Creating a culture of fear

There's a frightening article in the New York Times (free registration blah blah blah) today about scientists who study AIDS and other STDs being warned to avoid certain "key words" in their grant proposals to avoid "unusual scrutiny by the Department of Health and Human Services or by members of Congress".

Some excerpts:

The scientists, who spoke on condition they not be identified, say they have been advised they can avoid unfavorable attention by keeping certain "key words" out of their applications for grants from the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those words include "sex workers," "men who sleep with men," "anal sex" and "needle exchange," the scientists said...

... an official at the National Institutes of Health, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said project officers at the agency, the people who deal with grant applicants and recipients, were telling researchers at meetings and in telephone conversations to avoid so-called sensitive language. But the official added, "You won't find any paper or anything that advises people to do this."

The official said researchers had long been advised to avoid phrases that might mark their work as controversial. But the degree of scrutiny under the Bush administration was "much worse and more intense," the official said.

This article is as deeply frightening to me as any of the other recent examples of the climate of groupthink and hatred we've seen.

The insidious thing about creating this kind of climate of fear is that it's self-perpetuating and self-running. Once enough people have been frightened, once enough scientists have been grilled by grant boards, and once a few grants have been turned down for mysterious reasons, the community will become much more repressive than any outside agency could be. Community censors will steer people away from even doing research in these areas: "Come on, you don't want to screw things up for everyone, do you? They might pull the funding for our entire field! Couldn't you do a project on something less controversial?"

For more on the climate of fear, here's a transcript of Tim Robbins' excellent speech at the National Press Club.

Then again, there's always this treatment of the issue.