[Gareth321]

You should speak with some researchers. Entire categories are off limits because DEI politics. I could cite many examples, but one which comes to mind now is that of Noah Carl, formerly of Edmund's College, Cambridge University in England: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-noah-carl-is-fightin...

He deigned to research politically contentious topics like migration and IQ. He wasn't just defunded. He was fired.

[chalst]

The racist overtones to Noah Carl's work certainly did his case no favours, but he was doing scholarship whose poor quality is easy to see. Before you get tenure (or the watered-down approximation that the UK has), academia offers essentially no job security: only around of 1/4 of researchers starting their first post-doc will succeed in getting a permanent academic position. I wonder what he was thinking?

[Gareth321]

Science should be immune to "overtones." Overtones are subjective and based in emotion and personal experience. I don't see any racist overtones at all.

Which work was poor quality? His work is published and peer reviewed. It should be easy to point at the work you're referring to.

He has conducted interviews about what he was thinking: he wanted to research migration and IQ, even though he received a lot of political pressure not to. He knew that this was a potential consequence, but believed that scientific and educational institutions would uphold Enlightenment ideals and allow free research. He was wrong. Politics have won in academia, and some subjects are off limits now.

[chalst]

> Science should be immune to "overtones."

This sounds nice, but given that science is done by humans, it seems entirely unrealistic to me.

If you had said: we should try to minimise the influence of this kind of politics on science, I would agree, but I rather think that is best achieved by keeping think-tank-class ideologues like Carl far away from tenure.

The tide of politics waxes and wanes in academia. Your whitewashing of Carl's record does not help reduce the role of politics in academia.

> Which work was poor quality?

Carl was spending his time publishing in a 'journal' that was published by a friend that had essentially no quality controls, where the content contained provocative racist claims not backed up by argument or evidence instead of doing the hard work of quality scholarship.

[nvr219]

I speak with researchers all the time. Most agree that Noah Carl's pseudoscience is what got him canned, not any DEI initiatives.

[Gareth321]

His work is published and peer reviewed. Which work was "pseudoscience"? I think you're only making that accusation because it's vague and sounds authoritative, but you don't have any examples.