Biden's War on Science and Merit

Follow the science, they tell us. You know, the people who believe that you can change your sex by changing your mind insist that we all follow the science. Besides, if you refuse to believe that you can change your sex by changing your mind they will cancel you and shut you down. Because they believe in science.

Everyone knows that true science is based on skepticism. So it makes perfect sense that the follow-the-science crowd would want to enforce their opinions, as settled science. For the record, settled science is another word for dogma.

Considering that you can only study advanced science if you know advanced math, you will not be surprised to hear that the follow-the-science party is working to stop school children from studying advanced math. Producing more capable scientists must take second or third place behind our love for diversity. It is beyond stupid, but it is not beyond surprising.

The California Department of Education has decided that advanced work in math is, you guessed it, a product of inequity. We need to dumb down the best students, in order to ensure that other students will not feel less self-esteem. Obviously, the result will be that parents will simply pack up and leave. They will do what they need to do to ensure their children’s education. Those who remain in public schools will be handicapped-- for life.

Robby Soave reports on the California plan (via Maggie’s Farm):

California's Department of Education is working on a new framework for K-12 mathematics that discourages gifted students from enrolling in accelerated classes that study advanced concepts like calculus.

"The inequity of mathematics tracking in California can be undone through a coordinated approach in grades 6–12," reads a January 2021 draft of the framework. "In summary, middle-school students are best served in heterogeneous classes."

In fact, the framework concludes that calculus is overvalued, even for gifted students.

"The push to calculus in grade twelve is itself misguided," says the framework.

As for who will do the high tech jobs of the future, can you spell-- China.

It gets better. Heather Mac Donald reports that the Biden administration has chosen someone who knows nothing about science to be the head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. (via Maggie’s Farm) She was, as the saying goes, a diversity hire:

President Joe Biden has now taken the push for “diversity” in STEM to a new level. His candidate to head the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the largest funder of the physical sciences in the U.S., is a soil geologist at the University of California, Merced. She has no background in physics, the science of energy, or the energy sector. She has never held a position as a scientific administrator. The typical head of DOE’s Office of Science in the past has had managerial authority in the nation’s major physics labs and has been a physicist himself, Science reports. The new nominee’s only managerial experience consists of serving since 2020 as an interim associate dean of UC Merced’s graduate division.

Why was she hired? You guessed it-- diversity and equity. Mac Donald continues:

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is, however, a black female who has won “accolades for her work to promote diversity in science,” as Science puts it. Berhe would be the first black woman to head the $7 billion office, and that is reason enough, according to the diversity mantra, why she should oversee X-ray synchrotrons, the development of nuclear weapons, and ongoing research on nuclear fusion. Her nomination requires Senate confirmation; if Berhe will not commit to hiring and grantmaking on the basis of scientific expertise alone, irrespective of race and sex, senators should vote her appointment down.

Yes, indeed, follow the science. Unless it conflicts with your deeply held and decidedly unscientific belief in equity:

As head of the Office of Science, Berhe would be asked to choose strategic directions for DOE-funded science. Should the agency try to expand understanding of fundamental particle physics or of the physics of the universe? How much attention should be given to solid-state lighting, semiconductors, or artificial intelligence? With regard to energy conservation and clean energy, should DOE pursue geothermal or biomass, tackle storage issues, or seek greater energy efficiency through insulation and refrigeration? Each day, the Office of Science turns out dozens of “one-pager” descriptions of projects and proposals. It is unlikely that a soil geologist (with an M.S. in political ecology) will have the knowledge to evaluate proposals for, say, advanced scientific computing research or nuclear physics, or make the policy judgments that those “one-pagers” require.

Berhe herself benefited from diversity quotas. What does that imply about her understanding of science?

A physicist wonders if Berhe “can know merit when she sees it.” Preference beneficiaries “think that merit is a myth and hierarchies of achievement are arbitrary and based on power and oppression,” this professor observes, based on years of watching academic admissions and hiring. Berhe argues that the lack of race and sex diversity in STEM is due to exclusion, rather than to the absence of a proportional number of competitively qualified “diverse” candidates in the hiring pipeline. Her co-authored articles include: “Leaky Pipeline vs. Vicious Obstacle Course: metaphors for the persistent exclusion of minoritized scholars from STEM,” “A critical feminist approach to transforming workplace climate in the geosciences through community engagement and partnerships with societies,” and “Hostile climates are barriers to diversifying the geosciences.” She will undoubtedly further elevate the importance of race and sex as criteria for federal research awards.

So, it belongs to the war against merit. We must, in following the science, sacrifice science to the gods of diversity and equity.

What is Berhe’s record?

Berhe’s lab, however, is developing and testing “sexual harassment bystander intervention training programs . . . that incorporate experiences of diverse women,” as part of a National Science Foundation consortium. Her lab recommends readings on racism and offers tips on writing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” statements that are increasingly required of academic science hires. Expect such statements, thinly disguised euphemisms for announcing oneself as “diverse,” to become mandatory for a DOE science job or grant.

A few scientists have spoken up about the appointment:

But the subjection of scientific research to the requirement of race and sex parity threatens future human progress. Such parity can be achieved only by sacrificing intellectual standards. An electrical engineer at a prestigious California university compares Berhe’s nomination to “putting a newspaper delivery boy in charge of Google.” Theoretical physicist Alessandro Strumia warns that by choosing scientific leadership according to a political agenda, “science itself risks becoming another form of covert political activism.”

All civilizational clashes contain trench warfare. There, the Biden administration has chosen not to compete. It has sacrificed merit in favor of diversity and will soon be joining California in ensuring that minority children, in particular, especially those who might have excelled, will be relegated to jobs that do not require any scientific expertise. They will become journalists, bureaucrats, teachers and fact checkers for Facebook.