The federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding(www.highereddive.com)
174 pointsby walrus015 hours ago15 comments
  • soundworlds2 hours ago
    "Humanities" is literally on the list. As in, do not fund any Humanities research.

    Also not allowed to use "solar energy", "Geothermal energy", "EV infrastructure", "electrification", "Hydrogen energy".

    Welp, America, you either gotta kick this administration out, or enjoy cosplaying the 1800s.

    • hahahaa2 hours ago
      Car powered by coal combustion via fast energy transmission systems. "Chemical coal".
    • Forgeties7927 minutes ago
      My friend lost their research grant because they had “accessibility” - they were going to make sure to accommodate screen readers.
    • protocolturean hour ago
      >enjoy cosplaying the 1800s.

      Thats what they voted for, dont know why they would get rid of them now.

  • whatever13 hours ago
    Math professors at my alma mater were instructed to remove references to “inequalities” to increase their chances of getting funded. The <= and >= type of inequalities.
    • superhuzza2 hours ago
      Yes, same with "diversity" for cellular diversity in the brain. Millions of dollars of grant money withdrawn.
    • beej712 hours ago
      We had some trouble with a geology grant that mentioned "mineral inclusion".
    • transcriptase2 hours ago
      Meanwhile there was a period of time in Canada where to have a chance at funding from federally funded programs, regardless of how absurd or tenuous the relationship to the work, one had to prominently shoehorn “climate change” and “equity” into every grant proposal.

      Even provinces and municipalities followed suit. Non-profit community org looking to install some signage and a trash receptacle at the start of a walking trail? Please explain in 300-500 words how this advances the causes of DEI. Studying the genome of a viral pathogen impacting raspberry farmers? Explain how the DNA extraction kits, centrifuge, hot water bath, and pipette tips you’re requesting funding for relate to challenges arising from our changing climate.

      • cwnyth2 hours ago
        Citation needed.
        • Yokohiii2 hours ago
          The comment is removed. I was also a bit confused, so I've looked it up. So a very rough overview: Under Trudeau in Canada some regulations around gender politics and climate change, got a bit out of hand in terms of absurd requirements to state how they are helpful in the matter. Even for trivial things, they were not a hard requirements but helpful.

          Unlike the US gov in this post, they didn't slash projects with good intentions, they just changed and clarified the requirements.

          Correction welcome, I am far away from canadian politics.

          • transcriptasean hour ago
            Interesting that an entirely true comment has been removed via flagging. I not only helped write grants during the peak of that trend, but reviewed applications where I was expected to evaluate how other applicants satisfied those priorities of the funding body.
            • dymk41 minutes ago
              Because it’s a stupid whataboutism
          • cwnyth34 minutes ago
            Same. I welcome correction, but I need evidence first. I'm not saying there wasn't something silly going on, but the commenter made it seem like the Canadian government did the opposite of DOGE to the same degree rather than just encourage connections to broader societal impact. Such a claim needs to be sourced.
          • Jtsummersan hour ago
            The comment isn't removed, it's [dead]. Turn on showdead in your profile and you can still see it.
        • what2 hours ago
          Weird that you want a citation for this but the GP.
          • cwnyth32 minutes ago
            You find it odd I don't need additional sources for the link that comes sourced and has been in the news for the past few years? I find it "weird" you don't need citations at all.
      • qsera2 hours ago
        Humans are a stupid stupid stupid bunch!
  • wnevets2 hours ago
    Its important to note that US deficit spending is breaking records. They can't even pretend that they're saving money.

    [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/u-budget-d...

  • hn_throwaway_994 hours ago
    These people who work for this administration are all so grossly and maliciously incompetent.
    • walrus0122 minutes ago
      It's easier to understand if you consider they might literally be agents of a foreign government.
      • hamper65315 minutes ago
        Never see malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation.
        • walrus013 minutes ago
          Could be a core cadre of 5% of clearly compromised or foreign agents recruiting a vast amount of fools and putting them in the positions where they can do the most damage.
        • conception6 minutes ago
          They are making hundreds of millions of dollars on the grift. They seem quite comptent.
    • throwaway274482 hours ago
      They are quite competent at causing enough chaos for those with inside knowledge and wealth to exploit.
      • slater2 hours ago
        And for the next administration to be left holding the bag, teeing it up for another round of "see? SEEEE???? they're terrible at the economy!!" if a Democratic president wins the election
    • Varelion3 hours ago
      Should be criminal.
      • reverius422 hours ago
        A lot of it is! We live in lawlessness (for those at the top) in the US.
        • piloto_ciego2 hours ago
          Man, this is the kind of thing I have been trying to tell people. It's unsettling to think about, but I'm like, "look, there are no rules now, it's all a negotiation, the only real laws are the laws of physics and the rules someone selectively enforces under the threat of violence."

          It would do us good if we remember this, because this sort of the basic state of nature that most people have lived under most of human history. I'm not saying this is how it should be, but a lot of people are still living in the pearl-clutched "but, that's against the rules!" despite there being basically no real rules for a decade.

          When people realize that it's all nonsense, it's going to get weird.

          • hibikiran hour ago
            There's entire books on developmental economics which explain how states create institutions that might appear to be rules based, but are ultimately just negotiation and favor. They get more money from developed countries and investors that don't look to deep, but ultimately the rate of growth is quite bad, because investing money in that kind of environment just has a poor rate of return.

            All well described, with experimental numbers and everything, for countries in Africa and Latin America. Little did people realize that no, you can also apply this to developed countries when they suffer sufficient degradation.

          • BLKNSLVRan hour ago
            We are _in_ the weird stage. The President is someone who has realised the nonsense, because people around him for his whole life have enabled and facilitated the nonsense in order to earn some of his dad's money. And now, instead of his dad's money backing him, he has the US' money, he's got a whole new cabal of enablers and facilitators, and a line as long as roughly 30% of the US population awaiting to fill any role they could get to feed off that fat pipe.

            But, yes, when this filters down, and it has started, there's going to need to be a significant amount of legislative strength shown in order to stop the wall from collapsing entirely.

            • BrenBarn29 minutes ago
              We're going to need more than just "legislative strength" within the framework of our existing government, because this has shown that that framework is inadequate. I don't see a path to true recover without a Nuremberg-style process in which essentially everyone who held any position of authority in this administration is called to account, in a manner that does not assume that that process must be done in accordance with pre-existing laws. As a simple example, it will require ignoring the Supreme Court ruling that the president is immune to facing consequences for "official acts" he has taken. Most likely it will require ignoring or scrapping the Supreme Court entirely.
          • throwaway274482 hours ago
            'The last decade has been the Democrats clinging onto the rulebook going "but a dog can't play basketball!" while a dog fucking dunks on us over and over' -@Arr
          • lokaran hour ago
            See:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_state_(model)

            • piloto_ciego38 minutes ago
              This is fantastically interesting, thanks!
          • wahnfriedenan hour ago
            Won’t matter as long as people have Netflix and Chipotle
    • sublinear2 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • macintux2 hours ago
        Do not “both sides” this level of corruption and incompetence.
      • mrtesthah2 hours ago
        Following the law is not a matter of partisan politics.
        • zmgsabst42 minutes ago
          Sure it is — see the Democrats refusing to stop discriminating based on protected class, despite that being illegal.

          Quotas, affirmative action, and now DIE have all been ruled illegal bigotry by the US Supreme Court, but Democrats can’t and won’t stop being bigots.

          I can’t take a party who has flouted civil rights laws my entire lifetime whining about “muh rule of law!” seriously.

      • ajross2 hours ago
        What's the counterexample of significant funding withdrawn by democratic administrations because of "possibly conservative" language in the output?

        "Tone deaf" seems not to be capturing the essence of the malfeasance here.

        • rightbytean hour ago
          I think it is some sort of whataboutism without any regard to proportions. Some people have a really hard time emotionally dealing with systems that occusionally fail.
        • zmgsabst41 minutes ago
          They refused to give money unless your application included a section explaining how you supported Democrat social ideology, during the Biden administration.

          So called DIE-statements.

    • qsera2 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • sunshinesnacks2 hours ago
        Over-correcting from too much competence? Can’t tell if that’s what you meant (presumably sarcastically) or if you mean over-correcting from too much previous attention to DEI…
        • qsera2 hours ago
          Competence does not require correction.

          It is when there is too much stupidity going on that

          * Even large number of fairly average people can see it happening...

          * large number of fairly average people tries to correct it and overshoots the target, because you know, they are a large number of average people..

          The cycle continues...

          I won't go into specifics, because read the above.

          • Yokohiii2 hours ago
            You are governed by fairly average people.

            As a fairly above average person you can certainly adapt.

          • jasonlotito2 hours ago
            > Competence does not require correction.

            Correct, which is why an even larger number of fairly average and intelligent people are wondering why we are correcting.

            > It is when there is too much stupidity going on

            Exactly. There is too much stupidity going on in government right now. Exactly.

            > I won't go into specifics, because read the above.

            Because you don't want to get corrected?

            • qseraan hour ago
              He he he he he he.....
  • floren2 hours ago
    Biologists I know were reporting that they'd changed their grant proposals to study e.g. ovarian cancer in "non-male" mice
    • BLKNSLVR44 minutes ago
      Testosterone-challenged mice?

      Not sure if that would get additional funding or have it cut.

  • giardini28 minutes ago
    Merely being on a list doesn't cancel research - other factors are involved. But as a first pass methodology for identifying garbage studies and people giving money away to politically-unfavorable groups, this seems like a good start!8-))
  • 2 hours ago
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  • dools3 hours ago
    The trump admin is a hive of scum and villainy worthy of a comic book universe, and Musk is inextricably linked. Thus anyone using twitter or grok or buying a Tesla or using starlink is complicit.

    EDIT: or working for these companies!! Couldn’t pay me enough to do it.

    • BLKNSLVR43 minutes ago
      > Musk is inextricably linked

      That's understating it. Musk was the lead role in the cutting, he'd have OK'd the list if not partially authored it.

    • inigyou3 hours ago
      "admin" is what we call a regime that works properly. This one doesn't, so it's a "regime".
  • deadbabe2 hours ago
    I wonder if just injecting a typo into each banned word when its used will be enough to bypass the keyword search for auto-banning.
  • 2 hours ago
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  • etchalon3 hours ago
    This is what right-wing Twitter brain gets you.
    • forestrywat3 hours ago
      That's just "Twitter brain" at this point, right? Hard to imagine anyone leftish still being there.
  • bluecalm2 hours ago
    Why not use an LLM to filter research they don't want to fund? Keywords list seem like the dumbest way to go about it.
    • rjrjrjrj2 hours ago
      "Dumbest way to go about it" is SOP for this administration.
    • secretsatanan hour ago
      They did though, an llm filter is just as dumb. Don”t they have those interviews with the edgelord doge employees trying to justify the stuff they killed?
      • secretsatan42 minutes ago
        Adding to this, i think llms are just part of their game, they know well enough they aren’t accurate, but it plays into comments like this, where we’ll think an llm would make a smarter decision, but it’s just a smokescreen, they’re already looking at gaming the bots, musk trying to get grok to abide by his petty worldview is the most obvious ploy. But they’re already obfuscating sources of information as a matter of course, soon, we won’t know anything anymore, we’ll have to trust their machines.
  • dadjokeran hour ago
    [dead]
  • blints2 hours ago
    Under the previous administration there were keyword lists that ensured that not only would you not get funding, but were subjected to a humiliating self-criticism session before being professionally ruined.
    • mrexroad2 hours ago
      Citation?
      • secretsatan2 hours ago
        It’s the usual stuff, they shut down speech on all sorts of topics, like the superiority of white christian men over everyone else
      • blints2 hours ago
        [flagged]
    • protocolturean hour ago
      >And some or all of the Black students across three sections of the course were offended by what they’d heard. So they wrote a letter to the dean of the Marshall School of Business, Geoffrey Garrett, among others, describing Patton as insensitive and incapable of teaching the three-week intensive communications course.

      The Biden administration is some students now?