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Did you misplace your comment? That's not what we're talking about at all and actively misrepresents everything I said with culture war buzz words. My claim is that in an over-competitive environment, attempts to "game the system" naturally rise. That's not indicative of a moral failing on behalf of the candidates (scientists) exactly, it's just a natural thing that happens in competitive environments with poorly set guardrails. It would be mistaken to take attempts to game the funding system at face value, no questions asked. While obviously moral virtue is higher when 'doing the right thing' in more difficult environments, I think we should be careful about how we ascribe moral fault to actors in a broken system. Surely scientists deserve some blame for juicing their proposals with DEI language, but to hang all the blame at their feet is bananas.
Roughly speaking, 1 in 4 NSF grants get funded, which means 3 essentially get denied. Scale-wise, I would say even an increase in the funding rate to something like 40% would have had a disproportionately large effect in decreasing attempts to pander to the left. Also, I think that probably over half of those grants are likely worth funding, no "gay race science funding" required.
Maybe I misunderstood your position. I thought you were saying the mismatch between the number of scientists requesting funding and the amount of funds available put the scientists in a position where they vulnerable to pressures to conform to the current zeitgeist and unable to be principled. And thus, the way to "save science" is to ensure that the funding is less competitive. That there are is more funding being chased by fewer projects. Thus they can be principled.
I am interpreting that to mean that science cannot be apolitical unless all (or the vast majority) of science is funded. If those are the terms, I would rather not fund it.
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