I wonder how will this affect private institutions and private publications?<p>I could imagine people moving away from CDC into private sector, and considering it's long been a "model" US view that things progress best when done in a free market, it might actually be a boon to medical research.<p>But, a couple of quick searches tells me 1/3rd of healthcare costs per person comes from the federal government (data from 2023), and NIH puts majority of it's $48B budget towards external (83%) and internal (11%) research.<p>Obviously, only some research would have (or need to have) the forbidden terminology, so perhaps nothing really happens.<p>Edit: and lest it remains unsaid, let's also take this with a grain of salt until it comes out from multiple sources or officially.
I'm assuming at this point refusing will be a badge of honour but one which is terminal for federal funding, in this 4 year term if not longer. You would need very high confidence in your future career trajectory to do that.<p>We had a mini storm over government censorship of CSIRO science in Australia and it got pretty ugly, but this is much uglier.<p>If they do the same for NSF, earth sciences, DoE and AGW it's going to be pretty nasty.<p>I don't even have to agree with the science. This kind of mass bad-topic-ban is really unhelpful. I wonder if the editorial boards are also going to put up a fight? I can imagine some kind of "retracted because of Trump policy, not because the peer review process asked for it" markers.<p>Genetics, and Lysenkoism comes to mind. A stain on soviet science which echoed down the years.
I am not a lawyer but this CDC order seems contrary to Trump’s recent Executive Order “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP”.<p>This Executive Order states in part: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.<p>…
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;<p>(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
…<p>Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech.
(a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.”<p><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-freedom-of-speech-and-ending-federal-censorship/" rel="nofollow">https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/rest...</a>
Having talked to a couple of people in the CDC I fear the worst. They’re not allowed to participate with the WHO outside of the agency (even on their own time). The employees are largely censored from expressing their opinion on any topic, anywhere.<p>They were talking about getting work outside of the States. These are smart, dedicated people who are boots-on-the-ground for crises like Ebola, and I wonder about the purpose of the agency and our ability to respond to the next event (with bird flu looming on the horizon).<p>So research aside, our incident response has already been compromised, and we’re just seeing the beginning.
So, a historical question - did these terms such as “pregnant person” get introduced by administrative diktat or by gradual evolution? I’m curious about the provenance of such terminology.<p>Administrators have elsewhere made changes like renaming manholes “maintenance holes”, is this mostly rolling back such decisions (in a characteristic bulldozer/chaotic style of course)?
It's going to be NASA next isn't it, because of climate change and the need to remove any evidence of that and other environmental changes...
Remember how a few days ago, headlines were exploding how DeepSeek wouldn't answer questions about Tiananmen Square and other "sensitive topics"?<p>Well, welcome to the inside part of a great wall in the making. Thoughts and prayers y'all.
If everyone at the CDC quit tomorrow, how hard would it be to create a non-profit and staff it entirely with CDC personnel and resume work? Assuming somehow funding could be acquired. What else would be a barrier? Research labs? Some kind of logistical, organizational, etc partnerships? Access to data? What else? I'm half serious.
This is darkness. State mandated lists of forbidden words.<p>Trump's cat's paw proposing Constitutional amendment for a third term for Trump (but not previous Presidents). We can be sure at the end of such a third term, another amendment would be tabled.<p>The recent election, won by deception; enough people believed the lies that the election was taken. This is not democracy - it is something only which <i>looks</i> like democracy, because there is an election. An actual election requires voters to be well-informed.<p>The FBI staff involved in the investigation, fired. This is vindictive; they were doing their job.
While the intention behind “woke” research may have been to promote inclusivity and address historical injustices, its execution sometimes led to unintended consequences.<p>By prioritizing ideological alignment over rigorous methodology, some studies may have compromised objectivity, breadth, or practical applicability. The goal of creating space for marginalized voices was important, but in some cases, this approach limited open discourse, dismissed alternative perspectives, or failed to produce the most balanced conclusions.<p>That said, the push for inclusivity did bring valuable insights and necessary corrections to many fields. However, for research to serve everyone effectively, it must remain grounded in evidence, open debate, and methodological rigor—ensuring that progress is both fair and sustainable.
"woke" seriously broke the minds of the conservatives in America. Crazy to watch their reaction to this. They can't take their own advice and just mind their own business? Leave people alone?<p>The cdc is political and gets involved in cultural wars? This is already happening with this administration?
<i>biologically male, biologically female</i><p>The trans stuff has definitely been controversial, but those phrases are definitely not "woke"?
This is part of the administration as defining all humans are neither male nor female — or, due to the presence of both Müllerian ducts and Wolffian ducts in early embryos, that all humans are both sexes at once.<p>More importantly, they've made it clear you shouldn't trust the government, so they are going out of their way to prove that is the case.
So the US government is cancelling federal research that uses terminology it doesn't like?<p>Isn't this sending an Unamerican view of freedom of thought and expression? And a very dictatorial view of the American government and institutions?<p>All future research must abide by whatever histrionic whim the president has? I could imagine this being news from Belarus
The search and replace they want researchers to do:<p>gender -> personality<p>transgender -> trans-identifying<p>pregnant person -> pregnant woman<p>pregnant people -> pregnant women<p>LGBT -> LGB (or LGB and T separately)<p>transsexual -> ??? presumably trans-identifying<p>non-binary -> ??? presumably something to do with personality<p>assigned male/female at birth -> male/female<p>biologically male/female -> male/female
Overtures of fascism. I expect we’ll see thinly-veiled euphemisms and rephrasings that <i>just</i> evade the banned list, if not outright refusal. Ultimately this falls short for the same reason that simple filters of all kinds fail in their (apparent) objective, to the extent that it doesn’t even feel like the point is to actually stop the discussion, but rather to send a message.
"Of the 4,700 newspapers published in Germany when the Nazis took power in 1933, no more that 1,100 remained. Approximately half were still in the hands of private or institutional owners, but these newspapers operated in strict compliance with government press laws and published material only in accordance with directives issued by the Ministry of Propaganda."<p><a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-press-in-the-third-reich#toward-the-end-of-world-war-ii-3" rel="nofollow">https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-press-...</a>
We are now at the digital equivalent of book burning in the 1930's. The parallels are pretty clear. This is the moment in history class that someone raises their hand and asks 'but why didn't anyone stop them?'.
Does this mean that they also have unconstrained control over the weaponized diseases created and stored in laboratories?<p>Should I be concerned that they may break all treaties and engage in biological warfare with the EU?
Freedom of Speech.<p>Democracy.<p>Equality.<p>Equity.<p>I used to know what these words meant, but it seems the old definitions are no longer fit for purpose.
I am truly utterly dismayed that any fool could attack the very foundations of science like this.<p>The only interesting thing is how a Supreme Court might react to a scientist challenging this blocks his right to free speech. The test would be which is greater - the ideology or the law …
This is true, but the biology of gender - including gender dysphoria - is <i>established science.</i> There is no ambiguity about it.<p>It's only "offensive" to people who don't like how reality works.<p>Which is clearly the real problem here.<p>Pretending otherwise is gaslighting, because they're doing the same thing to climate change research and pandemic research.<p>And there's a good chance vaccines and other public health measures will be next.<p>This is not a rational government for rational people planning a rational future. This is a government of angry anti-rational cranks with mental health issues working out those issues in public, to the detriment of everyone except a small cadre of multi-billionaires who share the same psychology, but whose wealth will (somewhat) protect them from consequences the rest of us will have to live with.
If your thesis is that Trump is awful and will be ousted, and the general public, even the MAGA crowd, will recoil at the devastation he unleashed, I suppose at least it's all mercifully quick. At this rate the US might be in a major recession this year already, with healthcare in disarray and everything else too.<p>Not something to relish, but I suppose better than slogging it out for years. At least he's accelerating the timeline.<p>Of course the alternative is that he's here to stay, in which case the accelerated timeline means more damage.<p>¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is what happens when people decide for dictorship, hard times ahead, unfortunately saying we have told you so isn't going to sort out things now.
I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen a politician make an absurd campaign promise and then follow through on it successfully. I’d find it terrifying if it weren’t about the most first-world of all first-world problems.
> While the policy is only meant to apply to work that might be seen as conflicting with President Trump’s executive orders, CDC experts don’t know how to interpret that.<p>This seemed key to me. The managerial/editorial layer is acting in a way that any manager would when there is unclear interpretation: risk-adversity.<p>It's much easier to do than undo, so you stop until things are cleared up.<p>However, it seems the organizational layer whose work is being affected is assuming this risk-adverse interpretation <i>is</i> the new policy coming from the top. No doubt, legacy media will take the same interpretation.<p>If I were to approach this rationally, I would probably want to see clarification before running with the Hitlerian comparisons.
with all due respect, some of these journals got themselves into untenable positions that require twisting one’s self into a pretzel to defend their practices and decisions. for example, i had to cancel my acm subscription because the <i>communications</i> deteriorated in quality, shifting focus from publishing more on the science and practice of computing to sociopolitical issues. there was more articles on social intervention, blacks/minorities in tech, etc that reduced the useful content to about 40% of the journal, imo. not what i signed up for even though the identity police will help me know that i’m a minority in computing—a fact i wasn’t aware of until recently.<p>i guess at some point in these last 8 years or so, one accrued extra points for publishing articles along those lines. who knows, it probably earned acm more subscriptions, donations, pats on the back, sensitivity points, etc. and so it reinforced itself and resulted in even more sociopolitical articles. but it was a letdown for someone who wanted to passively follow developments in computing. so i left.