From Truth to Therapy: How the Progressive Left Gutted the Human Sciences, and Why STEM is Next, By Professor X

Bo Winegard's lament (see below) in is not hyperbole; it is autopsy. A flagship journal now demands "citation diversity statements" that function as racial, gender, and geographic quotas for footnotes, an intersectional socialism of scholarship where merit is dethroned and victimhood crowned. "Every attempt has been made to reference relevant research in a manner that is equitable…" translates bluntly: cite fewer white men, or else. This is not a parody of wokeness; it is the new orthodoxy, and it has already hollowed out the human sciences. Psychology, sociology, anthropology, once devoted to understanding Homo sapiens, now indict him, provided he is pale, male, and Western. The same ideological contagion that began in humanities seminars is now metastasising into STEM. If we do not cauterise it, the hard sciences will follow the soft ones into therapeutic irrelevance.

The infection began in the humanities, feminism, postcolonialism, critical race theory, where truth was never the point; deconstruction was. By the 1990s it had leapt species: from English departments to anthropology, then social psychology, then every corner of the human sciences. The telos flipped overnight. No longer explain human behaviour; exonerate protected groups and condemn the rest.

Psychology now treats implicit-bias studies as gospel, not hypotheses. The APA's 2021 apology for "upholding white supremacy" reads like a Maoist self-criticism session; 500 hours of meetings to pledge "antiracist" science and "indigenous healing."

Sociology explains every disparity with "structural oppression," even when the data scream selection effects or cultural variance.

Anthropology abandoned cross-cultural comparison for moral relativism and advocacy.

Taboo topics, sex differences, race differences, heritability, coil in the corner like unexploded ordnance. The only permissible cause of inequality is systemic injustice. All else is heresy. Nature Human Behaviour made it official in 2022: papers that "stigmatise" groups, however true, may be rejected because "potential harms…outweigh the benefit of publication." Translation: some facts are too dangerous to print.

The result? A generation of scholars trained to cite ideology, not evidence. Curious minds now scour Substack and arXiv preprints for what journals won't touch. The human sciences have become HR departments with footnotes.

The soft fields fell because reality clashes with progressive metaphysics, namely, the axiom that all groups are equal in every socially valued trait. When data refuse to comply, you have two choices: abandon the axiom or abandon the data. Progressives chose the latter. STEM has resisted longer because physics, chemistry, and engineering are harder to bully; bridges fall when equations lie. But the siege engines are already at the gates.

1. Citation Quotas Invade the Hard Sciences

Nature Reviews Physics (2023) and ACS Nano (2024) now urge "diverse citation practices." IEEE's diversity statement demands "equitable representation" on editorial boards. The NIH's $300 million "FIRST" program ties funding to faculty DEI plans. Merit is being algorithmically diluted.

2. "Decolonising" Maths and Physics

Cambridge's "Decolonise Science" working group insists Newton's Principia is "Eurocentric." MIT's 2025 curriculum review flags "problematic" examples that "centre white male perspectives." The American Physical Society now hosts panels on "queering quantum mechanics." When equations are branded colonial, rigour itself becomes suspect.

3. Safetyism Trumps Discovery

Google's 2021 firing of Timnit Gebru for a paper on AI bias set the template. A 2024 Lancet editorial warned that climate models showing differential regional impacts could "stigmatise" the Global South and should be "contextualized." NASA's 2025 DEI strategic plan prioritises "psychological safety" in peer review. Translation: don't offend, even if the data do.

4. Replication Crisis + Identity Politics = Lysenko 2.0

Psychology's replication rate hovers at ~40%. Add mandatory "antiracist" framing, and inconvenient null results vanish. A 2024 meta-analysis on sex differences in spatial rotation was retracted, not for fraud, but for "failure to adequately address systemic factors." When replication meets repression, science dies.

The Mechanism: Capture, Cowardice, Cash

Three forces drive the rot:

1.Institutional Capture – DEI bureaucracies now outnumber tenure-track faculty in many universities. They control grants, promotions, and curriculum.

2.Cowardice – Academics are risk-averse; dissent means social death. A 2023 survey found 62% of STEM faculty self-censor on controversial topics.

3.Cash – Federal agencies (NSF, NIH, DoE) tie billions to DEI compliance. A single "diversity statement" can swing a $10 million grant.

The progressive vision is not anti-science; it is post-science. Truth yields to "lived experience," equations to "epistemic justice." The APA's "indigenous healing" is the model: folk wisdom elevated, double-blind trials optional. When STEM falls, we get bridges designed by feelings, reactors run on hope, and climate models that prioritise equity over thermodynamics.

Pockets of sanity remain. Florida's 2023 ban on DEI in public universities cut administrative bloat by 15%. Texas's SB 17 (2024) defunded campus DEI offices; applications from top talent rose 8%. Hungary's 2018 expulsion of gender studies preserved its technical universities' global rankings. Markets punish nonsense: SpaceX launches, Blue Origin stalls, physics doesn't care about pronouns.

1.Defund the DEI Complex – Zero out federal diversity mandates.

2.Restore Merit – Blind review for grants and publications; abolish identity-based hiring quotas.

3.Protect Dissent – Academic freedom statutes with teeth (Chicago Statement + enforcement).

4.Fork the System – New journals (OpenPsych, Quillette Academic) and universities (University of Austin) bypass captured institutions.

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky outlasted the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Truth is stubborn. But it needs defenders. The human sciences are already in ruins; STEM is the last citadel. If we let the therapeutic Left breach its walls, we won't just lose knowledge, we'll lose the Western civilisation that knowledge built.

https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/progressives-have-destroyed-the-human