The NSF descends into gobbledygook..

A call for proposals for incomprehensible program that funds anything but science with public money.

I am on a National Science Foundation email list that regularly receives listings for calls for proposals to participate in newly funded science programs. I no longer apply for funding from the NSF but it is nice to know what current areas of science are of interest. This week, I received an email that seemed so strange that I thought it was a mistake. The header had word salad that made no sense . I went to the NSF.gov web site and checked. There it was:

Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science.

I tried to parse this in numerous different ways to see if it made sense as an English sentence, to no avail. I even asked a few people who were visiting us at the time to let me know if they understood it. Ultimately I gave up. In one of the most ludicrous efforts to tailor a program name to fit an acronym I have ever seen, some group of bureaucrat at the NSF must have decided they needed to fund a program they could name INCLUDES and picked a random collection of politically correct-sounding words and strung them together in the appropriate to get the appropriate name.

That would have been just silly, but it gets worse. The level of thought that went into the title appears to have been matched by the level of planning that has gone into the program, which, it should be emphasized does not mention a single area of science that will be explored or enhanced by the dollars taken from the public trust and thrown down this rabbit hole.

It starts well, with a grand sounding theme:

In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a set of "Big Ideas," 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering.

Next, it talks about implementing this by bringing different disciplines together to explore what are presumably important interdisciplinary questions:

The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research.

I was a bit confused about what is meant by the bureaucratic phrase ‘convergence research’, which I assumed was bureaucrat-eze for ‘interdisciplinary research"‘ so I looked it up online and found the definition:

By definition, convergence integrates multiple areas of science via the cooperative work of researchers from different scientific backgrounds until theories, knowledge, methods, challenges, and even vocabulary words are intermingled.

This seemed reasonable, but then I found a definition provided by the NSF, where ‘societal needs’ is highlighted, and interdisciplinary nature is presumably implied...

Convergence research is a means of solving vexing research problems, especially those focusing on societal needs. It has two primary characteristics: It is driven by a specific and compelling problem, whether that problem arises from deep scientific questions or pressing societal needs.

This, presumably provided the motivation for NSF bureaucrats to devise a program described as follows, where it becomes clearer that the goal of the new funding program actually is:

NSF INCLUDES is a comprehensive, national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) discovery and innovation, focused on NSF's commitment to ensuring accessibility and inclusivity in STEM fields, as communicated in the NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2022 - 2026. The vision of NSF INCLUDES is to catalyze the STEM enterprise to work collaboratively for inclusive change, resulting in a STEM workforce that reflects the diversity of the Nation's population. More specifically, NSF INCLUDES seeks to motivate and accelerate collaborative infrastructure building to advance equity and sustain systemic change to broaden participation in STEM fields at scale. Significant advancement in the inclusion of groups that have historically been excluded from or under-served in STEM will result in a new generation of STEM talent and leadership to secure the Nation's future and long-term economic competitiveness..

Here is the key phrase. This program will “accelerate collaborative infrastructure building to advance equity and sustain systemic change to broaden participation in STEM fields at scale” . It is a DEI program.

What precisely is meant by ‘collaborative infrastructure building to advance equity’ is not described. Nor are what precise ‘systemic changes’ are actually envisaged.

This vague program doesn’t actually describe any scientific research areas at all that will be supported. It certainly doesn’t explain how it will “position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives”. Here ‘diverse disciplinary perspectives’ is generally taken to mean bringing different disciplines together to tackle common scientific problems.

The pressing ‘societal need’ that is being addressed is presumably rather Equity and Inclusion, but what specific ‘vexing research problem’ will be supported is not described at all.

‘Infrastructure building’ appears to be the entire aim here, but it is not infrastructure in the traditional scientific sense of laboratory tools or instrument development. Rather the only conclusion that reasonably results from a reading of this document is that this program will involve the hiring of yet more DEI officers, and creating more DEI bureaucratic infrastructures across the board at universities and laboratories that are already chockablock full of these offices.

Ultimately the important question is this: Will taking away research money from science to further build up DEI bureaucracies enhance the scientific leadership capability of the US? I would suggest that spending money specifically improving educational infrastructure, including public science education that should be accessible to all, while expanding the research enterprise itself so that there are more opportunities for all qualified young scientists to contribute to the national science effort might be a much better use of NSF funds and would do more for both the nation’s scientific leadership, and to open the scientific enterprise to a broader audience.

Whether or not you think taking NSF funds away from the support of science is an abuse of the NSF mandate, what is clearer is that if this program continues to be controlled by the same group that came up with its title and description, there is cause for concern.