This is an ongoing issue in the west (and relegated to specific “niche” mainstream media), but as it happens – a lie repeated multiple times becomes the “truth”. I am not taking sides but a rather well thought out commentary is being linked here:
The Danger of Politicizing Science – by Jonathan Rauch
The insinuation of political agendas into science is nothing new; I wrote about it in my 1993 book “Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought.” Back then, factions like creationists, Afrocentrists, and Marxists were hawking alternatives to mainstream biology, math, and social science. Today, the political right is hard at work scrubbing school libraries and curricula of what they deem to be critical race theory (whatever that is) and LGBT “grooming” (whatever that is).
By explicitly making social justice an element of editorial policy, NHB breaks with this tradition. To the extent it does so, the results will be bad. However professional and well intentioned NHB’s editors may be, they are not qualified to decide on society’s behalf whether research is socially harmful or desirable. In fact, they have no idea how a piece of research will ramify.
Enough said. Those are the contextual arguments, and I have seen enough discussion around “diversity” without any material benefit to those individuals being discussed in conferences. Possibly, it’s a cultural thing, but stupidity is universally infective. Being called out at the source is critical to prevent a “more insidious pandemic” before the ideas take root (or are bandied to score brownie points).
RadOncNotes 