Scietific societies are failing the moment by scrubbing diversity from their websites without explanation

I called last week, “The worst week for science ever.” Of course, it was just the worst week so far.

This morning, I saw reports of two large scientific societies – The American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) – editing their websites to remove or reduce mentions of diversity. 

“The ACS has deleted its website on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Respect.” – David K. Smith

“The main DEI page from AGU has been modified to take diversity out of the title.” – Celeste Labedz

This is on top of the American Society for Microbiology removing a bunch of pages relating to diversity and replacing them with “Under review.” 

Not all societies are taking this road. The Society for the Study of Evolution released an message today, for instance, said the society still supported “community building in an equitable and globally inclusive manner.” Near the end, it concludes, “we note that the attacks on historically excluded members of society are reprehensible. We encourage our membership to be unwavering in your support of the most vulnerable within the community.”

My hypothesis about these is that somewhere in these big societies, there is one or more federal grants supporting some program or another.  They had lawyers review the executive orders, who suggested that they change the website to avoid getting sued. A lawsuit exposes the entire society to financial risk, or maybe even ruin.

I appreciate that scientific societies want to continue to exist and are sensitive to risk.

But I am deeply disappointed that there seems to be no communication about these changes. Words and phrases and entire pages are disappearing with no warning or notice. That’s not transparency and it sure as anything isn’t leadership.