look no further.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are not taking the coronavirus epidemic seriously, to judge from their funding priorities. On April 20, those two agencies announced the availability of grants to increase the “diversity” of biomedical research labs. Academic virologists working on respiratory failure, say, could receive hundreds of thousands more taxpayer dollars if they could find a “diverse” student to add to the project. No scientific justification for the new diversity hire is needed; indeed, high school students are eligible, despite the virtual certainty that they will contribute nothing of value. To the contrary, such new hires will be a drag on any medical advance, since the scientists must pledge to mentor the students, taking time and attention away from their scientific research. Those mentees will be chosen not because of their science skills—they need present none—but because of their group’s underrepresentation in STEM.
"We're not actually accomplishing shit, but look at how diverse we are!"
1 comment:
Further, they are not serious about the program, because they call the participants, "Mentees." The correct word is Protege', as in Mary Cunningham was famously William Agee's Protege' in the very early 1980's, when they both worked at Bendix where she was a rising star mentored by William Agee -- until Bill's first wife found out and protege' Mary became Mrs. Agee 2.0.
Post a Comment