A few months ago, Senator Ted Cruz announced that he had discovered grants of one billion dollars of scientific grants funded by the administration of former President Joe Biden, which gave priority “extremist political views” or “new major theories such as”, “,”, and “diversity,”.
When Cruz released The database of this research is “wake up” Earlier this month, we decided to manage our own experience. We have asked one of the models that operate ChatGPT, which can refresh through large quantities of data, to assess all 3500 grants in the database as if it were an investigative journalist looking for Marxist advertising, “waking ideology”, or diversity, stocks and inclusion. The model tried to give us descriptions of how to suit each project for these topics. We were particularly interested in the grants in which they appeared empty. Then we read through the full summaries of the researchers for these and many other grants, including each one described in this story, and looking for signals to some keywords in the list.
We have found that Cruz has invaded many examples of scientific projects funded by the National Science Corporation, which simply confessed to social variations or were not completely linked to the social or economic topics mentioned by his committee.
Among them, for example, it was a $ 470,000 grant to study the development of mint factories and how to spread it across continents. We can also say, the project faced a problem with Republicans in the Senate Committee for Trade, Science and Transport due to two specific words used in its application on NSF: “Diversification”, in reference to the biological diversity of plants, and “female”, where the application noted how the project will support young science in the research team.
Other projects led us from artificial intelligence to:
- Development of a device that can treat severe bleeding. It seems that he caught the committee’s attention to use the phrase “victims” – as in the victims of shots – and “shock”.
- Create biological sensors to detect infectious diseases. The grant seems to have been marked for the frequent use of “POC”, a shortcut that is often used for “colored people” but in this context it means “care point” – that is, where people receive medical treatment – and “barrier”, referring to part of the biological sensor itself.
- Eye tracking technique for diagnosis and treatment of concussion. It appears that the signal has been marked with “trauma” and “position” brain injuries, which means the condition of patients.
“It is very frightening.”.
Lindqvist spend hours a day grinding plant samples and analyzing their DNA to determine genetic differences between species. She said that the study of plant diversity can help secure more flexible diets. She said: “We are really trying very difficult … to move our world forward, and better understand it through our type of foundational research, and sometimes a pioneer,” then a blacklist is marked because there is a word like “female” in your project.
Republican employees of the Senate Committee collected them Report by examining all NSF grants They were granted to the projects that started between January 2021 and April 2024. Using the keyword list, they reported those dedicated to the research they said, “It often depends on the theories of new Marxism that defined merit with material or ethnic features, not the individual’s talent, work ethics, or intellectual curiosity.”
Evaluating the advantages of these awards requires a deep understanding of dozens of scientific fields, from gravitational waves to DNA. But the report describes a raw approach; While employees tried to calculate the different methods that could be used as their main words, they did not review all grants manually. The report also failed to admit that NSF has a legal mandate to make science more comprehensive for women, ethnic minorities and disabled.
Lack of accuracy in the committee’s methodology “is clearly funny.”
Cruz has just released the full database, as the Trump administration told the Trump administration that she was studying research grants to ensure that it complies with the executive orders of the president that ends diversity, shares and integration initiatives. Cruz said he requested a “great scrutiny” for granting in his database. at that time , NSF used a similar list of keywords to review.
The Cruise office nor a Republican spokesman on the committee did not respond to the suspension requests.
It is not clear whether the approved projects that are still waiting for payments will get their money. A federal judge ruling last Friday The administration cannot cancel or freeze grants to support diversity, shares and integration programs. When asked how he would respond to the first judge, a NSF Propublica spokesman directed to Agency web pageWhich has not been updated with information about the court ruling at the time of publication.
“NSF is urgently conducting a comprehensive review of our projects, programs, and activities to be compatible with the current executive requests,” said a PROPUBLICA spokesman in response to questions about the review process.
The Senate Committee list includes words such as “Diversification” and “Al -Mudhaza”, which have technical meanings that have nothing to do with social issues. Although the authors of the report worked to remove the scholarships that were marked for these reasons, some, such as Lindqvist, have slipped.
Kim Lin Shipply, professor of international affairs at Princeton University, who is studying the rise and fall of constitutional governments, said that the lack of accuracy in the committee’s methodology is “clearly funny.” But she is also concerned about what may happen if legislators follow a more serious approach, such as trying to ban research on racist inequality, similar to how Congress is limited to severely Studies on armed violence.
NSF evaluates grant proposals based on two factors. The first is intellectual merit. Each application is reviewed by a committee of experts – often other academics – specializing in the same topic. It revolves around detailed applications that include data, references, and researchers ’qualifications, and more information from the summary summaries that have been evaluated by the Senate Committee.
The other factor is “Wider effects“Which can include how research can benefit societal welfare or make science more comprehensive.
currently, Federal laws NSF is required to support research in faculties and historical black universities and other institutions that serve the groups represented by an imperfect representative in science. Congress NSF also ordered the financing of “designed to increase employment, retain and progress” for the members of these groups in scientific professions.
“All this is hard to federal financing,” said Schepele. “If anyone” wake up “, it was Congress.”
Shepli said that the laws approved by Congress have a more legally weight than executive orders, so NSF should not give priority to Trump’s order for his mandate to support the people who were represented incomplete in science. She said in an email that the White House “literally asking NSF violation of law!”
The committee’s report has identified some projects to simply recognize that people from some demographic composition face unique challenges. This includes the study of Houston University on mothers’ deaths that are looking for the reason that lions, indigenous people and other colors in the United States are nearly three times the white women to die during pregnancy or during the first year after birth. Another project appears to include the use of drones to provide a fibrillation remover to people with a heart attack, which was marked because it indicated that the emergency response times are slower in low -income neighborhoods and minorities.
In other cases, the keywords that caught the attention of the committee may have come from awareness efforts aimed at expanding the effect of research. The nuclear astronomical physics project includes $ 6 million to study the origins of the universe as a sign of attracting a “variety” of students interested in the topic and the summer school program to increase interest in nuclear science professions, “especially among women and minorities.”
This is in line with the 1998 law that ordered NSF to develop “intellectual capital, both people and ideas, with a special focus on groups and regions that were not completely involved in science, mathematics and engineering.”
“You will get a better science” in this way, “said Melissa Venocan, Vice President of Science and Innovation in the Union of Scientists concerned. She said that when you get different views, you interact and think about complex problems, you will get different and new ways to solve a problem.
The “Hamshammer” methodology of the report ignores the great scientific merit of these projects, which addresses many “critical national needs in areas such as space, agriculture and computer infrastructure – as well as the need to expand talent gathering,” said a spokesman for the Democrats at the Senate Committee. E -mail said that the classification of democratic Senator Maria Kaneuel from Washington “realizes that there is no method that the United States can compete” with the rest of the world to innovation “without ensuring that NSF financing confirms the participation of women and minorities in STEM”, referring to science, engineering and mathematics.
Professor of Rice Vicky Yao University saw how the efforts made to expand the participation of excitement and interest in science can increase.
When Yao applied for a research grant in 2022, it included communication with community college students, many of whom are inhabitants, an incomplete representative and they have no access to research opportunities.
When the ProPublica Yao informed that her $ 610,000 project was listed on the Senate Committee list, she found that it is strange that such artwork is on DNA – a process that could affect cancer and neurological diseases – that can be described as “waking up”.
The choice of the committee for the main words is to the extent that stopping the research that uses these terms will not only end diversity programs but also vast areas of research on social sciences (“black societies”, “ethnic inequality”, “LGBT”), “climate change” (“zero zero”, “climate research”, “clean energy”) and “white women”, “victims”, “victims”.
If any research related to women or minority residents are fire, we may talk about 65 % of the American population. So at that stage, what remains? “Under any authority, or according to philosophy, the government can nullify or discredit research that focuses on two -thirds of the population?” Said Dominic Boer, a professor of anthropology at the University of Rice University, whose project is to reduce the risk of flooding by the committee.
Bewer received a $ 750,000 prize to use natural solutions such as rain gardens to reduce floods in Houston, where Hurricane Harvey encouraged tens of thousands of people in 2017. His team began to cooperate closely with residents of three neighborhoods: most often from low -ced exam communities.
It was initially assumed that this is why his research was marked. But it turns out that the tight keywords may be from the Boileplate language that describes the specified NSF program that mall the Work of Boar: enhancing the American infrastructure. Parts of the description of the grant program that contains these keywords were written by NSF during the first period of Trump. I used the phrase “economic social” and “equal opportunities” to explain the reason for the importance of the community’s infrastructure. The same description was found in more than twenty grants on the committee list.
Bouer said that he is talking to a kind of “absurdity of Orwellian” that “these words can have only one meaning, and this is the meaning they want to politicize.”
