See no evil

Toddlers will sometimes cover their eyes, thinking they are hiding. They think if they can’t see you, you’re not there. Using that toddler logic at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the Trump administration at the time tried to curtail reporting of infections and death, on the toddler-tested premise that if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

Now Trump 2.0 has wheeled out toddler theory to deal with research on DEI:

“In an unprecedented move, the National Institutes of Health is abruptly terminating millions of dollars in research awards to scientists in Massachusetts and around the country, citing the Trump administration’s new restrictions on funding anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender issues, or research that could potentially benefit universities in China.”

*snip*

“Among those whose research funding was terminated is Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her letter said she would not be receiving the last installment, roughly $650,000, of a five-year, $4 million award for honing time-efficient ways of asking patients about the discrimination they experience, including racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and age or weight discrimination.

““These are really important groups of people to study to understand how their life experiences are affecting their health,” Krieger said.

 

The letter she received said her work ran afoul of the administration’s anti-DEI rules, although Krieger said the research itself was not related to DEI.

 

“This is an assault not on just one little group of researchers. This is saying certain knowledge is not to be supported by the government,” Krieger said. “It’s the proverbial, ‘If there’s no data, there’s no problem.’ It means one can’t document the harms.”

 

Who elected the toddlers? Can we get some grown-ups in here?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/06/metro/trump-kills-science-funding-dei/