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#Biomedical science articles
biomedres · 10 months
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Doctor of Radiography Curriculum: Comparison of the Perception of Radiography Lecturers and Radiography Students towards the Proposed Curriculum
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Doctor of Radiography Curriculum: Comparison of the Perception of Radiography Lecturers and Radiography Students towards the Proposed Curriculum in Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research
https://biomedres.us/fulltexts/BJSTR.MS.ID.006063.php
Objective: The objective of this study is to compare the perception of radiography lecturers and radiography students towards the proposed Doctor of Radiography curriculum. Methodology: This study was carried out in all universities of Nigeria offering radiography as a course of study. The study population comprised of 62 radiography lecturers and 40 radiography students. A standard, self-structured questionnaire was used in the collection of data. The questionnaire comprised three sections. Section A obtained information on the demographic data of the lecturers and the students. Section B elicited information on perceived knowledge of graduates of the D-RAD curriculum while section C captured information on perceived quality of radiographers that will be produced by the D-RAD curriculum. Results: A total of 62 lecturers comprising 51 males (82.3%) and 11 females (17.7%) and 40 students comprising 26 females (65%) and 14 females (35%) participated in the study. For the production of very knowledgeable radiographers, the lecturers and the students had means of 3.09 and 3.19 respectively. The lecturers and the students had means of 3.25 and 3.47 for the production of high quality radiographers. The means gotten were greater than the cut-off score that is 2.50 which was the mean derived from a 4-point Likert scale of Strongly Disagree-1 to Strongly Agree-4. Conclusion: The proposed D-RAD curriculum will cover more content than the basic Bachelor’s curriculum and ensure for the production of high quality and knowledgeable radiographers hence it is a welcome development for radiography lecturers and students.
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nerdie-faerie · 1 year
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I understand why I have to cite my sources, but what if I was omnipotent?
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beguines · 1 month
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would you be able to recommend any books/resources that provide a good intro to anti-psychiatry? rlly fascinated by this subject
to be clear, i wouldn't describe myself as explicitly anti-psychiatry. people very close to me rely on psychiatric medication in order to relieve symptoms that aren't just disruptive to their role in capitalist society but cause them immense suffering in general. while i have had particularly negative experiences with psychiatric medication, i have also seen it save people's lives and pull them out of acute crisis. i've been seeing a therapist for four years who has had a very positive effect on my life and has always been respectful of my refusal to take psychiatric medication.
i also think it is necessary to acknowledge that while psychiatry and psychology are disciplines that enforce capitalist hegemony, the alternative to being capable of functioning within capitalist society isn't much of an alternative at all when capitalism's inescapability is part of its very nature. that being said, i think it's extremely important for anyone living with mental illness, being treated for it, or supporting someone who is to be aware of:
the insufficiency of the biomedical/disease model and the very slow speed at which the field is moving away from it
the inability of medical professionals to identify the etiology of any mental illness
the immense risk associated with virtually all psychiatric medications (particularly antipsychotics and mood stabilizers)
the very profitable marriage between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry
the influence of western (and particularly american) hegemony over how we treat what we call mental illness
the prevalence of coercive/forced treatment
i also think it's extremely important within that context to do your own research and ensure that you're engaging with material from a variety of different sources, maintaining an awareness of any biases they may have and how those affect their research and conclusions, whether they skew towards anti-psychiatry or not. the most important thing to do if you or your loved one has any kind of illness is to be well-informed and capable of advocacy, which is largely why i've been doing a bit of a deep dive on the subject lately.
what i'm reading now:
desperate remedies: psychiatry's turbulent quest to cure mental illness by andrew scull
psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness by bruce m.z. cohen
psychiatry in crisis: at the crossroads of social sciences, the humanities, and neuroscience by vincenzo di nicola and drozdstoj stoyanov
other recommendations:
i think your best bet for more introductory material would be robert whitaker's work, including anatomy of an epidemic: magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in america and mad in america: bad science, bad medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill. he started an organization called mad in america which has a lot of resources and information, including a podcast of the same name. there's also a network of associated groups that are based in different areas of the world if you're interested in non-american perspectives.
the medicalization of society: on the transformation of human conditions into treatable disorders by peter conrad
on the heels of ignorance: psychiatry and the politics of not knowing by owen whooley
here is a link to some of the old icarus project zines and pamphlets. i was briefly involved with a small icarus group when i was younger and there were some serious issues with the (dis)organization and some of the principles upon which the local groups operated. i'm sure these still have some useful and/or interesting information, and if nothing else they're interesting relics from the anti-psychiatry movement in the early 2000s. i'm less familiar with some of the newer work they put out before their dissolution in 2020. here is an article on the history of icarus from one of the co-founders, published in 2014.
i would recommend looking into bioethics and biopolitics in general, particularly focault. if you want to get into any of the seminal figures in anti-psychiatry (laing, szasz, etc), i would personally advise a very critical reading of their work. as always, this is not an explicit endorsement of any of these works, authors, or their respective viewpoints.
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jamisonwritestf2trash · 6 months
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hiya :D
i love ur headcannons they always make me laugh reading them!
do u think u could do some on what subjects u think the mercs would teach if they were teachers?
What Subjects Would The TF2 Mercs Teach?
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Awe, thank you, Anon, that's so sweet 💖 I can definitely write this, it seems like a lot of fun! UH going to just assume that these guys are teaching at a college, so they get specialized fields to teach!
This is probably going to be very similar to "What Jobs Would The TF2 Mercs Have If They Weren't Mercenaries" post, so I'll probably keep this shorter so I don't end up repeating myself, uh I also added how the classes would like them as a teacher!
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Demo would teach chemistry, trying very hard not to dabble with anything too illegal in his classroom. He loves the way science almost works like magic when it comes to chemistry. Loves the bearly visible bridge between a perfect result and utter chaos. His students are both deeply terrified and greatly inspired by Demo. He's a genius when it comes to science, and it shows through the times he's deeply concentrated while teaching. May or may not have "accidentally" shown the class how to make explosives. Oops.
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Engie is a fan of biomedical engineering regardless of if it's his job or just something he'd be asked to teach to people who were curious about it. He has such a passion for the mix of two things he loves, helping people and making things. He will go on for hours, showing examples of how important biomedical engineering is, how impactful even one person in the field can be. His students would love the passion he speaks on the subject with and how willing he is to make sure everyone in his class understands the material.
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Heavy would teach Russian literature after being inspired by his teachers. The passion they showed in their teachings and how willing they were to prioritize helping students evoked feelings in him that he never known. He does everything for his students, making sure that everyone is supported. He tries his hardest to give his all to make these students feel the same passion he has for it. His students love him, and his class is one of the most popular, has made large impacts on every student that's came into his class.
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Medic teaches, shock of all shocks, medical classes! I know, I know, but what can I say? He lives for the medical field. Keeps his class ethical enough, stating multiple times that as doctors, their job is to heal and save lives. However, some of his students who share the same, uh, curious shine in their eyes are more than welcome to attend a class that dips into the unethical side of medical practices. He's a good teacher, and his students are fond of him for his unsettling aura and passion.
(Can you tell I know jack all about medicine and how it's taught lmao)
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Scout is a teacher in sports journalism, and his class both loves and loathes him as a teacher. He loves sports, so writing about them is super easy! He has a lot of fun teaching other people the best way to describe things and how to put their feelings on the page, but he's also horrendous at spelling and writing in general. His class understands his struggles but gets rather annoyed when Scout pulls up an article he wrote and can't understand any of it. He's trying his best, and he makes a half decent teacher.
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Sniper is a photography teacher, and honestly? His class isn't for everyone. In Snipers mind through every picture he takes he's expressing a deep feeling or trying to invoke an emotion in the viewer, which he succeeds in most of the time, but it's hard for other people to replicate that when you, don't. Talk. To. Them. Some people just pick up photography and understand exactly how to do what Sniper expects without guidance, others can't understand at all. Basically, not a teacher, teacher.
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Spy is teaching political science, hoping he can somehow subtly influence a few students into using the knowledge he provided to find a profession in espionage. He's definitely a teacher who would make you nervous, kind of a mean teacher, but he never let's a student fall behind. Subtly offering help or an extension to make sure his students succeed. Claiming he doesn't do it out of love for his students, just so he isn't known for having any failures in his class.
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Soldier is the worlds best american history teacher, hands down. You want to talk about passion? He loves American history and will go on the longest rants and makes all of them entertaining. His class is never dull or boring. He's another prime example of a teacher who will do anything for his students and make sure they understand everything going on. No man left behind and all that. His students love him :)
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Pyro is a teacher of fire science (I didn't even know that was a thing, but apparently it is, who knew?) Pyro, being obsessed with lighting fires, knows quite a bit about all types of fire is more than happy to share their knowledge about flames. While their students can barely understand them, they don't call Pyro out on it as their passion for the subject transcends words. Pyro's class is less of a class than a period of entertainment, but somehow everyone comes away from the class knowing everything they needed, and even somethings they didn't.
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Short and sweet little headcanons, how fun! Sorry if it's actually too short! Thank you again for the ask anon, super fun to write :)
I'm just now realizing that there's a chance that this won't make sense because I'm a little tired while writing this, so I hope it turned out well. Sorry if it didn't, Anon 😭
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Which search engine is best for academic research? Hint: It's not Wikipedia
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PubMed
PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health–both globally and personally.
The PubMed database contains more than 34 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It does not include full-text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC).
Available to the public online since 1996, PubMed was developed and is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other websites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
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Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar provides free, AI-driven search and discovery tools, and open resources for the global research community. With Semantic Scholar, researchers can understand a paper at a glance. Our system extracts meaning and identifies connections from within papers, then surfaces these insights to help Scholars discover and understand research.
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Connected Papers
Connected Papers is a unique, visual tool to help researchers and applied scientists find and explore papers relevant to their field of work.
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Research Rabbit
Research Rabbit is starting with our Discovery app which unlocks a completely novel way to search for papers and authors, monitor new literature, visualize research landscapes, and collaborate with colleagues.
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naturalrights-retard · 7 months
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Pfizer’s covid mRNA vaccine messes with bone marrow stem cells and affects their growth and differentiation, Dr. William Makis said. And wonders whether this could lead to turbo cancers such as leukaemia.
In a recent article, Dr. William Makis highlighted three science papers about mRNA “vaccines” which are cause for great concern. The three papers are:
Study 1 – Matteo Zurlo et al.,The anti-SARS-CoV-2 BNT162b2 vaccine suppresses mithramycin-induced erythroid differentiation and expression of embryo-foetal globin genes in human erythroleukemia K562 cells, bioRvix. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.07.556634 (7 September 2023). Study 2 – Laura Breda et al., In vivo hematopoietic stem cell modification by mRNA delivery. Science 381,436-443(2023). doi: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade6967 (27 July 2023). Study 3 – Puccetti, M.; Schoubben, A.; Giovagnoli, S.; Ricci, M. Biodrug Delivery Systems: Do mRNA Lipid Nanoparticles Come of Age? Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023, 24, 2218. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms24032218 (22 January 2023). Formation of Blood Cells in Our Bodies Our bodies produce blood cells continuously from the time we are in the womb up to old age. Millions of blood cells are replaced each day as they live out their lifespans. The lifespan for red blood cells is around 120 days.
There are more than 10 different kinds of blood cells, each performing its own set of tasks. Though red and white blood cells may end up in different places in the body, after we are born production of blood cells starts in the bone marrow. Bone marrow makes more than 220 billion new blood cells every day.
Haematopoiesis (adj. haematopoietic) is the medical term used to describe the process by which our blood cells are formed, develop and mature into their final “adult” types. The process begins with a haematopoietic stem cell (“HSC”), which then goes through a series of steps to arrive at the final product – a mature blood cell. A mature blood cell would be a red blood cell, a white blood cell such as a lymphocyte, or some other type of blood cell.
Lymphoblast cells are immature white blood cells that develop into healthy immune cells called lymphocytes. In leukaemia patients, for example, lymphoblasts don’t mature. Instead, they multiply rapidly in the bone marrow and interfere with blood cell production.
In a 2020 Nature Biomedical Engineering study, researchers used a type of genetic therapy, known as RNA interference, and nanoparticles modified in such a way that they would accumulate in the cells found in the bone marrow, rather than in the liver. These particles could be tailored to help treat heart disease or to boost the yield of stem cells in patients who need stem cell transplants, Penn Engineering Today wrote.
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sporesgalaxy · 11 months
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Tumblr keeps crashing each time I send this so I gotta be quick: do have any tips on how to study biology (college is not an option atm)
Oh boy! I will do my best!
I've listed the basic irl resources for biological information first, followed by some online resources.
I've got a strong Animalia bias, so apologies that I don't have any botany-specific sites for you. 😔
I'm sure there's some stuff I'm forgetting. I'll add on to this if I think of anything!
If there's anything specific you need help finding a reliable biological resource for, let me know and I will try my best to help find you something!
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Finding primary sources (stuff written by the scientists who did the research [i.e. a journal article]) is always very good, but reliable secondary resources (someone else summarizing other people's research [i.e. Wikipedia page, book]) can be very valuable as well.
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Meatspace Resources
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I would highly recommend checking to see if there is a Nature Park in your area! Nature parks often have volunteer programs and/or free educational opportunities. In my experience, naturalists are always very excited to meet new people interested in learning about local ecology!
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There's also Zoos and Aquariums of course, although I know they cost money and are typically geared more towards kids. I'm lucky to live near some nice ones. Maybe check if there are any special programs happening at Zoos/Aquariums in your area (by checking their website[s]), where you might learn more than you would on a normal day trip.
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Plus natural history museums, which usually have rotating exhibits so that you can keep learning new things when you come back! They also have more of an all-ages vibe than Zoos in my experience. Once again dependant on if there's one near you, and not free.
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Last but not least: the local library, although obviously not every published book is a flawless resource. Still, might be interesting to poke around! There's usually some sort of digital search catalogue to make finding things easier. Libraries are fun :)
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Online Resources
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Jstor is GREAT. Not all jstor articles are open access/free, but some are! And you can set a search filter to show you only things you can access.
One good way to find out what experts have written for other experts about biology: search a species name or biological concept or type of experimental study, etc. etc., in jstor's journal articles. I've linked a search for journal articles "I can access" containing the word "biology" as an example.
The website layout can feel a little obtuse at first but I think if you fiddle around with it a bit, it's not too bad to figure out? Feel free to kick my ass if I'm wrong djgjkeg
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Wikipedia is actually a very good place to introduce yourself to a lot of biological concepts. I would recommend checking out some of the sources yourself if you can-- usually at least some of them are free, and that can introduce you to new free resources for learning more (today I discovered bugguide.net!). Often they will link you to jstor.
But biology-focused wiki pages have a pretty good track record for Correct Information in my experience. The only issue I've run into is there being too little information sometimes.
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Pubmed is a really good resource to read biomedical scientific papers for free if that interests you at all! Reading scientific papers is a really important skill and I think you can pick up a lot just by diving in and googling words you don't know.
A well-designed experiment is replicable (that is, you can understand from the paper how they set things up to the point that you could do it yourself, given the resources). It's also important to pay attention to sample size. The more times you replicate any process in an experiment, the more likely you will be able to identify what the most common result really is, and why.
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Fishbase is a website I was introduced to in my icthyology class to find info about different fish species :) It kind of just dumps all the info on you in a big text wall, but many pages include great details about life cycle and diet that might go unmentioned on wiki pages.
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I've never used bugguide.net before today, but so far it seems solid and like it has a lot of good info. I assume it is similar to fishbase but for bugs
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EDIT: FREE ONLINE TEXTBOOKS I FORGOT ABOUT!!!
I used both of these for university classes at some point. I didn't use them much, so there may be issues I don't know about.
In my experience though they were solid resources, if a little confusingly worded at times. Bouncing between the textbooks and wikipedia tended to help me.
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miss-biophys · 5 months
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There are many postdocs in academia, but not so many permanent researchers.
A new paper shows a statistics on where hundreds of Biomedical Sciences PhD graduates eventually ended up 10 years or more after graduation.
What strikes me there:
1. Sooo many postdocs go to administration positions after their postdoc is finished.
And it's true! I know so many people in administration who were good scientists before!
The following graph shows that from 418 PhD graduates, 325 went for a postdoc and 93 didn't. 145 administration/management/operation (AMO in the graph) positions in the end is for me a bit shocking.
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2. The time for a postdoc in academia to actually get a permanent/non trainee position can be up to 13 years!
Only half of the people makes it in 6 years after PhD graduation. That's much longer than getting a permanent job in administration. I do not want to be 13 years postdoc. This is also one of the reasons people quit academia.
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There are many more facts in the original article. Go read it if you're interested.
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bpod-bpod · 29 days
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Driving the Tube
Applying advanced microfluidics technology, reveals the role of cells' 'handedness' – a bias for direction of growth – in vessel development
Read the published research article here
Image from work by Haokang Zhang and colleagues
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA
Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Published in Science Advances, February 2024
You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook
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hedwig-dordt · 7 months
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The Ig Nobel Prize, for scientific research that makes people laugh and then makes them think. This year's winners!
CHEMISTRY and GEOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, UK] Jan Zalasiewicz, for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks. REFERENCE: “Eating Fossils,” Jan Zalasiewicz, The Paleontological Association Newsletter, no. 96, November 2017. Eating fossils | The Palaeontological Association (palass.org) WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Jan Zalasiewicz
LITERATURE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK, MALAYSIA, FINLAND] Chris Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira O’Connor for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. REFERENCE: “The The The The Induction of Jamais Vu in the Laboratory: Word Alienation and Semantic Satiation,” Chris J. A. Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira R. O’Connor, Memory, vol. 29, no. 7, 2021, pp. 933-942. doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2020.1727519 WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Chris Moulin, Akira O’Connor
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRIZE [INDIA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, USA] Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools. REFERENCE: “Necrobotics: Biotic Materials as Ready-to-Use Actuators,” Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor J. Shimokusu, and Daniel J. Preston, Advanced Science, vol. 9, no. 29, 2022, article 2201174. doi.org/10.1002/advs.202201174 WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Te Faye Yap and Daniel Preston
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] Seung-min Park, for inventing the Stanford Toilet, a device that uses a variety of technologies — including a urinalysis dipstick test strip, a computer vision system for defecation analysis, an anal-print sensor paired with an identification camera, and a telecommunications link — to monitor and quickly analyze the substances that humans excrete. REFERENCE: “A Mountable Toilet System for Personalized Health Monitoring via the Analysis of Excreta,” Seung-min Park, Daeyoun D. Won, Brian J. Lee, Diego Escobedo, Andre Esteva, Amin Aalipour, T. Jessie Ge, et al., Nature Biomedical Engineering, vol. 4, no. 6, 2020, pp. 624-635. doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-0534-9 REFERENCE: “Digital Biomarkers in Human Excreta,” Seung-min Park, T. Jessie Ge, Daeyoun D. Won, Jong Kyun Lee, and Joseph C. Liao, Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology, vol. 18, no. 8, 2021, pp. 521-522. doi.org/10.1038/s41575-021-00462-0 REFERENCE: “Smart Toilets for Monitoring COVID-19 Surges: Passive Diagnostics and Public Health,” T. Jessie Ge, Carmel T. Chan, Brian J. Lee, Joseph C. Liao, and Seung-min Park, NPJ Digital Medicine, vol. 5, no. 1, 2022, article 39. doi.org/10.1038/s41746-022-00582-0 REFERENCE: “Passive Monitoring by Smart Toilets for Precision Health,” T. Jessie Ge, Vasiliki Nataly Rahimzadeh, Kevin Mintz, Walter G. Park, Nicole Martinez-Martin, Joseph C. Liao, and Seung-min Park, Science Translational Medicine, vol. 15, no. 681, 2023, article eabk3489. doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abk3489 WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Seung-min Park
COMMUNICATION PRIZE [ARGENTINA, SPAIN, COLOMBIA, CHILE, CHINA, USA] María José Torres-Prioris, Diana López-Barroso, Estela Càmara, Sol Fittipaldi, Lucas Sedeño, Agustín Ibáñez, Marcelo Berthier, and Adolfo García, for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward. REFERENCE: “Neurocognitive Signatures of Phonemic Sequencing in Expert Backward Speakers,” María José Torres-Prioris, Diana López-Barroso, Estela Càmara, Sol Fittipaldi, Lucas Sedeño, Agustín Ibáñez, Marcelo L. Berthier, and Adolfo M. García, Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. 10621, 2020. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67551-z WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: María José Torres-Prioris, Adolfo García
MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, CANADA, MACEDONIA, IRAN, VIETNAM] Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s two nostrils. REFERENCE: “The Quantification and Measurement of Nasal Hairs in a Cadaveric Population,” Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Margit Juhasz, and Natasha Atanaskova Mesinkovska, Journal of The American Academy of Dermatology, vol. 83, no. 6, 2020, pp. AB202-AB202. doi.org/10.1016/j.jaad.2020.06.902 WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Christine Pham, Natasha Mesinkovska, Margit Juhasz, Kiana Hashemi, Tiana Mamaghani
NUTRITION PRIZE [JAPAN] Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura, for experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food. REFERENCE: “Augmented Gustation Using Electricity,” Hiromi Nakamura and Homei Miyashita, Proceedings of the 2nd Augmented Human International Conference, March 2011, article 34. doi.org/10.1145/1959826.1959860 WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Homei Miyashita, Hiromi Nakamura
EDUCATION PRIZE [CHINA, CANADA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, USA, JAPAN] Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students. REFERENCE: “Boredom Begets Boredom: An Experience Sampling Study on the Impact of Teacher Boredom on Student Boredom and Motivation,” Katy Y.Y. Tam, Cyanea Y. S. Poon, Victoria K.Y. Hui, Christy Y. F. Wong, Vivian W.Y. Kwong, Gigi W.C. Yuen, Christian S. Chan, British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 90, no. S1, June 2020, pp. 124-137. doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12549 REFERENCE: “Whatever Will Bore, Will Bore: The Mere Anticipation of Boredom Exacerbates its Occurrence in Lectures,” Katy Y.Y. Tam, Wijnand A.P. Van Tilburg, Christian S. Chan, British Journal of Educational Psychology, epub 2022. doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12549 WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Christian Chan, Katy Y.Y. Tam, Wijnand A.P. Van Tilburg
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [USA] Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz for experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward REFERENCE: “Note on the Drawing Power of Crowds of Different Size,” Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 13, no. 2, 1969, pp. 79-82. psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/h0028070 WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Len Bickman
PHYSICS PRIZE [SPAIN, GALICIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, UK] Bieito Fernández Castro, Marian Peña, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullón, Antonio Comesaña, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido, for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies. REFERENCE: “Intense Upper Ocean Mixing Due to Large Aggregations of Spawning Fish,” Bieito Fernández Castro, Marian Peña, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullón, Antonio Comesaña, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido, Nature Geoscience, vol. 15, 2022, pp. 287–292. doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00916-3 WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Bieito Fernandez Castro, Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido, Alberto Naveira Garabato, Esperanza Broullon, Miguel Gil Coto
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biomedres · 1 year
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Nocturnal Activities and Strategies for Self-Protection Against Human-Vectors Contact in a Peri-Urban Community in Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria
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Nocturnal Activities and Strategies for Self-Protection Against Human-Vectors Contact in a Peri-Urban Community in Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria in Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research
https://biomedres.us/fulltexts/BJSTR.MS.ID.005975.php
joy protection from long lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs) or other control measures due to human and vector behaviours that promote contact between man and vector mosquitoes outside the safe havens of LLINs and other protections against mosquitoes bites. Thus, the study on peri-urban dwellers nocturnal activities and strategies for self-protection against human-vector contact in Mararraba-Akunza, Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria was carried out between December 2016 and January 2017. A well-structured questionnaire on human nocturnal activities that predisposes them to mosquitoes bites was administered to 30 randomly selected households. Result obtained showed that most people sleep outdoor during the hot months between January and March 63.3% (19/30) and thus there was a very high significant difference (P < 0.0001) in relation to the proportion of sleepers between in-and-outdoor points. Almost all respondents 96.67% (29/30) when resting outdoors use a form of protection against mosquito bite. The main outdoor activity that predisposes the people to mosquitoes bites was watching television. Thus, there was a high significant variation (P < 0.01) across predisposing outdoor activities. Also, the proportion of outdoor sleepers across the four quarters of the year highly varied significantly (P < 0.0001). Almost all respondents 70% (21/30) sleep till daybreak and majority of them use insecticide outdoors 43.33% (13) but when indoors most of them sleep under LLINs 66.7% (20/30). The outdoor nocturnal activities of people in the study community will continually expose them to mosquito vectors bites due to high temperature of the lowland area which can only be supported through provision of stable electrical power supply in order for the periurban inhabitants to remain indoors at night. Also, LLINs should be made available to the inhabitants, and they in turn should ensure it is hung outdoor especially during the dry season period so as to avoid contact with mosquitoes.
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biomedgrid · 2 years
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Biomed Grid | Hyperglycemia Damages the Endothelial Glycocalyx: Implications for The Blood Brain Barrier
Introduction
It is well established that diabetes can lead to cerebral vasodegeneration, manifested principally by blood brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction [1] . The BBB consists of a tight capillary network that protects the brain from most circulating molecules while providing access to necessary nutrients required for function. These capillaries are formed by an inner layer of endothelial cells that are joined together via tight junctions and adherent junctions followed by a less dense layer of pericytes (ratio 4:1) that form socket like structures at the point of contact with endothelial cells, and a layer of astrocytes, whose end feet are in close proximity with the endothelium and allow for the diffusion of metabolites and neurotransmitters from the brain tissue to the endothelium and vice-versa [2] . The tightness of the barrier is mainly determined by the integrity of the endothelium, which provides the major resistance to transport across the vessel walls [3] .
Homeostasis of the endothelium not only depends on the adequate transmission of biochemical signals but also on dynamic interactions due to the circulating blood. The release of metabolic molecules, as well as changes in gene and protein levels have been attributed, among other stimuli, to fluid flow shear stress (FFSS) [4] . Endothelial cells sense and respond to such stimuli due to the presence of a mechanosensing machinery that includes the glycocalyx (GCX) at the luminal side of the vessel that connects to the integrin binding domains and focal adhesions and basal GCX at the abluminal side via the cytoskeleton [5] . This mechano-signaling modulates vasculogenesis, permeability, vasoconstriction, cell death and other physiological and adaptation responses [6] . The GCX is denser in the brain, covering the entire luminal surface of cerebral capillaries, suggesting that it may be an important component of the BBB [7] .
The GCX is a matrix of proteoglycans (PG), glycoproteins, glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), glycolipids and soluble proteins coating the endothelial cells. The most abundant GAGs are heparan sulfate (HS), chondroitin sulfate and hyaluronan (HA). The main PGs are syndecan (SDC)-1, -2 and -4 and glypican-1(GPC1).For reviews on the GCX composition and function see Reitsma et al. and Curry and Adamson [8, 9]. The integrity of the GCX is critical for sensing FFSS caused by the circulating blood [10]. Interestingly, FFSS can modulate the GCX barrier properties against cellular infiltration and molecular transport across the vascular wall [11, 12, 13]. In addition, the GCX is negatively charged due to the presence of anionic oligosaccharides, thereby forming an electrical barrier [14, 15]. In vitro experiments have shown that high glucose leads to the degradation of the HS component of the GCX in bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAEC) [16] and in human endothelial cell lines [17]. In BAEC, this resulted in an abnormal response of FFSS dependent hydraulic conductivity across the cell layer. In vivo experiments have shown that either neutral or anionic dextrans with molecular weights of 70-kDa and higher, do not penetrate the GCX and are therefore retained in the vasculature [18], however, short-term hyperglycemia can impair the ability of the GCX to exclude 70-kDa dextran [19] possibly due to enzymatic shedding of some of its components. This was partially supported by the observation that the GCX of mice deficient in hyaluronidase 1, an enzyme that cleaves HA, was preserved from damage in streptozotocin-induced diabetes [20]. In type 1 diabetes patients and in acute hyperglycemia, plasma HA and hyaluronidase are increased [21, 22]. In type 2 male patients, sublingual and retinal GCX thickness was reduced as measured by angiography, with a concomitant increase in markers for HA catabolism (HA and hyaluronidase) and an increase in transcapillary efflux of albumin, that was partially restored following administration of sulodexide [23], a purified GAG combining HS and dermatan sulfate with affinities for antithrombin III and for heparin cofactor II respectively [24, 25]. It is well established that reactive oxygen species (ROS) and advanced glycation end products (AGE) are involved in diabetic complications. ROS can depolymerize GAGs [26] and AGE degrade and inhibit the production of HA [27]. Besides the presence of ROS and AGE, the activation of heparanase and hyaluronidase lead to the deterioration of the GCX during diabetes [28]. The GCX therefore has been suggested as a target in diabetic vascular complications [29]. In hyperglycemic conditions, heparin or insulin preserves GAGs; insulin is an effective diabetic therapy since it both lowers blood glucose and protects the endothelium [30].
The GCX, the endothelium, the astrocyte end feet and basement membrane contribute to the BBB [31] preventing large molecules, neurotoxins, inflammatory factors and pathogens into the brain. A compromise in the BBB precedes many neurological disorders and is related to diabetes-associated comorbidities such as cognitive impairment and depression [32]. Hyper and hypoglycemia have been associated with oxidative stress in the brain, that may upregulate and activate the receptor for AGE, which also transports amyloid-beta from the blood into the brain, thus, establishing a relationship between type 2 diabetes mellitus and Alzheimer’s disease (also referred to as “type 3 diabetes”). Degradation of the GCX at the BBB may imply that there is a lower FFSS-induced endothelial nitric oxide production [33] which can impair vasodilation. According to the International Diabetes Federation (www.idf.org), in 2019, approximately 463 million adults were living with diabetes and it is estimated that by 2045 this number will rise to 700 million. Therefore, more research is necessary to understand the mechanisms by which hyperglycemia damages the GCX. Such studies will likely provide a key to prevent complications in micro and macrovascular beds of the brain and other organs.
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cbirt · 1 year
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MACHINE LEARNING FOR BIOMARKER DISCOVERY USING NGS DATA
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In this article, we will be exploring how machine learning (ML) techniques can be used to identify and analyze biomarkers from next generation sequencing (NGS) data. Biomarkers are specific biological molecules or characteristics that can be used to identify the presence or severity of a particular disease or condition. They play a crucial role in medical diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis, and their discovery and validation is an important area of research in the field of biomedical science. Next Generation Sequencing is a powerful tool that allows researchers to analyze large amounts of genetic data quickly and accurately. By combining the capabilities of machine learning with next-generation sequencing data, we can unlock the potential to identify and validate new biomarkers that can improve our understanding of diseases and lead to more effective treatments.
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dirtytransmasc · 1 year
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The thing about the Siblings that is the most terrifying is that they never stop learning.
It's like a bottomless pit, their desire to learn everything they can get their grubby blue hands on, and it's unnerving how quickly they pick things up.
Languages are a breeze for them, and as a result their code is constantly evolving.
Old Norse, Ojibwe (Anishinaabemowin), Interslavic (look it up), Trigedasleng (the 100), Gaulish, and Sumerian are just a few of the other languages the Siblings have decided to learn to some degree or another.
Ravi has a particularly unsettling interest in war tactics, military history, and different styles of martial arts. Miles, and others, get to learn the full scope of his knowledge when playing the assault on Bridgehead.
Reyzi took to medicine like a flame to oil, by fiften she had read every medical textbook, research paper, and article in Hell's Gate's system. Topics she took interest in including biomedical engineering, neuroscience, and the process behind creating an avatar. She knows both the human and na'vi body inside and out, and she uses this knowledge to her advantage.
Ro'eyk, to no one's surprise, specialized in chemistry, physics, engineering, and the history of weapons manufacturing. At thirteen, he made his own recreation of Greek Fire, and by fifteen he had taken apart every weapon in Hell's Gate's armoury and put it back together.
Of course, they tend to share their knowledge amongst themselves, and at times you might almost think they have a hive mind.
It's unclear what is more terrifying; the siblings having a hive mind, or that they are so connected that they don't need one.
and with their different forms of memory (photographic and eidetic) they could just about learn everything. they absorb everything, even passing details, and that's whats scary. they can't even leave the kids near the kids near the RDA science pukes, because the kids will remember everything they say and they will use it against them. they also know that if one sibling knows something, they all know it.
the recoms do not get a single moment of rest with those 3, 4 when spider is also in on their bullshit (affectionately dubbed that by the recoms) which is more often than not.
they know one wrong move from them, letting the siblings around the wrong person, anything of the likes of that, and someone's screwed and the blame could easily fall on them.
(also, I totally hc that ravi was a latin boy, he could recite latin in his sleep, it was one of his favorite, normal things to study)
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By: Anna Krylov and Jay Tanzman
Published: Oct 2, 2023
Note: A version of this article will appear as an invited chapter in the forthcoming volume The Free Inquiry Papers edited by Robert Maranto, Lee Jussim, and Sally Satel.
1. An age of unreason
The liberal enlightenment, humanism, and democracy are under siege. A once-obscure postmodernist worldview, Critical Social Justice (CSJ) [1-3], has escaped the academy and is quickly reshaping our institutions and society at large. Long-standing merit-based practices in science are rapidly being subordinated to practices based on the tenets of CSJ theory [4]. Increasingly, scientists must compete for funding, no longer only on the basis of scientific merit, but also on the basis of how their proposed research will promote the goals of CSJ. As an example, an NIH neurology program requires grant applications to include a “plan for enhancing diverse perspectives” with the goal to “bring about the culture change necessary to address the inequities and systemic biases in biomedical research….” [5] Similarly, funding for fundamental research in chemistry and physics now depends on researchers demonstrating their commitment to “promote equity and inclusion as an intrinsic element to advancing scientific excellence” [6].
In the academy, faculty hiring and administrative appointments are increasingly made on the basis of the candidate’s identity [7-9]. Merit-based admission to schools and universities is being weakened, with standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT being abandoned on “social justice” grounds [10,11]. K–12 is affected as well. Some school districts have stopped giving D and F grades in order to improve “equity” [12]. In math classes, activist teachers claim that getting the right answer and showing your work are white supremacist concepts and are advocating, instead, a supposedly anti-racist CSJ pedagogy [13,14]. Accelerated mathematics programs for gifted students, necessary to prepare them for advanced training and careers in STEM [15], are being dismantled in the name of “social justice” [16-18]. Many school districts have eliminated honors classes altogether in the name of “equity” [19]. The resultant weakening of the workforce has already contributed to the fall of the US from its position as the world leader in science [20].
In the university, faculty and staff are instructed to use Newspeak—neopronouns and other neologisms—in their written and verbal communications for the purpose of “inclusivity” [21,22]. To be avoided are such apparently un-inclusive terms as “strawman,” “brown-bag lunch,” and “picnic” [22–25]. Professional societies and corporations are following suit, proscribing terms such as “field,” “dark times,” “black market,” “double-blind study,” “nursing mother,” “hip-hip hooray,” “smart phone,” “homeless,” and “the French” [26–30].
In biology, an education paper recommends that teachers emphasize the sexual diversity across species in nature, which includes “organisms such as ciliates, algae, and fungi [that] have equal-size gametes (isogamy) and do not therefore have gametic sexes [that is, binary sexes, as mammals do].” This is supposed to promote inclusivity of LGBTQIA2+ students in the classroom [25]. Chemistry education also needs to be reformed, according to the journal Chemical Education, which published a virtual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) collection of 67 papers exploring such topics as decolonization of the chemistry curriculum, chemistry and racism, and gender and sexual orientation identities in the chemistry classroom [31]. A recent paper in the same journal describes “a special topic class in chemistry on feminism and science as a tool to disrupt the dysconcious racism in STEM,” which explores “the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism.” “To problematize time as a linear social construct,” the paper says, “the Copenhagen interpretation of the collapse of wave-particle duality was utilized” [32]. No, Deepak Chopra was not a co-author of the paper.
In STEM, prospective faculty are asked to pledge their commitment to the ideology of CSJ and to document their activism in advancing DEI [8,9,33,34]. Medical schools are abolishing long-accepted assessments of competency in order to improve racial parity in residency programs [35]. A pamphlet published by the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health claims that public health anti-obesity campaigns are an example of “fatphobia,” that public health’s “focus on body size is rooted in racism,” that “higher weight is not causal to worse health outcomes," and that “focusing on weight ignores systematic injustices” [36,37]. Under the doctrine of gender-affirming care, adolescents are offered life-changing transgender treatments, often after only perfunctory psychological assessment, despite the poor understanding that medicine currently has on the risks and benefits of these treatments [38–40].
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[ Unreason and intolerance. Upper left: Yale students protest “offensive” Halloween costumes (2015). Lower left: Activists burn books by J.K. Rowling (2023). Right: Students at UC Davis disrupt a film viewing by throwing a bag of manure into the room. ]
Free speech itself, the cornerstone of liberal democracy, is under attack. As viewed by CSJ activists, free speech is dangerous, harmful, and equivalent to violence [41]. Adherents of DEI ideology believe that DEI should trump academic freedom [42]. Institutions essential for providing a platform for the marketplace of ideas, information exchange, and debate have largely abandoned their mission in the name of social justice activism. Articles in the press are infused with CSJ ideology [4]. Scientific publishers from Scientific American to the flagship journals Science and Nature have become mouthpieces for CSJ [43–56]. Universities, whose primary mission is education and truth seeking, have become complicit in censorship, scholarship suppression, indoctrination, and intimidation [57–59]. Universities and professional organizations have compromised their mission as seekers and communicators of objective truths by abandoning traditional institutional neutrality in favor of political activism, taking official positions on elections, police reform, abortion, wars, and other social issues [60,61], leaving dissenters out in the cold. Where debate, constructive disagreement, and discussion were once cultivated, conformity and dogmatism, enforced both top-down (by CSJ-infused DEI trainings [62,63]) and bottom-up (by ideologically driven activists [58]), now reign.
On campus, another essential provision of democracy, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, no longer guides procedures for resolving conflict. Suspensions and terminations of professors without a hearing in response to offense taken by students, faculty members, or administrators has become commonplace (see, for example, Ref. 64–67). A predictable consequence is that there is now an unprecedented level of self-censorship by students and faculty [57,68,69]. Proposed changes to Title IX regulations will further erode the free speech of students and the protection of due process [70]. 
CSJ adherents accuse dissenters of being indifferent to existing inequalities and historic injustices, of being bigots, of having nefarious motives, and of perpetuating existing power structures. We reject these accusations. We oppose the practices of CSJ because they harm everyone, including those groups they purport to elevate [71-73]. It is precisely because we care about the existing problems in the world and about real social justice that we oppose CSJ.
What we are witnessing today—curriculum “decolonization,” the elimination of honors classes in schools, the ubiquitous war on merit [4], the imposition of political litmus tests for academic positions, Newspeak, the renaming of everything in sight, and on and on—are not isolated excesses perpetrated by a handful of overly zealous but otherwise well-meaning individuals; they are symptoms of a wholesale takeover of our institutions by an illiberal movement that currently has the upper hand. The current situation is not a pendulum that has swung too far and will self-correct [74]; it is a train hurtling full speed toward a cliff. Those of us unwillingly to go over the edge can either jump off—leave academia (or maybe start up alternative institutions)—or fight to get the brakes applied before it is too late. The remainder of this chapter is about the latter course of action.
2. Why we should fight
To put it simply, we should fight because it is the right thing to do. It is not only our duty to the next generation, but an opportunity to pay our debt to the previous generations of dissenters who fought against forces of illiberalism to create the free and prosperous world that we enjoy today [75,76]. By fighting, we, too, can fend off the forces of unreason and restore the values of humanism, liberalism, and The Enlightenment. Inaction and submission will only enable the further spread of illiberalism. The history of past illiberal regimes, such as the USSR and Nazi Germany, provide ample lessons and motivation to stand and fight today. The train is gaining momentum; the longer we wait, the harder it will be to stop it. We must act now, while we still can.
Although there are uncanny parallels with totalitarian regimes of the past [23,77–80], we are still living in a free, democratic society. Despite the advances of illiberal ideology, manifested by the rise of censorship, the spread of cancel culture [23,57,58,81–83], and the proliferation of institutionalized structures (such as DEI bureaucracies) to enforce CSJ ideology, the dissenters of today do not face incarceration in prisons, labor camps, and mental hospitals. Nonetheless, we can learn from history.
In his book To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter [84], Vladimir Bukovsky [85] describes his experiences as a dissident who refused to comply with the Soviets and challenged the regime. Bukovsky describes the apathy and complacency of the majority of the population at that time. People understood the corrupt and inhumane nature of the regime, but they chose to keep their heads down because—as the Russian proverb goes—“No man can splay the stone” (in Russian: плетью обуха не перешибёшь).
Because of this complacency, the economically bankrupt, oppressive, and inhumane Soviet regime lasted as long as it did (70+ years). But it was the actions of dissidents that ultimately catalyzed its downfall. Consider, for example, the impact of the books of Solzhenitsyn, who told the world the truth about the atrocities of the Soviet regime [86]. In addition to meticulously documenting the scale of the atrocities, Solzhenitsyn explained that they came to be, not due to deviations from the party line or shortcomings of its individual leaders, but as the direct result of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
In Bukovsky’s time (the late 1950s to mid-1970s), open dissent was rare. Growing up in the Soviet Union, I [Anna]—as most of my peers—did not even know dissidents existed. It wasn’t until Perestroyka in the late 80s, when I read Solzhenitsyn’s books and learned about Sakharov [87] that I found out. Yet, it is through the actions of the dissidents that the West came to understand the Soviet regime as an “evil empire,” and this understanding propelled the political forces in the West that ultimately decided the outcome of the Cold War. The impact of the dissident movement on the Soviet regime has been illuminated through a series of memoranda of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, stolen and published by Bukovsky in his book Judgment in Moscow [88]. The acts of individuals splayed the stone after all.
I [Anna] was born (in the then-Soviet state of Ukraine) into the luckiest generation in the history of the USSR—the generation that witnessed the fall of the Wall when they were still young. We could escape to the free world, live as free people, and build successful and fulfilling careers in the West. Had the regime lasted another 20 years, my generation would have been yet another of the long list of those whose lives were ruined by the Soviet regime. I feel a personal debt to the dissidents of the day. 
Now, it is our turn to be the dissidents and to fight the good fight.
Fighting for what is right is not just the right thing to do; it is empowering. Standing up and speaking your mind is liberating, even exhilarating; while hunkering down in fear, hoping the storm will pass, is a bleak experience. Being honest feels good, while being complicit in lies is dispiriting. Fighting the good fight puts you in control, whereas passive submission leaves you helpless. Whether we ultimately win or lose this fight, those who choose to remain silent will look back and ask themselves why they did not act when they could. As Martin Niemöller wrote after World War II,
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Eventually, this illiberal movement, like those of the past, will come not only for the dissidents, but for the silent bystanders as well (and, eventually, for its own vocal supporters).
There are myriad excuses, as old as the history of totalitarianism and oppression itself, invoked to justify inaction, complacency, and collaboration. Bukovsky [84] enumerates a few of the more familiar: “What can I do alone?”; “I’ll be more effective after I get the promotion”; “It’s not my job; I’m a scientist.” “If I don’t collaborate, someone else will anyway (and I’ll probably do less harm).” These reasons may seem logical, even compelling; however, they are self-deceptions. Not pushing back against bad ideas allows them to spread. Not fighting back against illiberalism allows it to grow. Not standing up for truth permits the lies to flourish. Not confronting the CSJ ideologists permits them to advance. And when they advance, we lose. It is a zero-sum game.
The choice to fight in the face of potential consequences is personal [89] and not an easy one to make. But as you contemplate whether to act or to lay low, consider the importance of truth and integrity in your life. To paraphrase Bari Weiss: Worship truth more than Yale. As she says:
[D]o not lose sight of what is essential. Professional prestige is not essential. Being popular is not essential. Getting your child into an elite preschool is not essential. Doing the right thing is essential. Telling the truth is essential. Protecting your kids is essential. [90]
Sure, no one wants to become a martyr for free speech or experience bullying, ostracism, and professional damage [81,91–93]. Cancel culture is real, but the risks are not what dissenters to totalitarian regimes faced historically or face today—cancel culture does not put you in jail. One still can write a dissenting op-ed without the fear of being stripped of their citizenship and expelled from the country, as Solzhenitsyn was for his writings [83]. We still can criticize DEI policies without fear of being put under house arrest, as Sakharov was for his vocal opposition to nuclear weapons and his unwavering defense of human rights [87]. But if we delay, some of the totalitarian nightmares of the past may become a reality. There are already worrying signs of this totalitarian-style repression in America: parents opposing CSJ in schools have been accused of terrorism and investigated by the FBI [94]; a journalist who wrote about collusion between the government and social media was paid a surprise home visit by the Internal Revenue Service [95]; a student who questioned the concept of microaggressions [96] at a mandatory training was expelled and forced to “seek to psychological services” [97]. These incidents in America today are chillingly similar to practices in Russia in the Soviet era, when the KGB routinely investigated dissidents, and dissent from Soviet ideology was considered a psychiatric disorder [84,88]. In the absence of resistance, this illiberal movement, like illiberal movements of the past, will gain ever more power, and we will face ever worse repression and erosion of individual freedom.
Inaction does not guarantee survival, but fighting a successful fight does. The only way to defend yourself against repression by an illiberal ideology is to stop the spread of the ideology.
The dangers of inaction are real, but how much risk one should take must be a personal decision [89]. Above all, it rarely does any good to get fired. Getting fired is playing into their hands. It’s one less enemy in the organization to fight against its ideological capture. Should all the dissidents get fired, the ideology wins. Full stop.
But it’s not hopeless. As we elaborate below, there are ways to maximize the impact of your actions and minimize the chances of negative consequences of resistance.
3. How to fight
Although there is no sure-fire roadmap to solve the current crisis, there are some do’s and don’ts. A recently published handbook, Counter Wokecraft (which we highly recommend), written by an anonymous STEM professor, provides concrete recommendations for staging the resistance [98]. It convincingly explains how small but deliberate actions add up to big change and elaborates on the perils of delaying action. In what follows, we offer our view on how to fight, and we share examples of successful acts of resistance that give us reason for hope. Small contributions add up, so do something rather than nothing.  As Gad Saad writes in The Parasitic Mind:
The battle of ideas knows no boundaries, so there is plenty to do. If you are a student and hear your professors spouting postmodern nonsense or spewing anti-science drivel, challenge them politely and constructively. If you are a graduate and your alma mater is violating its commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of thought, withdraw your donations—and let the school know why. If your Facebook friends are posting comments with which you disagree, engage them and offer an alternative viewpoint.... If you are sitting at your local pub having a conversation about a sensitive topic, do not refrain from speaking your mind. If your politicians are succumbing to suicidal political correctness, vote them out of office. [99]
1. Educate yourself; knowledge is power.
To effectively counter the ideology of CSJ, it is crucial to understand its nature and the tactics it employs. As two-time Nobel Laureate Marie Sklodowska-Curie said:
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so we may fear less.
Although Curie was referring to phenomena of the natural world, the observation applies equally to the world of ideas. By understanding the origins and tenets of CSJ, we can fear less—and fight more effectively.
For me [Anna] and my former compatriots, who were forcibly schooled in Marxist-Leninism and experienced its implementation as Socialism firsthand, it is easy to recognize the current illiberal movement’s philosophical roots [78,79]. We recognize the familiar rhetoric and the Orwellian co-option of the language: the media outlet of the Communist Party, which disseminated its lies, was called Pravda (Правда), which is Russian for “truth”; victims of Red terror were called “enemies of the people” (враги народа); Soviet troops invading other countries were called “liberators” (освободители); and  nuclear weapons were developed with the slogan “nucleus for the cause of peace” (атом—делу мира). We are used to looking behind the facade of nice-sounding words and seeing their real meaning to those in power [100]. It is not hard to see that today’s “Diversity,” “Equity,” and “Inclusion” have about as much in common with the noble concepts of diversity, equality, and inclusion as Orwell's Ministry of Love had to do with love or his Ministry of Plenty had to do with plenty. (A more-fitting operational definition of DEI would be Discrimination, Entitlement, and Intimidation.) This linguistic tactic is used because it works. It has fooled many STEM academics and ordinary citizens and has enabled the illiberal ideology to get its foot in the door [3].
As Counter Wokecraft explains, the tactics CSJ employs to gain power in our institutions include the use of liberal-sounding “crossover words” to shroud the illiberal aims of the movement [98]. The concise essay “DEI: a Trojan Horse for Critical Social Justice in Science” by the same author offers insights into the philosophy that undergirds the CSJ movement and clearly elucidates its aims [3]. For a deeper dive into CSJ, we recommend the book by Pluckrose and Lindsay [1].
2. Use all existing means of resistance, but first and foremost, the official ones.
Mechanisms of resistance are available through existing institutions, even if the institutions themselves are failing to protect their mission [101]. These mechanisms can be exploited to change the institution from within.
Bukovsky describes how their dissident group worked within the legal boundaries of the Soviet regime [84]. He contrasts this approach with anarchism and revolutionary destructivism, which, he argues, lead to outcomes that are worse than the original evils. Bukovsky and his dissident comrades structured their activism and resistance within the framework of the Soviet constitution—which many legitimately considered to be a joke. When allowed to speak in court, Bukovsky framed his defense to emphasize the constitutional rights of Soviet citizens, for example, to peacefully demonstrate. Bukovsky attributes their success to this strategy. As an example of an important victory, he describes how he and his fellow political prisoners managed to resist and ultimately eliminate mandatory “corrective labor” for political prisoners. Following legal protocols, they rolled out a concerted effort of filing official complaints. Although isolated complaints never had any effect (they would be registered, duly processed, and dismissed), by flooding the bureaucratic system with a massive number of such complaints (which each had to be properly registered and responded to), they pushed the system beyond its limits. The sheer number of complaints compelled administrative scrutiny of the prison and its officers. And the prisoners won the fight.
Today, we can work within the system of our universities and professional organizations, even if they have already been ideologically corrupted. We can participate in surveys; communicate our concerns to leadership; nominate candidates committed to liberal principles to committees and leadership; vote against CSJ ideologues; speak up against practices that violate the stated mission of the institution [43,102,103]; publish well-reasoned opinion pieces [4,14,15,23,82,83,102]; and insist that our institutions adhere to their stated institutional (and legal) commitments to free speech and non-discrimination, such as being equal opportunity employers. Counter Wokecraft [98] provides concrete suggestions on how to effectively oppose the advances of the CSJ agenda by simply insisting that standard protocols of decision-making be followed—that is, through formal meetings with organized discussions that adhere to a set agenda, vote by secret ballot, and so on. In short, the existing governance structures and institutional policies can still be utilized to defend and even restore the institutional mission, even when the institution’s workings have been undermined by CSJ activists.
The following success stories illustrate the effectiveness of working within the system.
At the University of Massachusetts, a faculty group fought—and won—against a proposed rewriting of the university mission statement, which would have redefined the purpose of the university as engaging in political and ideological activism, rather than pursuing the truth [104].
Faculty at the University of Chicago succeeded in having departmental statements that violated institutional neutrality (by voicing collective support for specific social and political issues in violation of the University’s Kalven Report [105]) rescinded [106].
Also at the University of Chicago, in response to faculty complaints to the institution’s Title IX coordinator and general counsel, at least seven programs that gave preferences to specific races or sexes in violation of Federal regulations were discontinued [106].
The faculty of the University of Washington voted down a proposal to require DEI statements for all tenure and promotion candidates [107]. As reported to us, an email campaign initiated by a single faculty member was decisive in defeating the proposal.
At the University of North Carolina (UNC), the Board of Trustees adopted [108] the Chicago Free Speech Principles [109] and Kalven Report [105]. The former articulates the university’s commitment to free speech and is considered to be a model policy on this issue; the latter ensures institutional neutrality, prohibiting units of the university from taking stands on moral, political, or ideological issues, unless they directly affect the mission of the institution.
Also at UNC, responding to a faculty petition, the Board of Governors moved to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements from its hiring and promotion process. The mandate states that the university “shall neither solicit nor require an employee or applicant for academic admission or employment to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action as a condition to admission, employment, or professional advancement” [110].
In California, mathematicians organized a petition that has, so far, blocked the implementation of radical, CSJ-based revisions to the K–12 math curriculum [18]. At the time of publication, the fight is not over; but they’ve won so far.
A new nonprofit, Do No Harm, has been formed to fight against the encroachment of identity politics in medicine [111]. Among their successes, filings with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against two medical schools has resulted in the elimination of race as a requirement for certain scholarships. Scholarships “meant for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, [a] worthy goal, can and should be met without racial discrimination,” writes the organization’s founder [112].
Adverse publicity and mockery, too, can cause Universities, which are sensitive to their public image, to roll back woke policies, as the following examples illustrate.
The administration of MIT reversed its own decision and reinstated the use of standardized tests for admission [113], the elimination of which had been mocked by dissidents [114].
The Stanford University “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” website, which listed 161 verboten expressions, including “beating a dead horse,” “white paper,” “insane,” and even “American,” was taken down after sustained mockery in the press and on social media. The university’s president ultimately disowned the initiative and reaffirmed the university’s commitment to free speech [29].
At the University of Southern California, the interim provost made a clear statement that “the university does not maintain a list of banned or discouraged words” in response to the mockery [115] of an earlier memorandum the university's School of Social Work announcing the cancellation of the word “field” as racist [26,29].
At Texas Tech, the administration announced that it was dropping mandatory DEI statements from the hiring process [116], after details of how these statements influenced hiring decisions had been publicized [9].
These examples illustrate the maxim that sunlight is the best disinfectant [117]. We can use social media and the press to shine a light on the excesses of CSJ to bring about change.
Pressure from state governments can also force universities to change course away from DEI ideology. Facing threats from the state assembly to cut funding, the University of Wisconsin system has announced it will eliminate mandatory DEI statements for job applicants. As we are writing this chapter, the state assembly is also threatening to eliminate funding for administrative positions at UW dedicated to DEI [118].
Arizona has also dealt a blow to DEI ideology. The state’s Board of Regents has mandated that public universities drop the use of DEI statements in hiring. The move was in response to a finding by the Goldwater Institute that DEI statements, which were required in over three-fourths of job postings, were being used “to circumvent the state’s constitutional prohibition against political litmus tests in public educational institutions” [119].
Organizations such as the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) have successfully used institutions’ own governing policies and bylaws as well as the law to defend scores of scholars who have been attacked for their extramural speech and threatened with administrative discipline or firing [120,121].
A move is afoot to strengthen universities’ commitment to academic freedom by encouraging them to officially adopt the Chicago Trifecta (the Kalven report, the Chicago Principles, and the Shils report). The “Restoring Academic Freedom” letter [122], which calls on universities to do so, has garnered 1700 signatures so far.
3. Don't play their game: You can’t win.
We are trained to seek compromises and solutions that bring different groups on board; we seek consensus. That is a fine approach under normal circumstances, when all agents are acting in good faith. But we must recognize that we are up against agents who are driven—knowingly or unknowingly—by an ideology whose goal is to take over the institution. Every compromise with them brings them closer to their goal [1,3,74,98,123]. Therefore, we must stand our ground.
A major advance in the spread of illiberalism has been the establishment of DEI bureaucracies in our intuitions to enforce CSJ ideology through policy [3,8,98,124-127]. It is important to understand the power of this system and to distinguish the system from the people. A DEI apparatchik can be a nice, well-meaning individual, who has been fooled by the movement’s deliberately deceptive language [1,98]; a cynical opportunist who seeks power and career advancement; or a True Believer. A DEI administrator may be completely unaware of the philosophical origins of CSJ, whose goals the DEI machine has been installed to implement. But just as a Soviet apparatchik need not have read Das Kapital to have been an agent enforcing conformity to Marxist doctrine, a DEI apparatchik need not have read the works of the critical theorists Gramsci, Derrida, Foucault, Bell, Crenshaw, and Delgado to be implementing CSJ-inspired ideology. But even participants who are naive of the movement’s history, philosophy, or ultimate goals are furthering its aims; they are still cogs in the machine. Do not be fooled by DEI administrators who may naively or deceptively deny that they are advancing CSJ ideology. They are, whether or not they know it or acknowledge it.
The power of the system—the DEI bureaucracy—and its ideological foundation make the motivations of the individual participants irrelevant. The story of Tabia Lee illustrates this point [128]. Lee—a black woman who directed a DEI program at a community college in California—questioned anti-racist and gender orthodoxy, declined to join a “socialist network,” objected to land acknowledgments and Newspeak terms such as “Latinx,” “Filipinx,” and neopronouns, and supported a campus event focused on Jewish inclusion and antisemitism. Lee describes her non-orthodox worldview as follows:
I don’t have ideological or viewpoint fidelity to anyone. I’m looking for what’s going to help people and what will help our students and how we can be better teachers and our best teaching selves. [128]
This attitude was found to be incompatible with the ideology of DEI. When Lee refused to change her worldview to comply with the orthodoxy, she was terminated from her position [128].
The establishment of the DEI bureaucracy in our institutions represented a tectonic shift from CSJ as a grass-roots movement to CSJ as an official power structure within the university equipped with a massive budget to promote its ideology [124,126,129-132].
A 2021 report by the Heritage Foundation [130], which documented the size of this new bureaucracy, identified 3,000 administrators with DEI responsibilities among the 65 universities they surveyed [124,131]. This number is in addition to the already extensive staff of Federally mandated Title VI, Title IX, and disability offices, who also perform DEI-related tasks. The new diversicrats already outnumber the mandated staffers. For example, the average university examined had 4.2 DEI personnel for every one ADA compliance administrator [124]. Given the sheer number of DEI officials and their generous salaries (one-third of chief diversity officers are paid more than $200,000 annually [132]), it is not surprising that DEI budgets are enormous; for example, in 2021, UC–Berkeley dedicated 41 million dollars to DEI [129].
The DEI bureaucracy is given official status within the university and is empowered to interfere in faculty hiring, to disseminate CSJ ideology by means of mandatory trainings, to infuse the ideology into teaching [10,13,16,25,31], and to curtail academic freedom [42,127]. Khalid and Snyder provide insight into the logic and financial incentives behind the DEI machine:
This attitude was found to be incompatible with the ideology of DEI. When Lee refused to change her worldview to comply with the orthodoxy, she was terminated from her position [128].
The establishment of the DEI bureaucracy in our institutions represented a tectonic shift from CSJ as a grass-roots movement to CSJ as an official power structure within the university equipped with a massive budget to promote its ideology [124,126,129-132].
A 2021 report by the Heritage Foundation [130], which documented the size of this new bureaucracy, identified 3,000 administrators with DEI responsibilities among the 65 universities they surveyed [124,131]. This number is in addition to the already extensive staff of Federally mandated Title VI, Title IX, and disability offices, who also perform DEI-related tasks. The new diversicrats already outnumber the mandated staffers. For example, the average university examined had 4.2 DEI personnel for every one ADA compliance administrator [124]. Given the sheer number of DEI officials and their generous salaries (one-third of chief diversity officers are paid more than $200,000 annually [132]), it is not surprising that DEI budgets are enormous; for example, in 2021, UC–Berkeley dedicated 41 million dollars to DEI [129].
The DEI bureaucracy is given official status within the university and is empowered to interfere in faculty hiring, to disseminate CSJ ideology by means of mandatory trainings, to infuse the ideology into teaching [10,13,16,25,31], and to curtail academic freedom [42,127]. Khalid and Snyder provide insight into the logic and financial incentives behind the DEI machine:
DEI Inc. is a logic, a lingo, and a set of administrative policies and practices. The logic is as follows: Education is a product, students are consumers, and campus diversity is a customer-service issue that needs to be administered from the top down. (“Chief Diversity Officers,” according to an article in Diversity Officer Magazine, “are best defined as ‘change-management specialists.’”) DEI Inc. purveys a safety-and-security model of learning that is highly attuned to harm and that conflates respect for minority students with unwavering affirmation and validation.
Lived experience, the intent–impact gap, microaggressions, trigger warnings, inclusive excellence. You know the language of DEI Inc. when you hear it. It’s a combination of management-consultant buzzwords, social justice slogans, and “therapy speak.” The standard package of DEI Inc. administrative “initiatives” should be familiar too, from antiracism trainings to bias-response teams and mandatory diversity statements for hiring and promotion. [127]
The DEI bureaucracy is a categorical enemy. Don't deceive yourself that you can work with it to accomplish good for your institution [128]. This bureaucracy is founded on ideas that are in direct opposition to the liberal enlightenment and humanism [1,3,4,42,79,99,125–128,133,134]. Their goals are not your goals; consequently, you cannot ally or compromise with them. We must, instead, focus our efforts on stripping the DEI bureaucracy of its power, ideally, ridding the institution of it completely. This will not be an easy fight, but neither is it an impossible dream. State legislatures are already taking action against DEI. At the time of this writing, 35 states have introduced bills that would restrict or ban DEI offices and staff, mandatory DEI training, diversity statements, and/or identity-based preferences for hiring and admissions [135]. Recognizing that such bills could go too far and compromise academic freedom, the Manhattan Institute has drafted model legislation that would abolish DEI bureaucracies on campuses while preserving academic freedom [136]. To date, at least one state, Texas, has enacted legislation based on the Manhattan Institute’s model [137].
Another reason not to attempt to work with the DEI bureaucracy is that CSJ ideology leaves no space for rational dialog. As explained by McWhorter [71], Pincourt [3,98], Pluckrose [1], Saad [99], and others, CSJ is not a rational or empirical worldview, but an ideology whose adherents have accepted a set of unfalsifiable tenets that may not be questioned. Thus, CSJ ideologues are not open to reasoned arguments that contradict their worldview; it is, thus, futile to argue with them. We need, instead, to reason with those of our colleagues who have not yet drunk of the Kool Aid.
Finally, since the goal of CSJ is to take over the institution, small compromises with them ultimately lead to large losses for us. Give CSJ an inch, and it will take a mile. Consider, for starters, the following example, in which the dean of the Duke Divinity School made the mistake of conceding to student activists, which led to ever-increasing demands and personal attacks on the dean herself [138]. “The chickens have come home to roost at Duke’s divinity school,” writes John Staddon. Dean Heath, the dean of the school, fully allied herself with the CSJ agenda, rolled out a variety of DEI initiatives, issued a self-flagellating editorial admitting the “structural sins” of the school, and forced non-conforming faculty to resign. Yet, despite these concessions, the demands of “marginalized groups” only grew stronger, culminating in uncivil acts, such as the disruption of the dean’s state-of-the-school address by “four dissident female students bearing bull-horns and chanting, ‘I am somebody and I won’t be stopped by nobody,’ followed by a rap, a little theatrical performance [of a rude nature].”
Staddon writes:
There is poetic justice in this incident. Despite the dean’s earnest attempts “to provide a welcoming and safe place for students,” even after she designed “a space for the work of Sacred Worth, the LGBTQIA+ student group in the Divinity School”—even after disciplining, and losing—Professor Griffiths [a non-conforming faculty], in spite all this, she has apparently not done enough! The LGBT folk want more, much more, in the form of 15 demands. “We make up an integral part of this community, and yet our needs remain deliberately unheard.”
The demands include:
“To appoint a black trans woman or gender non-conforming theologian” as well as “a tenure-track trans woman theologian” and a “tenure-track queer theologian of color, preferably a black or indigenous person.”
A dissident MIT website, the Babbling Beaver [139], illustrates the same point by a mock resignation statement by MIT’s former President Reif:
You would think giving them a Women’s and Gender Studies Program, hiring six dozen DEI deans and staffers, most of whom couldn’t pass 18.01 [MIT’s introductory math course] if their lives depended on it, and cancelling invited lecturers to appease shouting Twitter mobs would be enough,” lamented the weary lame duck. “But noooo ... The only thing I accomplished by giving in to the incessant demands was encouraging additional demands, each more strident than the last.” [140]
The statement is satire, but the concessions made by the president and the ever-increasing demands were real.
Stories of how CSJ, once it is let in the door, rapidly infiltrates the organization and eventually takes it over are too many to enumerate. We present but one example, where the process has been meticulously documented. The report, spon.sored by the organization Alumni and Donors Unite, explains how CSJ took over University of San Diego “first gradually then suddenly.”
Gradually, over the course of a decade, CSJ-DEI became sown into the university’s fabric through changes in hiring committees and curriculum. Then suddenly in 2020–2021 the administration, outside all normal channels of decision-making, initiated a hostile takeover of USD and adopted a radical woke agenda into nearly all facets of the university’s life. [141]
The devaluation of merit and intellectual honesty in the guise of social justice that we now witness will inevitably lead to the decline of our institutions, if not to their destruction [4]. A case in point is The Evergreen State University, which, in 2017, experienced a notorious CSJ uprising on campus [142]. Since then, the university has suffered a 25% drop in enrollment and has lost 45 faculty through lay-offs and attrition [143].
Learn how to recognize and take on categorical enemies [98]. Remember—it is a zero sum game.
4. Focus on truth, not partisanship. Do not fear verbal attacks.
When you take on CSJ, there is something you will need to come to terms with: you are going to be called names, and your views and beliefs are going to be distorted and misrepresented. These are standard tactics of the CSJ movement. Since the adherents of CSJ have adopted an ideological, rather than a rational, worldview, they cannot rationally defend it; so they use the only tools they have: personal attacks and strawman arguments. They will call you transphobe, racist, misogynist, alt-right, Nazi, etc., no matter what you say or do. They will use deliberate misrepresentation of your expressions to subvert and discredit them [98]. They will use the “Motte and Bailey” trick [144] to derail conversations. Learn about these tactics so that you can anticipate, recognize, and counter them [98]. As Gad Saad explains:
The name calling and accusations are locked and loaded threats, ready to be deployed against you should you dare to question the relevant progressive tenets. Most people are too afraid to be accused of being racist or misogynist, and so they cover in silence.… Don't fall prey to this silencing strategy. Be assured in your principles and stand ready to defend them with the ferocity of a honey badger. [99]
Because you will be attacked no matter what you believe, what you say, or how carefully you say it, there is no point in affirming in your interactions with CSJ ideologues that you are committed to traditional humanistic, liberal values. They don’t care. In her essay “I'm a Progressive, Please Don't Hurt Me,” Sarah Haider calls this practice of hedging “throat-clearing” and explains why it is not effective [145]. She also points out the hidden bigotry of it, that is, the implicit assumption that those on the other side of the aisle are inherently evil. Haider writes:
Before touching on any perspective that I knew to not be kosher among other Leftists, I tended to precede with some version of throat-clearing: “I’m on the left” or “I’ve voted Democrat my whole life.” I told myself that this was a distinction worth insisting on because 1) it was the truth and 2) because it helped frame the discussion properly—making clear that the argument is coming from someone who values what they value. But there was another reason too. My political identity reminders were a plea to be considered fully and charitably, to not be villainized and presumed to be motivated by “hate.” The precursor belief to this, of course, is that actual conservatives should not be taken charitably, are rightfully villainized, and really are motivated by “hate.” But I’m done sputtering indignantly about being mischaracterized as “conservative,” or going out of my way to remind the audience that I really am a good little liberal.
She goes on to explain that throat-clearing is counterproductive because: (1) it doesn’t work, you won't be spared; (2) it is a tax on energy and attention; (3) it is bad for you; and (4) it is bad for the causes you care about.
So we should stop worrying about our group loyalties and focus on our cause. Truth wears no clothes, so do not try to dress it up in partisan attire. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and move on.
It may be tempting to stay out of the fight in order to preserve friendships. It is true that some people you thought of as friends may turn against you—privately or even publicly. It has happened to us, and it hurts. But it also lets you know who your real friends are—those who stick up for you whether they agree with your views or not. And you will find new friends and allies who share your values. These relationships, forged fighting the good fight, will be enduring and empowering.
5. Do not apologize.
We cannot stress this enough. Your apology will be taken as a sign of weakness and will not absolve you—in fact, it will make matters worse. Apologies to the illiberal mob are like drops of blood in the water to a pack of sharks. Additionally, your apology can be interpreted as an admission of guilt, which can come back to haunt you in the event you need to defend yourself legally or in an administrative proceeding. The Academic Freedom Alliance advises: “If you confess to an offense you didn’t commit, or if you concede to a claim or accusation that is factually inaccurate or not truly an offense, the admission can and will be used against you.” [146] Recognize that the CSJ activists on Twitter do not care about your apology; they care about publicly flaying you in order to sow fear among other potential dissenters [147]. Someone claims to have been offended by your speech? Someone claims it caused them pain? Fine, that's their problem [148]. You know what your views are. And your friends do too. Stay on message. 
6. Build a community and a network.
Communities and networks provide moral support and there is safety in numbers. Some groups already exist. The Heterodox Academy (HxA), for example, provides a platform to organize communities (e.g., HxSTEM is a community of STEM faculty) and to connect with colleagues who are open to reasoned debate, as per the HxA statement, which each member is asked to endorse: “I support open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in research and education.” The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) also provides resources and support to those who push back on anti-humanistic policies, especially in schools, universities, and in the medical profession.
Organizations like FIRE and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) provide educational resources, opportunities to network, and—most importantly—protection, including legal representation. Join and support them. Build groups and act as a group—e.g., write an op-ed piece with a group of co-authors. Ten people are harder to cancel than one. Counter Wokecraft describes how to identify the allies among your colleagues and how to build effective resistance at your workplace [98].
Stand up for others. Next time they will do it for you. When you see a colleague being ostracized for what she said, think first, “Which parts of her message do I agree with?” not “Which parts do I disagree with?” If you agree with the main message, say so, and be charitable about imperfect expression. Way too often do we hear colleagues justifying their silence with excuses like “I agree with her in general, but she should have been more careful about how she said this or that.”
Some communities, including mathematicians and psychologists, in response to CSJ takeovers of their professional societies, have simply started new ones [149,150]. Perhaps we need more of these to send a strong message to the old societies that they need to change course. We see evidence of the effectiveness of this strategy; for example, the American Mathematical Society [151] cancelled its CSJ-dominated blog shortly after the establishment of the new Association for Mathematical Research [149], whose apolitical mission is simply to “support  mathematical research and scholarship.”
In 2022, in response to increasing ideological influence and censorship in their profession, behavioral scientists founded the Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences, dedicated to “open inquiry, civil debate, and rigorous standards” in the field [152]. It publishes the Journal of Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences, which commits to “free inquiry,” “rigorous standards,” and “intellectual exchange” [152]. Notably, its terms and conditions state that the journal will base retraction decisions strictly on the basis of the widely accepted COPE guidelines [153]; otherwise, the terms and conditions state, “We will never retract a paper in response to social media mobs, open or private letters calling for retraction, denunciation petitions, or the like....” [154]
There is even a new university—The University of Austin (UATX)—established in response to the current crisis in higher education [155]. The message on the UATX webpage—“We are building a university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth”—makes clear what void in the American academy UATX aspires to fill [156]. That the university received over $100 million in donations and over 3500 inquiries by professors from other institutions within six months of the project’s announcement, makes clear the demand [157].
The success of such new initiatives will inspire more educators and scientists to stand up and defend the key principles of science and education. And it will send a strong message to our leadership. Even if we cannot appeal to their sense of duty, the financial considerations (Go Woke, Go Broke [158]) and the effect of negative publicity of the excesses of CSJ (such as DEI loyalty oaths, “decolonizing” the curriculum, renaming everything, and Newspeak [9,23,24,139]) may provide incentives to straighten out their act.
4. Conclusion
Will we succeed? Will we stop the train before it goes over the cliff? We do not know what will happen if we fight. But we know what will happen if we don’t. The task ahead might look impossible. But remember the USSR. It looked like an unbreakable power, yet in the end it collapsed like a house of cards. The Berlin Wall looked indestructible, yet it came down overnight. Recalling his 20 years’ experience in the gay marriage debate, Jonathan Rauch told us: “I can tell you that the wall of received opinion is sturdy and impenetrable...until it isn't. And that it's the quiet people in the room who are the swing vote.... and please illegitimi non carborundum [159].”
We are not helpless. We have agency and we should not be afraid to exercise it. We should fight not just because it is the right thing to do, but because fighting brings results. If we behave as if we were living in a totalitarian society, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Afterword
A Russian proverb says, “Fear has big eyes” (у страха глаза велики), meaning that people tend to exaggerate danger. Accordingly, it may feel like resisting the mob will inevitably lead to career damage. But this is not the case; the flip side of risk is reward. In recognition of her activism, including her publication of “The Peril of Politicizing Science” [23], which “launched a national conversation among scientists and the general public,” Anna Krylov, co-author of this chapter, was awarded the inaugural Communicator of the Year Award, Sciences and Mathematics, by the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences [160]. In “Victory Lap” [161], Lee Jussim, co-editor of the book in which this article will appear, documents how as a result of his public resistance to a mob attack on a colleague falsely accused of racism, his career enjoyed a variety of benefits including additional conferences invitations, massive positive public support for his activism, national attention to his scholarship, and an appointment to a departmental chair (with commensurate increase in salary), which he was offered because he had demonstrated that he could take the heat.
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Stop saying "nO oNe iS sAyInG aNy oF tHiS!!" They are. You know they are. Dotted throughout the article are references to sources for quotes and claims. For the list of references, see: References.
Liberalism really is under attack. It's always been under attack from the religous right, but its influence has diminished over time, with society becoming increasingly secular and irreligious, or at least indifferent to religious influence. And principles like the US's First Amendment keep it, at least in theory, from breaching the threshold.
But where the religious attack is on the downswing, the attack from the illiberal left is on the upswing, and both more rapid and more successful, having infiltrated everything from government to science and even knitting clubs. And it hides behind nice-sounding words like "equity" and "diversity," people don't recognize it for what it is, and welcome it inside in a way they don't welcome religious intrusion.
This isn't about left vs right. It's about do we want a liberal society, or do we want a rampantly illiberal, or indeed anti-liberal society?
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iruludavare · 6 months
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{ ooc. ALSO REAL QUICK I will just say
@ any blogs with scientist muses in biology or genetics areas
If there's ever something you're not sure how it works or need the sparknotes versions of a concept without trudging through articles (or want to try and adapt to fit a fantasy setting while being believable-ish), you're always free to pop into my dms or discord and ask me! My phd is in biomedical science (mainly genetics and biotechnology) and I've been taking care of cells for like over 5 years every damn day. Cell culture?? Gene editing?? Cloning?? Functional assays? Genes, protein and RNA?? Viruses and bacteria?? That's my bread and butter }
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