MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 8--IMPORTANT UPDATES
This study misuses the word "politicized" in an ideologically tendentious way, but has clearly identified a surprising trend:
As of 2020, across all fields 30.4% of successful grant abstracts contained at least one of the terms “equity,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” “gender,” “marginalize,” “underrepresented,” or “disparity.” This is up from 2.9% in 1990 (Figure 2). This increase is seen in every field. As of 2020, the two most politicized [sic] fields seem to be Education & Human Resources (53.8%, up from 4.3% in 1990) and Biological Sciences (43.8%, up from 6.6%), although “diversity” may sometimes have non-political connotations in the latter. Even the fields that should be most disconnected from politics have seen a massive jump in these terms: Mathematical & Physical Sciences went from 0.9% to 22.6%, and Engineering from 1.6% to 25.4%.
It's hardly surprising that people working in "Education and Human Resources" might want to study "diversity" or issues related to "gender," and that doesn't mean the field is "politicized." But it would be interesting to know the details of the projects in math and engineering that involve some of these terms; it may turn out, of course, that they are all studies of the "diversity" (etc.) of their respective fields. In the current environment, the existence of such studies would not be surprising, and it would not mean that the fields themselves were "politicized."
(Thanks to Joshua Selby for the pointer.)
UPDATE: A math professor elsewhere writes:
At least in math, I'd bet that a large portion of the instances of those words appear in the required "Broader Impacts" portion of the grant proposals, not in the core scientific/mathematical sections. The Broader Impacts often include, for example, efforts to help disadvantaged students at all levels, or to prioritize hiring of disadvantaged groups for postdoctoral and other positions funded by the grant. Whether the goal is typically to compensate for past wrongs, or to achieve diversity for its own sake, is hard to say (thank you for pointing out this distinction on your blog).
Here is the paragraph from the NSF proposal guide describing what the Broader Impacts section is about:
"The Project Description also must contain, as a separate section within the narrative, a section labeled “Broader Impacts”. This section should provide a discussion of the broader impacts of the proposed activities. Broader impacts may be accomplished through the research itself, through the activities that are directly related to specific research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to the project. NSF values the advancement of scientific knowledge and activities that contribute to the achievement of societally relevant outcomes. Such outcomes include, but are not limited to: full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); improved STEM education and educator development at any level; increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology; improved well-being of individuals in society; development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce; increased partnerships between academia, industry, and others; improved national security; increased economic competitiveness of the U.S.; use of science and technology to inform public policy; and
Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide II-12 NSF 22-1 enhanced infrastructure for research and education. These examples of societally relevant outcomes should not be considered either comprehensive or prescriptive. Proposers may include appropriate
outcomes not covered by these examples.
Unless the original study excluded the "Broader impact" statements, its results are worthless. That's the conclusion of another math professor who also wrote me:
The first thing you should know is that mathematics standard grant proposals are divided into a few sections, the most important of which is “intellectual Merit” and the second most important is “Broader Impact.”
Since we’re not exactly curing cancer, many researchers in pure mathematics really only focus on the first, and then try to come up with something reasonable for the second. I have a vague impression that the intellectual merit is worth more than the broader impact, but I haven’t served on one of these panels so I can’t say for sure. The result is that many people try to come up with broader Impact after the fact and these things may not actually be integral to the proposed research. Often they are avenues to disseminate research results or train students. For example, conferences, summer schools for graduate students, or funding for undergraduate research. I want to emphasize here that for many pure mathematicians these things are not necessary to carry out their research, but just to promote the general research area or aid in training young people, which is viewed as something that grant holders should do for the good of the discipline.
From this optic, I think it’s natural that the objectives and language used in the broader impact section would change with the times. More people are mentioning DEI when speaking of the conferences and summer schools they plan on organizing, or undergraduate research they plan on sponsoring. I can’t say anything about whether or not mentioning DEI in this broader impact will influence the results; maybe they do. But the fact that the prevalence of these words jumped from 0.9% to 22.6% doesn’t seem very surprising to me in light of the things I’ve outlined, and doesn’t necessarily mean there has been any difference in the actual research that is being funded. What it I think it indicates is that people are more conscious of who attends the conferences they organize, etc.
So to be frank, this “study,” at least as it concerns mathematics, seems to me to be an attempt to find an eye popping statistic to support a predetermined hypothesis without bothering to understand the underlying mechanisms.
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