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What Does Diversity Have to Do With Science


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2019 Jan 7, 8:49am   1,939 views  17 comments

by cmdrda2leak   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  


www.youtube.com/embed/M9mM93scwi8


The promoters of identity politics — the idea that we are primarily defined by our race and gender — have taken over the humanities and social sciences.

That’s bad.

But not as bad as this: They are moving in on “STEM” — science, technology, engineering and math.

“All across the country,” a UCLA scientist reports, “the big question is: how can we promote more women and minorities by ‘changing’ (i.e., lowering) the requirements we had previously set for graduate level study?”

The National Science Foundation (NSF), a federal agency that funds university research, exemplifies this approach. Progress in science, the NSF argues, requires a “diverse STEM workforce.” Why this is the case they don’t bother to say. Somehow, NSF-backed scientists managed to rack up more than 200 Nobel Prizes before the agency realized that scientific progress depends on “diversity.”

No matter: in July 2017, it awarded $1 million to the University of New Hampshire and two other institutions to develop a “bias-awareness intervention tool.” Another $2 million went to the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M to “remediate microaggressions and implicit biases.”

The science diversity charade, as I discuss in my book The Diversity Delusion, wastes extraordinary amounts of time and money that could be going into basic research and its real-world application. If that were its only consequence, the cost would be high enough. But identity politics is altering the standards for scientific competence and the way future scientists are trained.

“Diversity” is now an explicit job qualification in the STEM fields.

The physics department at UC San Diego advertised an assistant-professor position with a “specific emphasis on contributions to diversity,” such as a candidate’s “awareness of inequities faced by underrepresented groups.” Solving the mystery of dark energy apparently now takes a back-seat to social justice. Maybe it was a coincidence, but all five candidates on UC San Diego’s short list were females.

If traditional standards are keeping women and minorities out of STEM fields, it stands to reason that changing standards must be the way to get them in. Or maybe standards are just another expression of the white patriarchy and thus no longer relevant.

An introductory chemistry course at UC Berkeley reflects the new “culturally sensitive pedagogy.” A primary goal, according to its teachers, is to disrupt the “racialized and gendered construct of scientific brilliance,” which defines “good science” as getting all the right answers.

This same diversity obsession extends to medical schools — not a happy thought when they wheel you into the operating room for emergency surgery.

The promoters of identity politics are literally playing with our lives. Medical schools admissions committees are now told to overlook the low test scores of black and Hispanic applicants in favor of a more “holistic” approach. From 2013 to 2016, medical schools admitted 57 percent of black applicants with a low medical college admission test score of 24 to 26, but only 8 percent of whites and 6 percent of Asians with those same low scores, according to Claremont McKenna professor Frederick Lynch.

Racial preferences in med school programs are sometimes justified on the basis that minorities want doctors who “look like them.” Really? Seems much more likely that minority patients with serious illnesses want the same thing we all do: a well-trained, skilled doctor.

The desperate attempt to get women into STEM fields is also based on the idea that, absent discrimination, women and men would be equally represented in the sciences.

This is highly unlikely, however. Differences in math proficiency between boys and girls show up as early as kindergarten. In the top .01 percent of math ability, where we find scientific genius, there are 2.5 males in the US for every female, according to a recent paper in the journal Intelligence.

This may help explain why women make up 14 percent of engineering workers and 25 percent of computer workers. To acknowledge this was once common sense; now it can get you fired. Ask James Damore, the Google engineer who questioned the company’s hiring preferences for females.

The National Labor Relations Board upheld Google’s firing of Damore on the grounds that his statements about “purported biological differences between men and women” were “discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment.” This decision means that every evolutionary biologist, neurologist, or economist who acknowledges the differences between males and females is at risk of his job.

The unique accomplishments of Western science were achieved without regard to the sex or skin color of its creators. Now, however, funders, industry leaders, and academic administrators want us to believe that “diversity” is the key to the future.

But the truth is the exact opposite: we want our best scientific minds to be free to do their best work. In our highly competitive world, identity politics is an indulgence we can’t afford.

I’m Heather Mac Donald, fellow at the Manhattan Institute, for Prager University.

Comments 1 - 17 of 17        Search these comments

1   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Jan 7, 9:07am  

it has nothing to do with science we all know that. diversity just means "different". But identity politics turned it into virtue signaling, that if you oppose their forced diversity you are racist. Common sense of, let people be people and individuals doesn't work with left. They are brainwashed big time.
2   RWSGFY   2019 Jan 7, 10:12am  

#idiocracy
3   Ceffer   2019 Jan 7, 11:26am  

Higher Education needs to be made safe for Ijits. The Royalist Elite LibbyFucks will always have their private venues of genuine education and will pluck the best brains of the proletariat for their administrative and technologic needs. The rest of us can enjoy controlled, homogenized Ijitcy.
IJIT NATION! GLORIFY THE IJITS!
4   Shaman   2019 Jan 7, 11:26am  

Diversity of thought is the only sort of diversity required in science.
Funny how most of the “diversity” in tech the progs care about comes from Indians (most racist people on the planet), Asians (most educated people by far), and Arabs (who are best known for building briefcase “clocks”).
5   Rin   2019 Jan 7, 11:45am  

cmdrdataleak says
This same diversity obsession extends to medical schools — not a happy thought when they wheel you into the operating room for emergency surgery.

The promoters of identity politics are literally playing with our lives. Medical schools admissions committees are now told to overlook the low test scores of black and Hispanic applicants in favor of a more “holistic” approach. From 2013 to 2016, medical schools admitted 57 percent of black applicants with a low medical college admission test score of 24 to 26, but only 8 percent of whites and 6 percent of Asians with those same low scores, according to Claremont McKenna professor Frederick Lynch.

Racial preferences in med school programs are sometimes justified on the basis that minorities want doctors who “look like them.” Really? Seems much more likely that minority patients with serious illnesses want the same thing we all do: a well-trained, skilled doctor.


Even w/o the SWJ stuff, medical schools have already declined where instead of giving A's to F's or Honors/High Pass/Pass/Fail, today, the norm is Honors/Pass/Fail or even worse, Pass/Fail for places like Harvard & Yale.

I've discovered that many of these so-called elite graduates have such weak knowledge of cell biology or physiology that they might as well be undergraduates in the biosciences. And no, an MD-PhD doesn't make up for it because those ppl are overspecialized in one or two areas.
6   MrMagic   2019 Jan 7, 11:57am  

Doesn't matter, Climate Change is going to kill us all, just ask any scientist.

We're going to be 'Wet Bulbed" to death!
7   RWSGFY   2019 Jan 7, 12:35pm  

MrMagic says
Doesn't matter, Climate Change is going to kill us all, just ask any scientist.

We're going to be 'Wet Bulbed" to death!


ANY MOMENT NOW!!!!
9   Reality   2019 Jan 7, 5:17pm  

cmdrdataleak says
Racial preferences in med school programs are sometimes justified on the basis that minorities want doctors who “look like them.”


Can I as a patient then demand to be seen by White or Asian doctors only? A patient doesn't even have to be a racist to make such a demand: the admission standards are producing a net result that the average black doctor is less competent than the bottom 8% or 6% of White and Asian doctors!
10   RWSGFY   2019 Jan 7, 6:11pm  

Reality says
Can I as a patient then demand to be seen by White or Asian doctors only?


Yes you can.
11   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2019 Jan 7, 6:34pm  

You can ask, you can’t demand.
And you can’t ask for race, only gender ask is accommodated when possible.

DASKAA says
Reality says
Can I as a patient then demand to be seen by White or Asian doctors only?


Yes you can.
12   Patrick   2019 Jan 7, 8:16pm  

Resentment is the primary reason for the lowering of standards.

Resentment is an unhappy feeling, and so people come up with endless rationalizations for it.
13   marcus   2019 Jan 7, 10:45pm  

cmdrdataleak says
What Does Diversity Have to Do With Science


What does racism have to do with politics ?
14   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2019 Jan 8, 6:23am  

marcus says
cmdrdataleak says
What Does Diversity Have to Do With Science


What does racism have to do with politics ?


Ask the DNC.
15   Patrick   2019 Jan 8, 9:13am  

marcus says
What does racism have to do with politics ?


Thank you for asking, @marcus

When you want to hurt someone, you need a reason to hurt them or you just look cruel.

Democrats/media want to hurt poor white people, to export their jobs and import illegals to lower their wages.

How can Democrats justify harming so many people? Easy: blame them all for being racist! (White people are in reality the least racist ethnic group.)

This is why "racism" appears in the press far more than it does in reality. It is necessary as an excuse for taking millions of jobs away.
16   Shaman   2019 Jan 8, 9:31am  

Nice summary, Patrick.
17   Bd6r   2019 Jan 8, 9:35am  

"Diversity" is code-name for "institutionalized, anti-white and anti-Asian racism and discrimination"

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