Nature endorses DEI big time

Well, I don’t mean the entire journal Nature, but one strongly-written op-ed (Nature 639, 548), though I have absolutely no doubt that Nature adheres to its view. And the view of the author, bioethicist Arthur Caplan, is that despite Trump’s threats to withhold federal money from universities that maintain DEI programs, we have to push back hard on this initiative, for DEI is simply wonderful: a boon to science and society.  All of that, of course, is debatable, and, sadly, Caplan makes a number of assertions about DEI without a single reference to support them.

Click below to read his short piece (I hope you can see it):

Caplan strives to be clever by beginning with the hypothesis that had social media and grants been around in the days of Galileo, he would have been censored and lost government money. I laughed so loud! (Not!) At any rate, here’s Caplan’s view of what we must do with DEI, which he never defines:

More scholars must push back. The idea that scientists can keep doing what they know must be done to incorporate DEI into their work while adjusting terms to fit the demands of bigoted autocrats bent on hobbling science is to whistle loudly past a graveyard of avoidable error, continued financial cuts and censorship. That diversity matters to science is a truth — albeit one that has only recently begun to be accepted and applied.

But the “DEI” that many universities use, and which many of us object to, is much more than the statement, “All people, regardless of identity, religion, sex, able-ness, and so on, will be treated equally.” Who could object to that?

No, the DEI that Trump is trying to weed out is the ideological form of DEI. It is the assumption that there are different truths for different groups that are more or less equal; that adjudicating these truths is done by seeing which groups are more powerful; that there is a certain “progressive” ideology around sex and gender; that society (and science) is to be framed as a battle between the oppressor and the oppressed; and that “equity”–the representation of identity groups in proportion to their occurrence in society–is a goal we all must strive for, because inequities surely reflect ongoing bigotry.

Yet Caplan conceives of “DEI” in other ways, some of them bing okay. Here are two:

First, clinical and social-science research requires diversity to be valid. Genomics has established that different groups of people respond differently to drugs and vaccines. The individuals recruited to and participating in clinical trials must be representative of those who will use those treatments in real life. Attention to DEI allows researchers to identify differences in safety and efficacy between groups early on in the testing process.

Likewise, social scientists are well aware that understanding behaviour and implementing desired change requires studying populations besides white, Western, university psychology students — the group from which psychologists have mainly sourced participants for decades. This is the case whether researchers seek to overcome vaccine hesitancy, prevent self-harm, improve reading skills, change recycling habits or prevent obesity.

And I’m prepared to believe this one, though again no references are given, as it makes some sense and there are arguments that support it (one here). But the evidence seems thin:

 . . . .  diversity in the scientific workforce brings a multitude of ideas, approaches, perspectives and values to the table. Thinking outside the box matters in tackling all manner of problems in artificial intelligence, engineering, mathematics, economics and astrophysics. Diverse minds can find connections and patterns, provide perspectives and draw conclusions that might not occur to a group of less-inclusive researchers.

To me, the above aren’t problematic, but we all know that the “D” in “DEI” refers to race or sex, not viewpoint or studying different groups in anthropology. And then Caplan treats on more problematic ground:

Second, research has shown again and again that DEI matters when it comes to providing health care. A diverse and representative health-care workforce improves people’s satisfaction with the care that they receive and health outcomes, especially for individuals of colour. When Black people are treated by Black doctors, they are more likely to receive the preventive care that they need and more likely to agree to recommended interventions, such as blood tests and flu shots.

There are no references given here, and I’d like to see them. Remember the widely-publicized report that black newborns have higher mortality when treated by black doctors than white ones? It was attributed to racism, but later discovered that the effect was entirely due to white doctors having to deal with infants of the lowest birth weights, and hence having higher mortalities (see here and here).  People are simply too quick to impute all disparities to racism, and this is another of the big weaknesses of DEI.

Finally, there are two other contestable reasons why Caplan sees DEI as admirable:

Second, research has shown again and again that DEI matters when it comes to providing health care. A diverse and representative health-care workforce improves people’s satisfaction with the care that they receive and health outcomes, especially for individuals of colour. When Black people are treated by Black doctors, they are more likely to receive the preventive care that they need and more likely to agree to recommended interventions, such as blood tests and flu shots.

A DEI-oriented workforce improves learning and outcomes for all. Many veterans seeking mental-health care or rehabilitation after trauma specifically request a psychologist who is a veteran. Attention to DEI helps to ensure that health-care providers’ opportunities to learn are not missed, and that problems facing rural communities, minority ethnic groups and those with rare diseases are not neglected.

Again, I’d like to see the references. Maybe there is some literature out that that I just don’t know about.  But I will say this: satisfaction with health care is one thing, but health outcomes are another. Does DEI improve healthcare, degrade it because it erodes merit, or have no effect? But really, these two scenarios have little to do with DEI save that people like to be treated by people who look like them. That’s a form of tribalism, and isn’t so bad; but the ultimate arbiter of DEI here is whether choosing doctors or psychologists by identity rather than merit gives better outcomes than prioritizing (or at least giving heavy weight) to identity. After all, there are plenty of psychologists who are already veterans, so is there a need to prioritize “veteran status” when admitting someone to training as a psychologist?

In the end, Caplan goes back to DEI as it is actually used in universities: the version that derives from postmodernism with all the new trimmings. He bawls that we have to support it, implying that now that Trump is in power, it’s especially important to defend DEI:

Scientists, their funders and their professional societies must follow in Galileo’s perhaps apocryphal footsteps and speak up about DEI’s crucial role in science. They must urge patient-advocacy organizations, environmentalists and other citizen groups to declare that they don’t want their or their children’s health and well-being jeopardized by the bad science that a lack of attention to DEI will produce. They must emphasize DEI in their publications whenever the denial of its relevance to a scientific issue is demanded by political inquisitors.

These are dangerous times. Scientists globally must stand together for sound science and resist bigotry, bias and hate. If science is to honour one of its core values — a commitment to the truth wherever it might lead — scientists must stand up when DEI matters. Galileo’s story should remind us all: the only way forward is speaking truth to power.

Back to Galileo again!  I stand for good science and against bigotry, bias, and unwarranted hate. But when does DEI matter? Show me some cases and some data, and I’ll decide whether or not to stand up. To me, the only kind of DEI I now support at the university level is the principle that “all people must be treated equally despite their immutable identities.”