It has long been a desire by the Republicans to meddle in science — let’s filter out the results we don’t like. Nature reports that their desire has been made manifest: US health agency seeks to cut gender-related terms from scientific papers.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has mandated that all scientific manuscripts produced by its researchers that are under review at a journal be withdrawn so that certain language relating to gender can be stripped from them.
The directive, sent by the agency’s chief science officer to some staff members on 31 January, is meant to bring the CDC into compliance with an executive order issued last month by US President Donald Trump seeking to restore “biological truth” to the federal government by recognizing only two sexes: male and female. Executive orders can direct agencies inside the federal government but cannot change existing laws.
According to a copy of the e-mail, shared in the newsletter Inside Medicine, manuscripts must not include any mention of terms including ‘gender’, ‘transgender’, ‘pregnant person’, ‘transsexual’ and ‘non-binary’, among others. CDC scientists who co-author papers originating from outside the agency that include these terms are also expected to rescind their authorship.
It’s all very Orwellian. They will dictate what words we’re allowed to use, because they believe that they can bend reality to conform. It doesn’t work that way, though. They’re just going to silence scientists who know better.
The CDC mandate, however, erases mention of queer, intersex and transgender individuals from future literature and seems to legitimize “scientific sexism”, says James Mungin, a biomedical scientist at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, who identifies as transgender. Under the new rules, CDC researchers would be unable to share basic demographic data, such as gender identity or sexual orientation, about study participants — omissions that could lead to inaccuracies or ethical breaches if scientists are barred from disclosing why certain participants were removed from a study, Mungin says. Furthermore, gender identity and sexual orientation are nearly impossible to exclude when it comes to the study and treatment of conditions such as HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases, potentially causing harm to patients.
“If you’re working in basic science, you might get away with just references to sex, but gender is everywhere in public health,” says Ayden Scheim, a social epidemiologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who identifies as trans and studies the health care of marginalized communities. “Unfortunately, I see two things happening: a lot of these withdrawn papers will never be published” because collaborators outside the CDC aren’t going to agree to omit data, Scheim says, “and in the long term, a lot of research that focuses on health inequities for women or LGBTQ+ people will disappear”.
There were a lot of scientists and lay people who threw around terms like “cancel culture” and “censorship” before Trump took office. Where are they now? They were so touchy about criticism or a refusal to platform bad ideas, but I don’t see them even acknowledging that these are actions well beyond anything that has gone before.
If we let them get away with censoring “gay” and “transgender,” what will we do when “climate change” is forbidden, or “evolution”?
Or “Jew”?
For now, perhaps they can try publishing outside of the US. But getting funded for future research will force them to be very cautious. It all sucks.
BTW the requirements to be reviewed for NSF grants just went even worse. The list of forbidden words is very long. It even includes ‘women’ (but not ‘men’, for some reason)
Euphemisms to the rescue, or, if need be, circumlocutions.
(Can’t stop science)
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/state-department-travel-safety-website
Trying to erase us from existence. And people still refuse to call this genocide
Does that mean the Rabbi’s will have to modify the Talmud. I saw a Dan McClellan reel yesterday about the gender designations in the Talmud…it’s more than 2. In fact, it’s 8 according to this website, which agrees with McClellan’s outline: The Eight Genders in the Talmud. While that page didn’t answer my when question, the creator of this content does have a tag line on the page saying “Judaism has recognized nonbinary persons for millennia.”
So for a very long time, some people have recognized that gender identity is not a simple binary. I suspect that other cultures have similar perspectives based on real experiences with the development of humans. Sadly we are a nation dominated by idiots and those who scam the idiots.
“Euphemisms to the rescue”
Hey, shades of Santorum of years past! The euphemisms should be from name of various MAGA types, so that banning them will more “interesting”.
I’m not going to suggest any particular MAGA euphemisms, because it could easily be disrespectful (the MAGAt 100% deserve it, not the vulnerable), but others should.
OT: Irish Times has an article about fungus-infected Zombie cave spiders.
robro, the explanations given by more orthodox Jews is that the various minority gender groups aren’t non-binary genders in the contemporary sense but categories of people where there is doubt regarding which sex class they belong to and therefore which religious requirements apply to them. Of course the fact that classification into a sex immediately implies social privileges and requirements means that these are in fact gender categories of some sort, even if they do not rely on self-identification. (Oh, and the typical solution is that in case of doubt one has the obligations of both common categories and the privileges of neither. For example, one is required to pray like a man, but participation in group prayer doesn’t count, just like the prayer of a woman.)
Robro, https://www.jta.org/2023/01/17/politics/israel-has-been-an-lgbtq-haven-in-the-middle-east-its-new-government-could-change-that
If we don’t test for ill people, Jews, or political stupid people, then Trump figured that we won’t have any of them.
The Air Force is now going to stop looking for enemies, and then we won’t have any enemies. Im tired of winning so much.
Stop the universe, America wants off.
People like Jerry Coyne do not care about freedom of speech or cancel culture. They only care about themselves. He will ignore this because while he approves it since Trump is doing it he will keep silent about it.
[very droll, Bruce. Nice!]
@4 Robro. They secretly hate the Jews too, so it’s win-win for these knuckle dragging Troglodytes.
Why the fuck are they bothering to do this? If they don’t do it and say they did, how long will it take the word-police-wannabees to catch on? Are they being threatened with extralegal “justice” or bogus prosecution?
RB, on the one hand, it’s generally a matter of search/replace.
On the other, well…”cdesign proponentsists.” :)
Did they just accidentally ban papers on fuzzy (ie non-binary) logic and computation?
Cooties. It’s right-wing MAGA cooties about a bunch of technical language for things they don’t like. With lots of splash damage.
@Roy 15:
there are 10 types of people in the world; those that understand binary and right-wing magas.
@5 — I’m not sure that counts as a euphemism!
I was thinking more of ‘cheery’ instead of ‘gay’. ;)
Remember the last 20s when guys like Einstein were German scientists and then they were not? Well, that’s your future