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In our recently submitted grants we had to change “traumatic brain injury” to “concussive brain injury” and “male and female mice” to “male and non-male mice” because traumatic and female are now verboten words that can get our grants killed. It’s insanity.
What is the source for this list? What things does this ban apply to?
Many of those words are included on this USDA list of banned words from late March. The list also includes many more.
https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/usda-leaked-memo-bans-110-terms-from-agreements/
I like this one since it's straight from the horse's mouth. As expected it is less blatantly horrible. No doubt the other words are indeed also tabooed, but it doesn't surprise me that one's like "female" are secretly rather than explicitly forbidden.
There is an overlap with this New York Times Article ( archive )
It seems a list compiled by observing the words in repealed grants