NIH insiders reveal process stalling grants

https://bsky.app/profile/jeremymberg.bsky.social/post/3ljflptdcy22r

90 29 1 year ago

mmooss9• 1 year ago

The key cog is disinformation - see the outline of tactics in the OP thread, where it references using X to gain public support: One side has an effective machine, the other side has surrendered to the point where they won't even acknowledge the information warfare.

In the normal human social and political world, people respond negatively to this kind of behavior, and the leaders (elected officials and appointed ones) lose their power, careers, and reputations.

But with the disinformation machine, and with no effective opposition denouncing it or stopping it or offering effective countermessaging, the people conducting bad behavior can say whatever they want and get support, regardless of the absurdity or consequences - climate change; millions dying due to lack of health care (vaccines, pandemic, USAID programs, etc.); end of democracy and freedom; cruelty and brutality and brazen immorality; greed, fraud, crimes, etc.

Almost everyone I know has surrendered about disinformation; they embrace victimhood - i.e., because they are 'victims', any behavior is justified. James Carville, the leading Democratic political consultant, recently wrote a NY Times op-ed which counselled Democrats to literally roll over, do nothing, and the opposition - Trump, the GOP - will destroy itself. It's as bizarre as the things their opposition claims; it's also been an explicit strategy of the Democrats going back to at least Hillary Clinton's campaign - it's a proud embrace of cowardice (usually people hide it!). Who follows or listens to cowards and victims, who revel in their cowardice because it's justified by victimhood - who is inspired by it? Who votes for that? It seems like a disinformation campaign has taken over them too; that is the kind of psyops used in war against opposition troops (I'm not saying that's the case, but how insane it is that the Dems and others adopt the outlook that psyops tries to impose on their enemies).

Without effective messaging, there's nothing to do. If you put down all your guns (edit: metaphorically; i.e., your information warfare guns), you can't shoot back. Good people have enormous advantages in messaging: truth and goodness and decency; humans strongly prefer those things and can differentiate them to some degree - you can't fool all the people all the time.

They aren't absolute advantages at all. You can still lose, you have to fight hard. If you don't fight, you're going to see what we see today. If you want to stop them, take away their messaging and IMHO everything else falls.

worik• 1 year ago

I love what you say.

I agree there must be a fight back.

This has been cast as left/right - Ok. I can work with that.

If you put down all your guns, you can't shoot back.

No.

I urge those on the left, those who give a fuck, to fight back with with love and hope.

The perpetrators of the coup in the USA got there spreading fear and hate. The temptation is to fight back with violence. But fascism thrives on violence and will only get stronger if you feed it.

Love, and hope. That is what got a Obama elected - it works

92834092322• 1 year ago

The answer is community. It's why Republicans in some states are trying to ban collective bargaining. Invest in your communities and in each other.

SubiculumCode2• 1 year ago

I agree for now, but there may come a time where fire must be fought with fire. WWII would not have ended well without opposing armies.

mmooss9• 1 year ago

No.
I urge those on the left, those who give a fuck, to fight back with with love and hope.

When I said, "If you put down all your guns, you can't shoot back." I meant that metaphorically, in the context of information warfare. If you don't have an effective messaging and countermessaging, if you give up that fight, you can't defeat your enemy in that domain. I'm not advocating violence.

I urge those on the left, those who give a fuck, to fight back with with love and hope.
The perpetrators of the coup in the USA got there spreading fear and hate. The temptation is to fight back with violence. But fascism thrives on violence and will only get stronger if you feed it.

I agree generally - that's why I talked about truth, goodness, and decency. My point is that you need an effective way to reach people and persaude them, otherwise you're only loving and hoping yourself.

JumpCrisscross2• 1 year ago

I urge those on the left, those who give a fuck, to fight back with with love and hope

You can fight with love and hope and guns. (Figuratively.)

Musk and the DOGE bros are breaking the law. At the very least that means Democrats in the Congress, governors’ and mayors’ mansions need to put aside norms and conventions. (I say arrest them [1] for violating the Privacy Act of ‘74.)

[1] https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-state-officials-arrest...

SubiculumCode2• 1 year ago

Politicians decry politicians supposedly directing science funding, so politicians direct science funding.

Ignores that NIH inclusion polices is the result of scientists correcting scientific deficiencies (e.g. early assumptions that health researchers studying only male animal models was sufficient, because erroneously thought that treatments that work in men always work in women.)

freehorse2• 1 year ago

Similar to when they removed the accessibility guidelines for government websites in the anti-DEI crusade there, they now direct banning grants that include the word "diverse" as in "transdisciplinary", and probably quite a few more that offer any faint hint of what could be DEI.

This is a common pattern in general in authoritarian regimes: censors tend to be overzealous because the cost (to them) of false negatives (not banning sth that they should) is much higher than the cost of false positives (banning sth they should have not). The more people will be involved in this bureaucratic censorship assembly line the more strict the result will be.

immibis• 1 year ago

Other Hacker News commentators have sternly informed me this is not an authoritarian regime and I am just irrationally angry because my preferred candidate, equally good as all the others, didn't win.

freehorse2• 1 year ago

Oh, my sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding! Clearly, I must have been mistaken in thinking that any form of censorship or restriction on academic language could be seen as authoritarian. It's just my irrational anger speaking, obviously.

sega_sai2• 1 year ago

That's freedom for you -- you have a word 'diversity' in your grant -- no money.

Spivak• 1 year ago

I really do wonder where we lost the plot and where the opposition for diversity programs became legitimately insane. Like even if I agreed with them, and on some parts I do, I've never hated anything in my life with the intensity currently on display. Not the least of which because the group implementing these programs might be called naive or misguided, but are in good faith trying to improve things.

I don't particularly care for most of the implementations of diversity programs but I'm not so blind as to not see POSIWID and that you have to actually look at the outcomes to identify cases where systems aren't as fair as they might seem on paper.

sega_sai2• 1 year ago

I agree with this view completely. I think some of the programs probably went over the top in my view and I would not mind the pendulum swing back a little bit. But the current government seemed fixated for some reason and just want to kill it all and happy to act like a totalitarian state if you disagree.

mmooss9• 1 year ago

I really do wonder where we lost the plot and where the opposition for diversity programs became legitimately insane.

It's not about diversity programs - they don't care about that. Trump could shift positions and targets tomorrow, and they would go with him. It's about conditioning their movement to follow instructions and to commit horrors.

They've been following the same strategy for decades: Choosing an enemy, demonizing them with continuous propaganda, and then encouraging hatred, violence, and complete contempt for morality, rights, compassion, and humanity.

Other dangerous movements, from the Nazis to the Rwandan Hutus to more, invested a lot of time and effort in conditioning their followers to perpetrate horrors.

jfengel• 1 year ago

Not the least of which because the group implementing these programs might be called naive or misguided, but are in good faith trying to improve things.

That's the problem. This campaign is not being carried out in good faith. They do not believe in good faith, and do not believe that others can have it. They believe their own bad faith is justified by everybody else's bad faith.

Casting DEI programs as bad faith was fairly straightforward, since it plays into racist and ideological stereotypes. They're convinced that all of their own problems can be blamed on opportunities given to Those People. So that is where they are starting, with all the ferocity of people who firmly believe that they are being oppressed.

That's this month. Just wait until next month.

cytocync• 1 year ago

Imagine if we built a software tool for healthcare that lets doctors code without a single bug, tracks patient data like a GPS, and somehow also makes research grants move faster than an express train? We’d be the NIH of the future. Is this the NIH we want?

mmooss9• 1 year ago

I don't understand the point of this question. We'd also like carbon-free, cost-free energy; etc.

insane_dreamer• 1 year ago

Just make sure your grant says your research is designed to help white males and you’re golden.

No seriously the whole reason you need diversity in HSR is to correct inherent biases in the data due to under-representation of certain demographics, not to mention the fact that there are actual physical differences between demographic groups (sex, age, race, etc) which must be accounted for if you want the science to be generally applicable. Diversity in science is _not_ about giving a leg up to underprivileged persons (though that’s a good thing).

inciampati• 1 year ago

Genetic diversity is a scientifically measurable feature of an organism or population, often diversity is stylized as π. I've heard of grants that mention this diversity in terms of mouse populations which are currently frozen. The solution is to talk about 1-π, or "purity". Scientifically the same. Politically acceptable. lol

NIH insiders reveal process stalling grants

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