CDC has advised avoiding seven words in budget requests, including evidence-based and science-based

As social scientists who treasure the concept of academic freedom, we were taken aback when we heard that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) “had banned seven words.” The seven words: entitlement, diversity, vulnerable, transgender, science-based, evidence-based, and fetus. Upon further examination, it turns out that it is not quite that simple. CDC personnel were not told that they could not use the words. Rather, it appears that they were told to avoid using those words in budget requests that would go through the Trump Administration before being included in the budget document that would be sent to Congress.Whether the concern was the reaction of the administration, the Congress, or both is unclear, but there certainly was concern on the part of some CDC personnel that the use of these words might result in an additional reduction in funding for an agency the administration has already targeted for budget cuts.When a situation like that would arise when we were growing up, someone would roll their eyes and say, “That’s no way to run a railroad.” We can’t say it much better than that. It is beyond our imagination that someone is going to run a word-search of a document and then throw the budgetary proposal out because one of those seven words was used too many times. That’s no way to run a railroad.