President Donald Trump’s administration reportedly threatened to halt grants for scientific studies that mention words like “female,” “women,” “systemic” or “trauma.”

Darby Saxbe, a professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California, shared a leaked list of words that could cause scientific studies to be flagged by the National Science Foundation.

“This is a crisis for academic freedom & science,” Saxbe wrote. “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?” she continued. ” 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 […]