And it's an interesting time to think about this problem.
Because we're about to see how all the structures that were put in place to enforce those ethics react to being told they must instead do keyword searches for forbidden phrases set by fiat.
If you're the kind of administrator who does boring work of making sure all professors in your biomedical campus submitted IRB paperwork, are you also going to be the person who makes sure their papers don't contain the word "Woman" or "Historically"?
It is, and I do think itβs as subtle as the conversation on any other checks-and-balances mechanism in government these days: we can weaponise both painstakingly following the rules, or weaponizing the fact that rule enforcement is a human process that people ignore by convention.
Because we're about to see how all the structures that were put in place to enforce those ethics react to being told they must instead do keyword searches for forbidden phrases set by fiat.
If you're the kind of administrator who does boring work of making sure all professors in your biomedical campus submitted IRB paperwork, are you also going to be the person who makes sure their papers don't contain the word "Woman" or "Historically"?