STEM
News related to science, technology, engineering, math + medicine.
Will Jordan Peterson Lose His License?
The Free Press covers the attack on psychologist Jordan Peterson for his views. This “is not a message to Peterson, but a message to other would-be dissenters: Comply with our politics, or risk losing your livelihood…” Yet this isn’t the most chilling part. They have “pathologized dissent…[making] political disagreement into an illness. There is a long history here… the Soviet Union, among other authoritarian regimes, used mental illness as grounds for marginalizing countless voices.”
I’m a Black physician, and I’m appalled by mandated implicit bias training
An important piece by an anesthesiologist on California’s mandated implicit biased training in continuing medical education. “The malignant false assumption that Black people are inherently inferior intellectually has been traded in for the malignant false assumption that White people are inherently racist…That is the basic message conveyed by implicit bias training… [and] is harmful both to physicians and patients.”
Winter ‘23 STEM Collection
The following are STEM-related articles of interest from Winter 2023, updated regularly. Those of most interest are detailed in individual postings.
How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science
“An open-records request reveals that Texas Tech faculty penalize candidates for heterodox opinions.” Sailer writes that “these documents—published in redacted form…are the first evaluations of prospective faculty DEI contributions to be made publicly available. They confirm what critics of DEI statements have long argued: That they inevitably act as ideological litmus tests…[and] a massive failure of priority. This is an issue of academic freedom, and it is a degradation of higher education.”
America’s Security Depends on STEM
An important piece with a dire warning—time is running out for America. The author traces the importance of America’s mathematical and scientific progress and strength to its success in war and escape from global totalitarianism. Now, a new totalitarianism from within is threatening STEM programs at a time when America, and the free world, may soon be facing existential threats. “If China overtakes America, their rule will not be benign, and the hopes and dreams of mankind will be subordinated to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Hijacking of Pediatric Medicine
This long-form piece details what has happened inside the AAP, the nation’s leading organization of pediatricians. It is a stunning, frightening expose covering everything from politically-driven school closure recommendations, support for mask mandates ignoring harms to child development, conflict-of-interest vaccine promotion, stifling of internal dissent, and ignoring vaccine-induced myocarditis risk to support for “gender-affirming care” (puberty blockers, hormones) for minors without parental knowledge or consent. The story “shows how a small group of doctors with virtually unaccountable power can exert tremendous influence over public policy… At stake in all this… is not just lockdowns or puberty blockers but the credibility of the medical establishment itself.”
An accelerator physicist reaches his breaking point
A 63-year-old accelerator physicist, naturalized Japanese citizen and former Canadian citizen writes a scathing letter to the Elsevier academic publishing company after being asking to review a paper adhering to inclusion, diversity and equity (IDE) policies—”It has no business asking us to do anything besides reviewing the scientific quality of a submission irrespective of the race, gender, sexual orientation, age or civil status (incarcerated or not). I absolutely refuse to care about such things… It is time to grow a pair and fight for reason and the scientific method.”
Roughly a third of medical schools have DEI incentives for employees, report finds
Higher Ed Dive summarizes the 11/2022 AAMC Report: “Medical schools overwhelmingly say they support diversity initiatives, with 89% highlighting diversity, equity and inclusion in their school’s mission, vision or values statements. And almost two-thirds have a plan in place to diversify faculty recruitment…But only 35.6%…offer incentives for employees to meet DEI goals… [and] 43.6% reward faculty for DEI work…during tenure and promotion considerations.”
Fall ‘22 STEM Collection
A collection of STEM-related articles of interest from Fall 2022.
Embattled Stanford Professor of Medicine Jay Bhattacharya: ‘Academic freedom is dead’
At the November 2022 Stanford Academic Freedom Conference, Dr. Bhattacharya, “a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert…recounted the difficult road he faced as a result of offering his professional medical and scientific opinions during the height of the pandemic.” Bhattacharya and other experts were prescient in warning about the deleterious effects of lock-downs and the need to focus on the elderly.
An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science
Williams College biology professor, born under a dictatorship in Brazil, sounds the alarm on authoritarianism in the U.S.— “The risk of cancellation…is not theoretical. My fellow scientists and I are living it. What is at stake is not simply our reputations, but our ability to pursue truth and scientific knowledge…social justice is no longer what we thought it was, but has instead morphed into an ugly authoritarianism.”
The Power of Collective Action: Assessing and Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts at AAMC Medical Schools
The AAMC report (Nov. 2022) aims “to equip medical schools and teaching hospitals and health systems to become more inclusive, equitable organizations,” highlighting “practices that medical schools across the country can adopt to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture” with a goal of “transformational change in our learning and workplace environments.” AAMC members “comprise all 157 accredited U.S. medical schools [and] 14 accredited Canadian medical schools” with a 2022 merger expanding AAMC internationally.
Critical Race Theory Is Bad Medicine
Dr. Bosshardt argues that “The ACS [American College of Surgeons] must choose between surgery and ideology.”
Top med school putting wokeism ahead of giving America good doctors
A doctor and RN, both part of “Do No Harm,” found that “elite medical schools are deliberately recruiting woke activists, jeopardizing their mission of training physicians.” Harvard Medical School “asks applicants to share their ‘significant challenges in access to education, unusual socioeconomic factors, identification with a minority culture, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity,’ encouraging applicants to ‘explain how such factors have influenced your motivation for a career in medicine.’ Translation: Tell us how you want to solve social and political problems.”
Aug ‘22 STEM Collection
The following are STEM-related articles of interest from August 2022.
Woke Medical Organizations Are Hazardous to Your Health
MacDonald documents organizations using DEI to transform medical education and practice. As for universities? “Virtually all medical schools admit black and Hispanic applicants with [MCAT] scores…that would be all but disqualifying…by white and Asian applicants…some schools waive the MCATs entirely for select minority students.” Meanwhile, “courses on racial justice and advocacy are flooding into medical school.” The upshot? “If physicians are trained to combat ‘systemic racism,’ their ability to treat disease will suffer.”
The Science of Freedom: a Conversation with Anna Krylov
An important conversation with University of Southern Californian professor of Chemistry, Anna Krylov. Having grown up in Russia, Krylov understands what it’s like to live without freedoms, and realized quickly emerging threats in the U.S.— “I started to notice alarming trends in the scientific community and in society in general…I see censorship and other forms of suppression creeping into our institutions…it’s a very dangerous trend, and we need to resist it…even if that entails danger.”