As a former researcher I am not surprised to see another nation capitalizing on the counter-productive politicization of US science.
I used to be a researcher and writing proposals suddenly started taking up much more time around 2010 to 2013 because each grant became much smaller. Each grant also became more specific in what science you were expected to produce, which essentially made us all contractors for NSF plus DOE and winning a grant was sometimes more about politics than producing excellent scholarship. This pushed a lot of great scientists out of the field.
After I left research radical leftists started a more expansive politicized attack on science that is further politisizing who gets tenure or grants essential to making scientific progress.
- Biology as a subject is the most affected right now [1], because biology shows that there are biological differences that contribute to individuals choices in a way that invalidates the univariant equity doctrine political explanations. Women on average does are as capable as men in the sciences, but they differences in choices increase the more equal the societies are.
- Science as a competence hierarchy is under attack by the equity initiatives [2], making it so that the most important factors for getting grants and tenure is often not competence.
The fact is unfortunately that these programs have been shown to not increase the production of great science [3]. Moreover, these efforts further demoralize and alienate scientists.
We should at this point not be under any doubt that unless we defeat the politicization of science the US will not remain competitive. We should ask ourselves if we want to be equal on a sinking ship or make life better by allowing everyone to compete as individuals regardless of which identity you think they belong to.
[1] https://quillette.com/2018/10/18/trans-activists-campaign-ag...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/when-wil...
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/when-wil...