Not This Again . . .
A step too far at the NIH
Last year, several NIH agencies proposed and then rescinded a policy that would allow grant applicants from “diverse backgrounds”1 to check a box to receive special treatment during review, and potentially be funded at worse score thresholds.
The NIH eventually explained that:
as a federal government agency, NIH must always consider existing federal requirements that apply to its programs, including legal considerations regarding the use of gender, race, or ethnicity to make funding decisions.
i.e. the policy would have been illegal.
Besides its questionable legality, I believe that the policy would have undermined the scientific community by leading to resentment towards minorities. Grants are hard to get, and any “special treatment” will lead to questions about whether a minority scientist really deserves their funding (whether or not they actually checked the box)! The NIH already has separate grants such as the Diversity F31 for funding minorities, but this would have been different because it would have led to situations where non-minority and minority applicants were directly competing, with the minority applicants favored.
In any case, that idea was rightly abandoned. But now the same agencies want to try again, this time devoting $20 million for a new funding pool, and “encouraging” minorities to apply without explicitly saying the program is only for them.
My message to the NIH is this: focus on the science. And if you believe (as I do) that Black lives matter, fund research into malaria prevention.2
See the announcement for the full definition. Basically it’s non-Asian minorities, or people who grew up in dire poverty or are disabled.
See also: HHMI devoted $2.2 billion last year to fund "diversity in biomedicine". https://www.science.org/content/article/major-u-s-research-charity-places-big-bet-diversity
"Federal law prohibits HHMI from limiting eligibility for the awards to those from groups underrepresented in science, including women and those with disabilities as well as racial and ethnic minorities. HHMI plans to address that challenge, O’Shea says, by choosing grantees on the basis of both scientific excellence “and a demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” in science, engineering, and medicine. “We know how to do the first, but the second is new to us and we’ll have to work it out,” she says. Several universities are using a similar approach—which includes asking applicants to write so-called diversity statements—in faculty searches, she noted, “and we think it’s a very promising approach.""
Oh please, please, let the government not meddle with science, other than generously support it, leaving politics out of it. The various lobbies-economic, religious, social-will protest but let them. The value of unencumbered basic science outweighs all their concerns.