The original paper that inspired this article is a hot mess. It’s just one huge correlation/causation confusion of a political argument posed as research. My freshman expository writing professor tore classmates to shreds over more justifiable logical constructs.

It does show lexical homogenization. It does show an increase in their shoddily assembled list so-called diversity words. The concluded implications and pretty much every other part is hand waving, assumptions and political insinuation.

Like here where the author disclaims the shoddiness of using word frequency as a measure of politicization because the nuance and subtlety of bias make quantitative measurement difficult (he should apply for a grant to research that)… but then draws the entirely unsupported conclusion that politicization is actually worse than their only data implies:

“Note that word counts is a somewhat crude way of measuring politicization. Bias, particularly in the social sciences, is often subtle, and can apply to the kinds of questions that get asked and the standard of evidence used to accept or reject a hypothesis. Thus, the fact that so many grants contain terms that are in most contexts clearly associated with left-wing political causes likely underestimates the degree of politicization in science funding.”

And the author puts that assumption to work a couple of paragraphs and charts later:

”This report presents direct evidence that scientific funding at the federal level has become more politicized and less supportive of novel ideas since 1990.”

The opening paragraphs don’t even indicate a connection beyond “Look at this trend which I assume means Y. Now look at that trend which I assume means Y. Now look at them together. Vaguely similar, eh? Awfully suspicious, eh?.”

“Taken together, the results imply that there has been a politicization of scientific funding in the US in recent years and a decrease in the diversity of ideas supported.”

How about a real “diversity word” selection criteria instead of just showing some tenuously relevant clustering? How about contextual analysis or explanation of the terms? Language and public discourse have changed a lot since the 90s. To inform and help validate their word selection analyzing ~30 years of data, they used the “DEI terms” diversity, equity and inclusion, but the DEI acronym wasn’t used until about 10 years ago— it could be a coincidence, but could indicate those terms weren’t always an accepted standard — is there evidence other terms weren’t used instead? Is there any evidence those are the best terms to use now? Did 90s political grants use euphemisms or code words for political ideas to send more neutral? Were the terms you selected used by political activists as commonly in 1993 as they are now? Would the declining prevalence of second wave feminists and original civil rights movement activists, to use two prevalent examples of very political movements ubiquitous in academia long before 1990, have been equally political but using different words? How many of those words are central to the research topic and how many are positioning unrelated research as good for society or aware of current trends or more beneficial than they are? What other words or topics showed similar/different results for comparison? So-called inclusion words removed, was the lexical similarity static? During that same period, a small number of ubiquitous spelling and grammar checkers gained sophistication and adoption; writers who disregarded or disabled them probably retired and others probably changed how they wrote; the Internet sharpened the curves of trends and memes and also probably exposed people to better writing practices; writing trends have probably come and gone; educational curricula become more standardized; the Internet facilitated access to far more grant/business writing examples; there may have been particularly influential events or pieces of writing that changed things for other reasons— how did they consider or reason about factors like that? Do Internet-focused terms which would have gained prevalence in the same time frame follow a similar trend line? Any medical terms? BPA? GMOs? Genetic testing? Any other points of comparison at all?

Anyone interested in actually advancing human understanding rather than creating political cudgels could poke holes in this garbage all day. I don’t see how anyone could look at that and think “huh — thoughtful analysis” rather than “huh — that’s some elaborate work to give a tenuous air of legitimacy to a claim they didn’t test presented in a manipulative piece which won’t get much traction beyond a politically sympathetic subreddit.”