In his 2011 book The Great Stagnation, economist Tyler Cowen argued that economic growth in the U.S. is slowing due to less technological innovation. And he suggested this is because most of the “low-hanging fruit” have already been picked. Other commentators have made similar arguments.
In a new report for the CSPI, researcher Leif Rasmussen puts forward an alternative (or additional) explanation for the decline in technological innovation: science has become politicised.
Scientists, Rasmussen argues, have come under increasing pressure to tailor their research to the agenda of woke activists. (He doesn’t use the term ‘woke’ in his report, but we all know what he’s talking about.)
Rasmussen’s method is very simple. He counted the frequency of various politicized terms (i.e., woke jargon) in the abstracts of successful National Science Foundation research awards between 1990 and 2020.
Specifically, he noted whether each abstract contained at least one of seven terms: ‘equity’, ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’, ‘gender’, ‘marginalize’, ‘underrepresented’ and ‘disparity’. Variants of each term (e.g., ‘inclusive’ or ‘inclusivity’) were included in this.
Note: the National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency with an annual budget of $8.5 billion (so not exactly pocket change). And it accounts for a quarter of all federal funding of basic research at U.S. colleges.
Rasmussen’s main finding is shown in the chart below, with each line corresponding to a different area of science.
As you can see, the frequency of woke jargon has increased massively in all areas of science. Unsurprisingly, the worst offender is ‘Education & Human Resources’. As of 2020, more than half of all abstracts contain at least one of the seven terms.
By contrast, ‘Mathematics & Physical Sciences’ has seen the smallest increase; though even here, the rise is non-trivial. More than 20% of abstracts now mention ‘equity’, ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ or one of the other terms.
It should be noted that every NSF abstract has a section titled ‘Broader Impacts’, in which the researchers must explain why on earth their research would be of interest to anyone else. The official guidance for this section explicitly mentions the goal of increasing representation of women and minorities:
NSF values the advancement of scientific knowledge and activities that contribute to the achievement of societally relevant outcomes. Such outcomes include, but are not limited to: full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities … development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce
Hence, it’s not necessarily true that every abstract mentioning one of the seven terms corresponds to an ideological research project per se. In a lot of cases, the researchers probably just crammed as much woke jargon as they could in the ‘Broader Impacts’ section, hoping to maximise the chance of success.
‘Our attempt to prove the Riemann hypothesis will encourage more women and minorities to enter the field of mathematics because…’ You get the idea.
Rasmussen’s finding is therefore consistent with two distinct types of politicisation. First, funding agencies may have become politicised. (And in fact, we can already see this in the text quoted above). And second, scientific research itself may have become politicised.
Further research is needed to quantify the scale of each of these types. (I suspect that both are getting worse, or at least have been for the last decade.) Nonetheless, Rasmussen’s report provides valuable insights into a troubling phenomenon, and is worth reading in full.
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Talk TV discussing the ‘jab’. Better late than never!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLgLZDNd-EA
For that £2.4 million, they could hire 130 Royal Navy ratings.
No! They could paint HMS Queen Elizabeth in rainbow colours.
Yes, and rename it the HMS Woke.
This is why you’ll never catch me coming on here and regularly bleating on about how all the ills of the world and the woes of society are to be blamed on and placed at the door of the opposite sex. That would indeed come across as a tad irrational, obsessive and a teensy bit hostile, don’t you think? Because last time I looked the power-mad globalists, the corrupt politicians and health authority figures ( e.g, Scamdemic years, anyone? ), the bent scientists, the ‘rent-a-mob’ Useful Idiots ( from all camps ) that regularly cause havoc on our streets, the staff in the gender clinics, the bureaucrats who organize the NHS as well as the front-line workers, the teaching staff and education authorities and indeed, the communists, are ( and always have been ), *all* available in both genders. Anybody who can engage functioning eyes and brain can see what’s happening, as this article makes abundantly clear;
”It is important to understand that censorship does not occur in a vacuum. It is a symptom of a worsening disease. It is an early indicator of the political repression to come. Like a canary in a coal mine, the criminalization of speech forewarns that State-sponsored terror and murder are not far away. First, certain words and thoughts are banned. Next, certain people are rounded up and imprisoned. Finally, certain “enemies of the State” are executed quite publicly. The imposition of fear supersedes the rule of law. Terrorism undergirds social order. Oppression replaces popular support.
What is happening in the West today is a concentrated push for global communism. We could bicker about precise definitions — whether we are under attack from Marxists, socialists, Leninists, Trotskyites, Maoists, or other “revolutionaries” — but the end goal is clear. A small group of global “elites” seek to use ideological and economic leverage to centralize political power and direct all human activity. They seek the abolition of private property. They seek absolute control over individual lives and local communities. They are rebuilding twentieth-century totalitarianism with the privacy-destroying surveillance technologies of the twenty-first century.
Most Western nations are working together to promote a public vision that achieves their private totalitarian goals. Governments do not care about “hate speech”; they are dedicated to seizing control of the press, punishing dissent, censoring political opposition, and regulating public debate. Governments do not care about “climate change”; they are dedicated to seizing control over all economic activity by first establishing a monopoly on available energy. Governments do not care about “systemic racism,” “social justice,” or “income inequality”; they are dedicated to maximizing social divisions and distorting the meaning of fundamental rights, so that they may undermine long-cherished personal liberties. Governments do not care about “gun violence”; they are dedicated to disarming their populations and making it impossible for them to fight back against tyranny.
Governments do not care about minimizing vicious and costly wars; they are dedicated to distracting their citizens with false threats to their personal security. Governments do not care about maintaining the integrity and value of their monetary currencies; they are dedicated to printing and spending money that inflates household costs, taxes middle class savings, maximizes Wall Street profits, and increases welfare dependency. Governments do not need to create central bank digital currencies to stave off economic disaster; they are dedicated to creating economic disasters, so that they can justify a future communist system that runs on privacy-destroying CBDCs.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/marxist_globalists_will_resort_to_terror_and_violence.html
Thanks for posting Mogs. The article pretty much summarises all the same points I have been making since joining DS and I don’t mean that in a big-headed way. And I know there are plenty here who share the same views.
Well one of the reasons I mention the NHS and front-line medical staff above, aside from the obvious example of how appalling they were during the Scamdemic years ( and this obv goes for all countries that partook of the abuse of human rights and that of bodily autonomy of their citizens ) is with regards to the whole trans thing, but this in particular caught my attention. It’s all just coming from the same ideology though. No matter the narrative or the ’cause’, all are designed to harm. The Scamdemic years and the roll-out of the death jab rammed home to me how medical ethics no longer exist but this just takes the cake. Bear in mind, doctors lost their license for speaking out about the death jabs but enabling somebody’s severe mental issues surrounding body image is just fine. It’s all about supporting or opposing the narrative;
”I have long predicted that normalizing transgender surgeries would be followed eventually by doctors intentionally disabling patients with Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID). These patients obsess that their “true selves” are quadriplegic, or amputees, or blind, and they yearn to be made that way. It is a real and anguishing condition. Some are now even calling the affliction “transable” (get it?).
Well, here it comes. A doctor in Quebec “treated” a BIID patient by amputating two of his healthy fingers. Otherwise, the patient was threatening to mutilate himself.
Is anyone surprised, given the current cultural trends? After all, what is the material difference morally and in principle between surgically altering transgendered patients’ genitals and amputating healthy limbs or snipping the fully functioning spinal cords of BIID patients?
I fear the worst. We are creating a world in which the subjective primarily matters. Radical individualism is now our societal avatar, with powerful forces — transhumanists, the medical establishment, bioethicists, the LGBT lobby — all urging that self-identity become the be all and end all of life, even when that means doctors disfiguring healthy bodies.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-comes-after-transgender-doctor-amputates-mans-healthy-fingers/
“A concentrated push for global communism”. ——-If you had to round up all of the Equality Diversity Race Gender and Climate Politics to one single sentence then that sentence is probably good enough to cover what is happening. ——-In my particular area of interest which is the Troubling Science and Politics of Energy and Climate I have been aware of this for a very long time. I have come to realise that the issue is mostly NOT the issue.———— I can see over the 20 years I have been looking into energy and climate that the issue is not about the climate. Climate is simply the excuse for the politics.—-GREEN = RED
Ministers have clearly lost control of diversity spending and the respect civil servants and other people who should be doing what ministers tell them to.
It seems like the only way they can get back control would be to introduce a law that severely limits, or better still completely bans, spending on DEI roles. If people knew they could be sacked or even prosecuted for creating too many of these pointless jobs they might actually start to take notice as at the minute they’re clearly just ignoring the wishes of ministers and any written instructions they’re given.
Excellent idea, especially the complete bans.
I would refer you to Mogwai’s excellent post for an explanation of what is occurring.
Much obliged, hux.
Yes, you’re nothing if not consistent. 
Varmint also talks about this a lot. Both you and he are more well-read than me on this topic, however. If I’m to read a book it has to be of the thriller/horror type. 
How about an Equality Diversity and Climate thriller starring Brad Pit and Tom Cruise, with George Clooney in the role of Nelson Mandela for all the colour-blind casting fans? —-It could be called something like “From Here To Absurdity”
All state institutions have been taken over by radical leftist scum. Politicians no longer have control of officials.
The size and scope of the state needs to be radically reduced with real accountability to the citizenry for the discharging of the limited number of essential state services.
The senior naval officers responsible for this wokery need the Admiral Byng treatment.
Reading an article about Admiral Byng’s life just now, and how he was sent into battle with an appallingly ill-equipped fleet with skeleton crews instead of the hundreds more he needed, reminded me of the state of the Royal Navy today. He did his best in a bad situation, and did not deserve execution. Maybe someone else wanted his job, and set him up to fail.
That was the absolutely normal state of affairs for the Royal Navy at that time.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who wonders when, you know, a government minister will actually do something rather than express mild criticism of the madness they’ve allowed to multiply.
How hard can it be to sack someone?
I watch Premier League and Champions League football.———-Why is it not necessary to enforce “diversity” on all of those football teams? It is probably fairly obvious. The football teams want to win football games. They don’t care about the racial makeup of their teams. They sign the best players they can find for the money. ——–Ok they do some posturing about race by taking the knee etc. but they would never just play footballers in their team because they were black or Asian or whatever. So do Armies and Navies want to win wars and sort out conflicts by hiring the best people for their jobs or do they want to tick Politically Correct boxes?