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In war against dei in science, researchers see additional damage

    In the 1990s, Lane, as NSF director, led the requirement that, in addition to intellectual merit, reviewers should consider the 'broader consequences' of a subsidy. In general, he said, the goal was to encourage science that would benefit society.

    The wider impact requirement remains today. Among other things, options can fulfill researchers by including a project component that increases the participation of women, under -represented minorities in voice and people with disabilities. They can also meet the requirement by promoting scientific education or educator development, or by showing that a project will build up a more diverse workforce.

    The Senate Committee has set up thousands of “dei” fairs, because the wide search not only hills projects with a primary goal to increase diversity – such as a $ 1.2 million subsidy to the Colorado School of Mines for a center to to train technical students to promote equity among their colleagues – but also research that refers to diversity in describing its broader impact or describing study populations. For example, the Lipomi project was probably marked because it states that recruiting a diverse group of participants, analyzing results according to the socio -economic status, and states that patients with disabilities can benefit from portable devices for rehabilitation.

    According to the committee report, concepts with regard to race, gender, social status, as well as social and environmental justice, undermine hard science. They have broadcast projects that identified groups of people as under -represented, subordinated, social -economically disadvantaged or excluded; recognized inequalities; Or referred to climate research.

    Red flags also contain words such as' gender ',' ethnicity 'and' sexuality ', along with dozens of corresponding terms -' female ',' women ',' interracial ',' heterosexual ',' lgbtq ', as well as' black, “” White “,” Spanish “or” native “when referring to groups of people.” Status “also made the list together with words as” biased “, “Handicap”, “minority” and “socio -economic”.

    Moreover, the 'Environmental justice' committee marked and conditions that they placed in that category, such as 'climate change', 'climate research' and 'clean energy'.