A list of keywords that can now get a National Science Foundation grant pulled. (This is crazy.)

[highplainsdem]

Found this thanks to a quote-post on Bluesky from George Conway:

At some point we’re gonna see them do Boolean searches to the effect of

(activist OR advocate) AND NOT Nazi

— George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-02-04T01:53:08.194Z

What he's calling attention to is a thread from USC professor Darby Saxbe, who posted on both Bluesky and Twitter.

Bluesky thread starts here:

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

— Darby Saxbe (@darbysaxbe.bsky.social) 2025-02-04T01:26:32.536Z

Text with the screenshots she posted (which I can get from Twitter):

Darby Saxbe
‪@darbysaxbe.bsky.social‬

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.














Decision tree that has been sent to Program Officers at NSF





These keywords could show up in the text of ANY grant involving human participants. If you say you're going to study men and women, you get flagged. If you say you're going to control for socioeconomic status - totally standard practice - you get flagged. Disability? Flagged.


The word "systemic" is on the banned list, so if I study systemic inflammation & health, flagged. If I study political science, flagged. If I study trauma, flagged. Keep in mind that the largest mental health provider in the country is the Veteran's Administration, but we can't study trauma now?


If I study anxiety via threat-biased attention, the word "biased" gets me flagged. You can't design a study of humans without using at least one of the terms on the banned list, which means that biomedical, brain, social science research is now on ice in the USA

[sakabatou]

1. Writes a paper on the blood-brain barrier. Gets flagged.

[biophile]

2. So, ...everything.

As mentioned, virtually every study will be flagged

[electric_blue68]

3. Geeeeebzzzz! Crazy-A stuff!!! Screwing up Genuine Science, Research etc!

🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Notice 'male' and 'men' aren't on the list.

[SheltieLover]

5. Yes, I noticed.

[haele]

6. Heck, some of those words deal with studies of anomalies in physics...

And chemistry. Or finance. Systemic, Barriers, inclusive, exclusive, equitable, polarization (that really messes with optical or electro-magnetic studies), bias...
I use these words in systems engineering. One would think that the techo "geniuses" in DOGE understand context.

Idiots.

[highplainsdem]

7. They don't care about science. Their main interests are fascist control and censorship.

[kyburbonkid]

8. Nutty to the bone.

This is one of the stupidest most moronic assults on science I've seen. It's like the culture war carried over into research proposal writing. All I csn think about is Sharpie / huricane idiocy.