It's become very evident from the outside that the best time to stand up was yesterday, and you might already be too far down the slope to be able to quickly recover for this. I really do feel for all Americans who just want to have a normal life with an average quality of life or above, but at one point the environment around you change so quickly that that stops being even a possibility in the future. If your life hasn't been affected yet, it will be shortly.
The best day to stand up against the ongoing censorship and repression might have been yesterday, but the second-best day to do so is today. You really need to start caring about this before it's way to late. One "no kings protest" every 6 months is not gonna do anything, what you need is wide solidarity across industries, and a real general strike across the country. The second you do this, you'll see that the many and poor can control the few and rich.
The article linked doesn't even say what exactly they were protesting (beyond a rather vague "attacks on scientific research" which could mean a lot of things).
I can hardly think of a more peaceful form of protest, which only intended to make aware the participants about the content of the article. Those who were not interested presumably refused to take the article copy or did not read it.
Even on HN you can still see claims that USA is a "free" country where anyone can say anything about the government, without consequences. This example shows clearly that this claim is false.
The article they were distributing is pretty clearly about diabetes. If the actions it describes continues, significant efforts towards treating and even curing diabetes will be lost.
It sounds to me like criticism of the government.
The article is not a long read [1]. It describes how current policy is dismantling and destroying the research infrastructure for diabetes, infrastructure which has started or has already borne significant fruit. It encapsulates a criticism of the administration, and it’s definitely scathing, but it’s far from a partisan rant.
For example: “This CD3-directed monoclonal antibody has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent type 1 diabetes in people aged 8 years and older with stage 2 type 1 diabetes. As a result, we are a major step closer to a cure for type 1 diabetes. With the potential to prevent the disease, screening programs for type 1 diabetes are being initiated worldwide.
…
Two examples are the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN) and the Integrated Islet Distribution Program (IIDP). HIRN aims to advance our understanding of how β-cells are lost in human type 1 diabetes and to find inventive strategies to protect or replace β-cells in people with the disease.”
The funding for that research is being cut. If you have a loved one with or at risk of getting diabetes, this could be the difference between vastly different levels of quality of life and years of life versus death.
[1] https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/49/6/901/164764/Mi...
So just to jump back to the "The article they were distributing is pretty clearly about diabetes" thing mere comments ago - this seems to be about budgets and administrative matters. Those are generic concerns. In fact, in my unhumble opinion, this looks a lot like the sort of document written by someone with poor marketing skills worried that their budget is going to get cut in the near future. Especially since the conference organisers didn't think there was special merit to it.
There isn't much (if any) research here. It can reasonably be said to be out of scope for a diabetes conference if the organisers don't want to include it. All of us would like a larger budget, we don't need to listen to other people present on the topic of how they also want larger budgets. That is a political topic.
I’d agree with you if this happened at the journal level. It didn’t. The journal published it. Like, an astronomical conference paper describing why a new telescope design is a waste of money isn’t basic research, but it’s absolutely topical. (It could also reasonably be branded as political.)
The article is about the research infrastructure supporting diabetes research. If diabetes researchers aren’t allowed to comment on whether diabetes funding is working or wasteful in their own journals, or present their published journal findings at their own conferences, you’re not going to get any basic diabetes research.
> we don't need to listen to other people present on the topic of how they also want larger budgets. That is a political topic
It is. It’s also about diabetes. Debating which research avenues are more promising than others is absolutely political. It’s also at the heart of science. And frankly, informing fellow researchers and policymakers of the boring parts of the science is part of a scientist’s job.
Also, importantly, they aren’t asking for more budget in the article. They’re pointing out that the appropriated funds aren’t being delivered. They’re being literally misappropriated by OMB and HHS.
They got to have their say. Editorial published, made international news. I imagine all the conference attendees read it if they cared. Seems like a non-issue. Can we find a real problem for me to read up on instead? I'm having fun I suppose but I'm not seeing why we need to be all up in their business.
I bet less than 10% of the HN people who read the article even get to the "Misguided Brushes of a Pen..." editorial to find out what their complaint is.
ADA is violating its own code of conduct to suppress an article that calls out potentially-illegal misappropriation of diabetes-research funding by OMB and HHS, funding which falls in a results-oriented tradition and/or cuts off strong candidates for future therapies.
> Seems like a non-issue
Half of the front page usually is. You’re engaging with this content, so there is clearly something going on.
Personally, I flagged excerpts of the article to one of my Senator’s staffers. They weren’t aware of it, and will be surfacing the article to their boss, a doctor, tomorrow. If HHS is fucking around with Congressional appropriations on a healthcare issue germane to our state, they probably shouldn’t have gone out of their way to draw attention to it during an appropriation cycle.
They published the article. That is the opposite of suppressing it.
> Personally, I flagged excerpts of the article to one of my Senator’s staffers.
Sounds like this article is indeed quite politically charged then? We're dealing with a hot potato here that has little to do with the actual science of diabetes and is going to cause random United Statesmen on the internet to start emailing their Senator. If you can't connect the dots with how that might reasonably be seen as inappropriate fare for a diabetes conference then you're probably going to figure it out later after a little reflection. It is likely that the conference organisers want to encourage technical discussion in a polite low-politics environment.
Not the takeaway I got from the article. They describe specific research and specific dollar-drawdown amounts.
The tools of science are just as relevant as the science per se to the process of science. I may be extrapolating from the astronomical circles I’m more familiar with. But folks debating telescopes and whatnot is commonplace, political, and absolutely germane. In many of those cases, simply handing out an editorial wasn’t the norm—you’d have straight-up advocacy going on. The idea that a conference organizer would eject someone for distributing a published paper would be absurd.
> likely that the conference organisers want to encourage technical discussion in a polite low-politics environment
They invited a political appointee to speak!
And it appears that is about their limit for politics at the event. They put their foot down at letting it turn into a debate club.
I suspect if Bhattacharya didn't control the purse strings somehow he wouldn't have been invited to talk politics either, I bet the organisers were gritting their teeth when they offered him a slot. And nothing short of a significant cash infusion being involved would have induced them to let him speak. This appears to be a technical conference.
This looks like the shoe-on-the-other-foot version of what we saw during Covid and BLM. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. Whatever happened to just ignoring the guy handing out contrarian leaflets? As long as he’s not yelling at or berating people it shouldn’t be a problem. The paper does seem relevant to conference attendees, even if it’s political in nature.
Basically neither of the two primary parties believe in free expression anymore.
I’m sick and tired of people trying to force opinions they don’t like off the stage. The “paradox of tolerance” folks and the safetyist folks have a right to their opinions too, but they don’t have the right to compel others.
If it's such a non-issue, why should they have been forcefully ejected from the premises over it? And why do you feel so strongly that they should have been?
I don't. It makes literally no difference to me; especially since I've skimmed through the actual paper they were handing out anyway.
I'm just trying to figure out if there is actually an issue here or whether we're just having an anti-Trump session. And I'm arguing with JCC which is its own reward.
I don’t think any of your comments deserve to be downvoted, for what it’s worth.
So the organisers of a conference can control the topics that its attendees want to talk about in the hallways of the venue? They don't have to extend any agency to the attendees, they're just dumb consumers here?
Is it your position that if an article is critical of a world government it must not be discussed at a scientific conference? Or even "you should expect to get ejected from a conference if you criticize the host government"? Because believe it or not, that's not been a problem in the USA prior to Trump. And it runs contrary to how science should work.
This is what people seem to get mixed up about the First Amendment to the US Constitution. These scientists were removed from the conference because they were highlighting the scientific role to push back against government censorship. Not because it wasn't germane to the conference, but in furtherance of the censorship itself. The US Government participated here indirectly via its chilling on scientific discourse.
Comments in this thread suggesting that "this is just some private actors" are mistaken. This is absolutely the consequence of the Trump HHS policymakers decisions.
Your takeaway from Donglegate was that Richards was in the right?
The idea that a science based defense of science is anti-government and therefore off limits for a conference is downright Soviet.
They were distributing an Opinion Piece which title was (yes, this is the full title): Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now!
It's not like they were handing out "Trump sleeps during press events" posters. You should read the article they distributed, it's very relevant to the conference attendees.
Yup. From their article: “DCCT/EDIC revolutionized the approach to treating people with type 1 diabetes, establishing standards for glucose control and resulting in improved quality of life along with clinically significant reductions in the risk of diabetes complications and major adverse cardiovascular events.
After 44 years, it continues to provide new insights, including showing that in adults with type 1 diabetes, neurodegeneration is likely the result of non–Alzheimer disease mechanisms. DPP/DPPOS, which enrolled people with prediabetes, demonstrated the benefit of intensive lifestyle intervention and metformin in reducing the risk of developing diabetes. These findings led Congress to approve an amendment to the Social Security Act to establish the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program and provide lifestyle intervention services for eligible individuals.”
The first amendment applies to public spaces. Not private conferences which are invite-only. You're on an anti-U.S. tear in this discussion but lack understanding of the basics.
For the same reason I can't show up at your office and start handing out religious materials and/or pornography (take your pick) to everyone showing up for work and claim it's a free speech issue and my right to do so.
As someone else pointed out below, this exact argument was used to ban apps lacking "correct" moderation from the app stores a few years ago.
Freedom of speech is a philosophical concept broader than the First Amendment.
The conference organizers broke their own code of conduct to censor this article’s distribution. That violates principles of free speech. If they did it at the behest of a government official, that would be a First Amendment issue. We don’t have any evidence of that right now, but it isn’t a question which has been seriously investigated yet.
Indeed, my view and perspective is built by a culmination of recent events, not based on a single event. The widespread self-censorship Americans currently engage in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434091) is also a large part of it.
I don't have any "index of events" handy that could explain why I think the slope is so evident currently, but based on the ongoing journalistic suppression, individual self-censorship, centralization of control and power in governments and society together with lots of other smaller incidents like this one and others, makes it pretty clear to me at least.
— Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
- The population is kept just comfortable enough to become complacent, with easy access to intoxicants, brainrot media and fast food. Now there are even robots that can do our thinking for us. A large percentage of people are brainwashed into thinking that all change is bad because it will cause them to lose the paltry, ersatz freedom they have rather than gaining real liberty.
- The labor pool is kept large enough that any of us could be replaced immediately with no significant loss to our employers. As the ISP mantra goes, “we have nothing to lose but our jobs”.
Yes, we know that they couldn’t replace _all_ of us at once, but combine points 1 and 2 and you will start to understand why there is no appreciable labor movement in the United States.
Growing up, I always heard Americans bragging about freedom of speech, and how important it is. I'll admit I swallowed that wholesale as a young impressionable person in another country, and I still believe in it, just not the American freedom of speech flavor I suppose. But it's so sad to see the state of affairs compared to just ten years ago, where discussions could be freely held, even on mainstream social media, and people weren't afraid of talking about things with clear words.
But the chilling effect is in full effect today, and I think it's having a large impact on how well (or not) the working class could actually mobilize. Because as soon as anyone mentions "general strike" on social media, they seem to disappear into a black hole and that stuff never shows up in people's feeds. Regardless of the size of the labor pool, if you can't organize people somehow, especially across a large country like the US, it's short of impossible to actually get any change in reality.
If someone wants unfettered speech, it has to be someplace for which they are willing to pay the hosting and moderation bills. "Private businesses don't owe you a platform for your speech" as the American left liked to say.
You have to work with what you have, not what you wish you had.
Americans are talking about protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship all the time ... and I mean literally all sides - liberals, conservatives, leftists, feminists, MAGA ...
Whenever you see something like this, it's because the platform has some kind of automoderation policy that is liable to delete/shadowban content containing the word. Typing that, then, is not self-censorship; it's the exact opposite, the defiance of external censorshop.
That's just because reddit is almost entirely children and bots/shills. Yes, a platform full of children is going to be childish.
Using the example of someone typing “r@pe” to get around auto moderation is a pretty specific complaint, and not really an example of self censorship since that person clearly still got to say whatever they wanted to say.
At least online, there is a decent argument to be made that a good cohort of people have significantly lost the ability to self moderate.
If your life hasnt been affected yet, you arent paying attention. Or, it has been affected for the better because you are one of the many who generally support the movement.
"Yesterday" they were largely in favor of censorship: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434589
In case you’re being serious, this has been debated in various liberal traditions since the conception liberalism was first born. In essence, the modern liberal tradition (modern as in post-Enlightenment, i.e. about the whole time America has existed) says you don’t censor anything except for forces seeking to censor (paradox of tolerance).
Better minds than mine have debated the paradox of tolerance (a name only given in the 1950s, but a concept recognized for longer).
Also, not tolerating something doesn’t mean forcefully censoring it. Norms and conventions largely keep e.g. frowned-upon slurs out of common usage. The person getting told to shut up for using the N- word isn’t being censored by the state, but they are being encouraged to engage respectfully.
One, not my experience. (Indian family.) Two, people spouting out the N- word have generally caused themselves to be ignored, which sort of solves the problem as well.
I understand the want to protest, but you do know that misrepresentation doesn't help, right?
Refusing to cease by an even organisers order will, yes, result in being escorted out forcefully by security.
Sure. But if two groups of people are distributing articles published in the organisation’s own journal, with one of them containing elements of political speech, and the organization censors that one, it’s absolutely valid to ask if anyone in government directed that censorship.
The core of the argument is they should not have been asked to cease distributing their article, that’s literally one of the purposes of an academic conference, plenty of other people were doing it in various ways. The ADA, in claiming it was enforcing its rules, was in fact not following them.
What behavior exactly were they being given an opportunity to cease?
Now I’m actually curious for names. One of the people thrown out is an (the?) editor of the ADA’s journal. Who in the chain of command made this call?
Don't get me wrong, anything is better than nothing, and many small streams may form into one big river, eventually. But short of a general strike across impactful industries, I think the current wave of protests won't actually achieve anything.
There is a reason "general strikes" are so feared by the political and wealthy class, and it's because there is no way for them to get rid of them without actually agreeing to some of the demands, otherwise the strikes actually impact their lives. Protesting by going out on the streets waving signs isn't gonna accomplish that, sadly.
If like another 5% of eligible voters committed to voting every election, minor or not, and committed to calling their electeds on one issue every quarter, we’d likely see a sea change.
The threshold for laziness is very low, currently only 1 in 5 [1]. That’s both annoying and an opportunity.
[1] https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-national-survey-shows-...
The problem is not turnout. What the Democrats seem unable or unwilling to accept is that the American public doesn't agree with their platform and are also unable or unwilling to change their platform to something that voters will elect them for.
You’re only looking at the general. 5% more eligible voters turning out to primaries could easily flip the outcome, or at the very least, signal a political bloc that will show up for someone. 5% of eligible voters contacting their electeds would represent a 25% increase from baseline; this is the sort of power that makes e.g. regulating supplements impossible. (If you try your office’s phone lines get blown up by constituents.)
> unable or unwilling to change their platform
Changing your platform for a group that doesn’t turn out is incredibly risky. Sometimes it works. Most of the time, they keep up not turning out.
I understand you’re a fan of the method and it can be impactful but that’s not a reason to state that protesting does not accomplish anything.
Protesting is very effective when you have a government that listens, which clearly isn't the case here, then besides a bunch of violent options, you're basically left with general strikes.
That's 2028.
General strikes are not something you can just Make Happen. They're certainly not something you can reasonably scoff at an individual (one who's not the head of a major union) for not having Made Happen. They require significant amounts of coordination between unions if you want them to have a prayer of success, and that takes a lot of time.
Don't denigrate protests of the sign-waving type. They are a very important rallying activity for the resistance. Among other things, they help ensure that people who want to fight back know they're not alone, and ensure people who want the fascists to win know their feelings are not universal.
This would probably have been fine if this administration was not comprised of individuals that cannot abide any sort of pushback.
The protest would not have been needed without the official there - but their presence made the organizers so nervous that they tossed the editor in chief of their own journal.
The problem is how deep the federal dollars go into these systems that enable fear of pulling it. That is the mechanism of control. Our own tax dollars being weaponized.
The problem is no state AG suing to stop OMB and HHS from illegally re-appropriating funds directed by the Congress for diabetes research. Like, the multi-year funding shenanigan called out in the article is literally accounting fuckery.
> > Some questioned how handing out reprints of an editorial published in the ADA’s own journal, at the ADA’s own annual conference, could be construed as a violation of that code.
>The scientists were not disruptive or disorderly in their conduct, based on the videos posted by MedPage Today, although the fact that they were handing out reprints just before an NIH representative was scheduled to speak might be construed as a form of protest. But it could just as easily be argued that such actions fall under valid scientific dissemination and discussion, the conference’s stated objective.
Though there is a good case that breaking that rule is the best action. Getting kicked out probably did more for their cause then their protest. They just need the guts to publicly stand by.
There are few cases where it is so clear cut that only the organizers have violated the code of conduct, and not those who were expelled from the conference.
If assertions of truth are cast as an anti-government protests, that says a lot about the government.
The God Emperor is not to be questioned.
"Scientists were ejected from a meeting of the American Diabetes Associate for distributing printouts of an editorial that had appeared in the ADA journal. Here's the link: https://diabetesjournals.org/.../Misguided-Brushes-of-a.... The article highlights "the many threats the current U.S. administration pose[s] to the health of our nation". I recommend that you do read it: it is not technical, you don't need to have a degree in medicine or biology to read it. What do people not understand about the First Amendment?"
Are you implying that the ADA is bound by the First Amendment in this case? If so, can you elaborate how?
I believe that the time for counting signs of dictatorship had gone already. The signs were counted all before Trump was elected. For example: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
Now it is funny to look for signs enabling us to decide whether Trump presidency is a personal enrichment or a vanity project. It seems that it is both, but I can't decide what is more important to him.
> The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.
From https://americanliterature.com/author/hans-christian-anderse...
As an outsider, it’s not clear to me who you are referring to as tribalist regressors here.
Would you mind clarifying?
It is literally people who want to deny uncomfortable realities that are attacking and destroying it now. The ideological anti reality issue is in the side of Trump voters.
Also, funny enough, people who were correctly predicting what conservatives will do were called out of touch by people like you. Quite a few of them were actually social scientists and yes they have seen it.
It’s the social science academics living off the public purse I take issue with.
Maybe we should instil panic and fear in the junior school kids. Yeah, that’ll help!
Maybe we should be teaching the kids that white people are evil and rich white people just want to destroy the environment.
- the organizers are doing what they think is best for the attendees, and what the majority of attendees want
And, you should consider: "what if everyone did that?"
I gather they had a paper they thought was important, but was not accepted to the conference (so they had no formal chance to present it). What would happen if everyone who's paper was rejected could just wander around passing it out and pitching it to random passerby's? I think almost everyone who attends conferences would not want that.
I wonder what other options they considered. Did the conference have a less formal forum, like workshops or something? Could the topic be discussed there? A poster session?
Literally every academic conference.
> but was not accepted to the conference (so they had no formal chance to present it)
One, source for it not being accepted to the conference? It was accepted to the conference organizer’s journal.
Two, again, literally every academic conference. Folks handing out their papers, including preprints not published at the organizer’s journal, is ridiculously common.
> Could the topic be discussed there?
Again, literally just handing out their article.
If they wanted to be political in a scientific conference, they could have done so by handing the opinion piece outside the venue at the entrance. Whoever wanted to get into their politics could do it, and whoever wanted to be left alone and be there for the science could do it as well.
It's extremely disrespectful to be pressuring the other people in the conference with their ideology.
Standing in a hallway handing them out and discussing? I’ve seen it at aerospace conferences aplenty.
> giving it to people you know, or are already talking to?
This, too.
There could be some people who are afraid to be seen as involved in criticism of the administration, either for themselves or students/staff in the lab, for immigration or funding reasons. Not sure how relevant this is or how aggressive the approaches are. It would be helpful to hear from a neutral eyewitness.
Agree. In the meantime, I’m glad their article is seeing daylight. I would have edited it a bit more neutrally. But the shenanigans it calls out are damaging to diabetic care and research and almost certainly illegal.
"This organization is controlled by Trump loyalists. They are not scientists. You do not owe them respect. Speak over them. Let no manipulation go unchallenged or derided."
Strongly disagree. If they went straight up partisan at the conference, I’d be sympathetic to the notion of throwing them out. Not every space needs to be a protest venue.
They didn’t do that. They distributed an article published in the organization’s own journal. They argue why what they did cannot reasonably be considered “protest” under the organisation’s rules, given it’s literally what the conference is for. Challenging the notion that their ejection was the ADA following its own rules is the difference between them breaking the rules and the ADA breaking its own rules to censor their speech. (To cut off an aside, no the ADA isn’t bound by the First Amendment. Yes, the government is, and if they’re corruptly influencing to yank these researchers from the conference, that’s a legal issue. But more broadly, the concept of free speech is broader than the First Amendment.)
Yes. I’m saying I would be ideologically aligned with censoring disruptive protest at a conference. The fact that they didn’t do that is why this is getting attention and sympathy.
> The former audience will never be persuaded
Literally me. I’m being persuaded.
> while its useful to create a sense of martyrdom
Usually only within the group. Exhibit A is all the employee protests at tech companies. Entirely useless and generally unsympathetic to anyone not already in the choir.
> "We are protesting your abandonment of scientific principles" is both what they were doing and should be doing
Sure. Not at the conference. (Like, I’m sure being ejected for traditionally protesting would rank well on BlueSky and sympathetic parts of X. But it wouldn’t be on HN. And I wouldn’t have bothered reading their article if I figure I already know what will be in it.)
Because the fascists made it so.
Anywhere you try to declare an apolitical space is just a place where silence is serving the oppressor.
Something that may resonate with a broader spectrum is how science requires debate and polite disagreement. Good ideas can survive being pressure tested. Compelling consensus has terrible long-term outcomes.
Doesn’t this just mean not practicing? Broadly speaking, that per se seems fine.
At this rate, English could be replaced by Mandarin as the main international language of commerce. The only thing that could hold it back is the writing system.
If China could convert its writing to use the Latin alphabet I think that could happen with the US now on the path of destroying its research institutions.
Find a public square, get a permit and you can rant all day about Jesus, Palestine or space lizards.
Your argument is a strawman: you are refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion. The argument isn't "is protesting at a conference acceptable?" The argument is "does this behavior constitute an unacceptable protest?"
Something is fundamentally broken in the USA. It's like Neo-Russia, or rather handled like that by those cronies.
[1] Required ‘diversity and inclusion’ statements amount to a political litmus test for hiring - https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oat...
[2] Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...
[3] Berkeley Weeded Out Job Applicants Who Didn't Propose Specific Plans To Advance Diversity - https://reason.com/2020/02/03/university-of-california-diver...
[4] A recent report from the Goldwater Institute found that 80% of job postings for Arizona’s public universities required applicants to submit a statement detailing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. - https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-new-loy...
[5] Mathematicians divided over faculty hiring practices that require proof of efforts to promote diversity - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/mathematicians-divid...
[6] Science Must Not Be Used to Foster White Supremacy - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-must-not-...
[7] Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2
[8] I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It - https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-dis...
[9] A Swedish professor proved that most rapes are committed by immigrants. The prosecutor's office took care of it - https://portal.research.lu.se/en/activities/a-swedish-profes...
[10] Human subjects review, personal values, and the regulation of social science research. - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1986-12806-001
[11] The National Institutes of Health now blocks access to an important database if it thinks a scientist’s research may enter “forbidden” territory. - https://www.city-journal.org/nih-blocks-access-to-genetics-d...
Honorable mentions:
“If you write: ‘I believe that everyone should be treated equally,’ you will be branded as a right winger,” Vinod Aggarwal, the chair of Asian Studies at the university, said in an interview. - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/ucla-dei-statement.htm...
UC Berkeley’s rubric for evaluating diversity statements penalized candidates for saying that they prefer to “treat everyone the same,” or for objecting to racially segregated affinity groups. As my reporting has shown, by the early 2020s, the Berkeley rubric had become something of a gold standard, used by search committees across the country, including at the University of New Mexico, University of South Carolina, Northwestern University, and Ohio State University. - https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-death-knell-for-diver...
https://www.nas.org/reports/diversity-statement-then-dossier...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nih-national-institutes-health-...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-nih-sacrifices-scientific-r...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-ohio-states-dei-factory-...
A conference for the members of a medical association has the stated purpose of providing a venue for the exchange of information between the members. When the authors of an article published in the journal of the said medical association distribute free copies of that article to their colleagues who attend the conference, they do exactly the thing for which the conference is organized.
Only a shameless liar can claim that such an action is a "violation of the code of conduct".
“These proposed cuts would eliminate the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which they claim “is replete with DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] expenditures,” the Fogarty International Center, which is responsible for funding degree programs in foreign countries that benefit the health of all, including Americans, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, whose charge includes supporting research and offering information about complementary health approaches in the setting of whole-person health.”
This is ideological. It’s got nothing to do with medical science and research.
> The numerous measles outbreaks and associated avoidable deaths have resulted in part from hyping disproven theories of harm rather than publicizing the effectiveness of the measles vaccine
> Plugging the concept that diabetes is curable by “changing the food source” simply ignores the large body of work that has demonstrated that it is not merely a disease of poor nutrition and the immense challenges of reinventing the food industry
> If this policy continues, it will greatly reduce the number of funded programs or even eliminate them. Will the reduction and elimination of these major programs be in the best interest of science and improve the health of the American public in general and individuals with diabetes in particular?
They are very concretely worried because the current administration is demonstrably directing funding for research projects away from scientists (and into the Trump family pockets, which is equally well documented. They are worried because Diabetes research is threatened by budget cuts.
Which part did they violate?
If you point a shotgun at a flock of sheep and a wolf - sure, you might hit the wolf sometimes. That doesn't mean you're doing a good thing!
No a brainwashed populace that believes doctors are whom you are supposed to get nutrition advice from, or that believes an industry that profits off of sick people who has their hands in the funding funnels and mainstream media and astroturfing accounts here on hacker news like you is going to look out for their best interest, that populace not going to believe that.
That's ok. Let those of us not tribalizing and astroturfing take back our health and dignity and agency and autonomy in caring for ourselves.
If they were distributing fliers, sure. They weren’t. They were distributing an article published in the conference organizer’s own journal. That’s what academics do at conferences!
> risk losing all funding
They’ve already lost the funding. That’s what is being pointed out. OMB is using accounting shenanigans to circumvent the will of the Congress to cut funding to diabetes research, including, based on the article, some pretty serious and nonpartisan stuff.
They weren’t distributing a scientific article.
Link: https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/49/6/901/164764/Mi...
Astronomical journals frequently have articles going through the economics of various telescope proposals. The analogy would be someone in management at one of those conferences with an economic stake in one of the telescopes forbidding that team from distributing its work while others continue to do so.
It’s obviously a breach of any reasonable code of conduct. It’s obviously a departure from precedent. And it would make anyone outside that conference really curious about the specific allegations raised in the quashed paper.
The only people who use this phrasing are pro-Trump propagandists. It's an attempt to make criticism sound superficial rather than a reasonable objection to actions. Don't be fooled.
Huh. A while back on here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42390479) you were complaining that Alex Jones was getting too many consequences for his statements. Was he a child? Why the change in tune?
These kind of behaviour should trigger the dismantling of the whole ADA organisation, then to be rebuilt on proper grounds.
As usual i’m not surprised these fascist behaviours (“you’d better align with us and publicly pledge allegiance to us or else”) comes from the left. They’re the real fascist.
How? Researchers handing out a journal from the conference organizer’s own journal is now protesting and banned at conferences?
The “protestors” include the editor of the journal. They knew what the rules were and they followed them. If Conference A gets to yank research because a non-science MBA at the journal thinks it could hurt their stock price, and Conference B doesn’t allow that, which conference do you think will do more important work?
There’s a word for countries where speaking literal, objective, scientific truth is framed as protesting and therefore objectionable.
