reflected in distinctions between summer and winter. And Indigenous communities often use seasonal calendars that align with their local environments, reflecting a deep connection with nature’s cycles.
Knowing as many scientists as I do, I sense they understand the difference in seasons between the two hemispheres without the virtue-signalling wording suggested in this piece. I am sure the arrangements they ultimately make are based on the needs of their attendees and the goals of the conference rather than monsoonal rains and meteorological inclusivity.
To conclude this review of October’s leftist takeovers in science, I need to turn to Nature once again. In another article published this month, the authors assert women who applied for assistant professor positions in North America were more likely to get job offers than men…because women are better at job interviews.
Of course, they clearly neglected a critical element that was even called out in the second paragraph of the piece:
The findings, published on the bioRxiv preprint server 1 , have not been peer reviewed. Still, they offer a sign that the academic job market might be making progress towards equity in hiring, says co-author Nafisa Jadavji, a neuroscientist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
"Women are better than men at science job interviews"
That's a strange and seemingly-antagonistic headline for a piece that immediately goes on to discuss the "number of job applications," "identifying as a woman," and "progress towards equity in hiring."
— John W. DeFeo (@johndefeo) October 10, 2024
I will also note that progressive hiring has a snowball effect: Leftists will continually hire more leftists because theirs is the only correct position to hold. Since 2000, universities have taken a hard left turn, and the resulting short-shifting of potentially talented men in biology is one of its many toxic consequences.
With the above information in mind, the “Nature” article is a nauseating bit of equity propaganda that should be insulting to all serious researchers…male and female (if biologists are still allowed to distinguish only by two genders).
Serious science in this country is under threat. pic.twitter.com/6jpbjhCDnr
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) October 18, 2024
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Alan Sokal, call your office!
Memo for President Trump in January 2025: Nothing will get the attention of higher education quicker than a complete cutoff of federal funding until its gets it collective mind right.
The NSF needs to be “reformed”.
Into oblivion
LI readers should click on Leslie’s X posts and “like” them.
Leslie, did you commission these drawings from your AI?
If so, what’s that in the pocket that looks like a beer bottle?
The grim reaper is actually a harvest trope, with the customary scythe, which works with a touch.
That’s not a harvest trope nor even a harvest scythe. Even the handle is wrong.
It’s an echo of the grim reaper, which means a misunderstanding of the grim reaper.
True, most modern renditions get the scythe wrong even if they try to put a scythe in because who knows about scythes these days. It has to bend so that lying flat on the ground it slices whatever is growing as it’s moved in a circle, like slicing bread. Not head-on but by sliding while advancing. A scythe can’t be used as a weapon in particular – the geometry is all wrong. A major source of misunderstanding.
Pic of the harvest idea, from long ago when it was the idea
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhhardin/2373431345
As it happens, I’ve mowed my acre of lawn with a scythe for a couple of decades.
My uncle was one of the most well known theoretical chemists in the world (The Pariser–Parr–Pople (PPP) method). I doubt that his advancement of the field had anything to do with “cultural motivation, and political influence”, especially given that his career spanned more than 60 years.
The politicization of science and engineering here in the US bears some resemblance to Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union from the 1930s until the early 1960s. The effects on Russian agriculture and genetics was devastating. Zhores Medvedev, a biologist and agronomist, wrote one of the best books on the subject, “The Rise and Fall of T. D Lysenko.” He is well qualified having lived in that era. While we have yet to send people to prison, in many respects the situation here is worse. The scope of politicization here is far wider. Stalin left the physicists and mathematicians alone, although as discussed in the book “Gulag … ” there was some interference in railroad engineering. Mathematics has been called “racist” and these pernicious ideas have even appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly to my horror. The rot is wide and deep.
Based on my personal experience, having worked in engineering, math and physics for many decades, most of the members of the DEI protected groups cannot do high end work. There are exceptions of course, but not many. I have worked with and supervised DEI hires.
The effects will be devastating. Our opponents who avoid DEI will advance while we will fall behind, We already have. The national security consequences are all too obvious.
The Chronicle came out with a good article on the politicization of science funding (which controls what science research gets done).
https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-ruthless-politicization-of-science-funding
“To get funding today, scientists must show that their research will advance the goals of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).”
“This has happened, in large part, by federal mandate, in particular by two Executive Orders, EO 13985 and EO 14091, issued by the Biden White House.
These executive orders do not call for equal opportunity in science funding — funding of the best scientific ideas, regardless of who proposes them — but for so-called equity, which gives preferences in funding to specific identity groups. EO 13985 perversely claims that such group preferences are a prerequisite for equal opportunity.”
“Scientific Method in Brief” by Hugh G. Gauch Jr. (a friend from my Cornell Days)
https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Method-Brief-Hugh-Gauch-ebook/dp/B00B4V6AH6/
“The fundamental principles of the scientific method are essential for enhancing perspective, increasing productivity, and stimulating innovation. These principles include deductive and inductive logic, probability, parsimony and hypothesis testing, as well as science’s presuppositions, limitations, ethics and bold claims of rationality and truth. The examples and case studies drawn upon in this book span the physical, biological and social sciences; include applications in agriculture, engineering and medicine; and also explore science’s interrelationships with disciplines in the humanities such as philosophy and law. Informed by position papers on science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences and National Science Foundation, this book aligns with a distinctively mainstream vision of science. It is an ideal resource for anyone undertaking a systematic study of scientific method for the first time, from undergraduates to professionals in both the sciences and the humanities.”
This book is designed to be used as a text book for a one semester course. It is not an easy read.
So what percentage of grant-receiving researchers do you think have mastered the concepts in this book?
Just as the word “fake” can be substituted for the word “trans” to clarify any sentence, the word “studies” can be replaced with “the professor’s opinion on.”
After hearing bits and pieces over the years, I finally sat down and read “Bretz’s Flood.” Of note is that the entire USGS actively and officially refuted his hypothesis for 40 years, from 1925 until 1965, when satelite imagery was to convincing for them to maintain alternative explanations. Keep in mind that USGS is a huge part of the climate change religion, so not only are they capable of presenting a scientifically false narrative, they have a pretty solid history of doing it in modern times.
Before we start making policy decisions or throwing around federal funding we need Congress to start demanding that any research/experiment must:
1. Have total transparency
2. Have been replicated
No more of the shell game ‘its proprietary, so you must trust me BS’. Show your work, all of it, including the modeling or be ignored and remain unfunded. Require this from every institution/entity receiving federal funds of any kind for ALL their employees. No granting an administrative, research or academic position to any person who will not comply, including past research… unless that institution/entity is willing to forego federal funds of any type including student aid/loans.
THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With an exception immediately made for “classified research,” into which 98% of current grant applicants will flee.
Nope. All ‘classified’ research will be done by gov’t ‘Top Men’ locked inside area 51.
“A surprising trend: women who applied for assistant professor positions in North America were more likely to get job offers than were men”
Self-congratulatory bullshit from a media who for years has been threatening organizations with cancellation if they hire or promote white, straight males.
Reminds me strongly of an earlier example:
‘In reporting on the continuing controversy, the national press routinely cites strong public support for the ban. The lead of an April 6 story in The New York Times is typical: “A group of House Republicans plans to introduce legislation on Thursday to repeal last year’s ban on assault weapons, even as national polls continue to show that a majority of Americans favor it.” Having whipped up hysteria about “assault weapons,” journalists now point to the results of their alarmist reporting as evidence that they were right all along.”
–PROF. WILLIAM R. TONSO, “SHOOTING BLIND,” REASON MAGAZINE
“I hypothesize a massive preference cascade is building for trade schools and apprenticeship programs.”
And universities which explicitly reject the various Marxists ideologies.
And actually teach the Majors. Any that do that, will find companies clamoring for their grads.