Army Scraps Gender-Neutral Standards Pushed by Discredited Social Engineers

If structural engineers design a bridge that collapses, they figure out what went wrong before they replace the bridge. When a military social experiment collapses, “social engineers” and “experts” who designed the experiment never admit their mistakes.

Misguided social policies are rarely reversed, but this just happened when the U.S. Army reversed course on the much-anticipated Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT). Shortly after the Obama Administration opened combat arms units to women in 2015, officials decided to create the ACFT as a replacement for the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT).

The ACFT was supposed to have “gender-neutral” standards identical for men and women, but the structure of gender equality has crumbled under the weight of reality. Due to persistently high failure rates, primarily among female trainees, the Army has decided to scrap the concept of gender-neutrality in the ACFT.

Instead, exercise requirements and test scores will be gender-normed and different for men and women, with some standards lower than before. This matters because the entire experiment with women in combat has been built on egalitarian theories that did not survive contact with reality.

As explained in this detailed CMR Policy Analysis, the Army’s stunning reversal belied numerous promises from social engineers and “experts” advising the Pentagon on what should be done to gender integrate direct ground combat units such as the infantry:

Combat Fitness Test Fiasco Forces Army to Drop Gender-Neutral Standards

In 2015, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter ignored the request of Marine Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford that some infantry and Special Operations Forces units remain all-male. Carter ordered all combat positions to be opened for women, vigorously denying that they would receive special treatment in training.

In subsequent weeks, all of the military services repeatedly promised that if women were assigned to the infantry, armor, artillery, and Special Operations Forces, “Concerns about possible reductions in combat effectiveness can be addressed by “effective leadership” and “gender-neutral standards.”

Now the Army has given up on gender-neutral standards, due to high failure rates among women during three years of “diagnostic” trials. The tougher six-event combat fitness test will be gender-normed like the three-event physical fitness test that the Army used for 40 years.

This did not happen because of solid research that the Marine Corps produced in 2015, but because of recent data produced by RAND, a Defense Department contractor that has long supported progressive policies that are deeply embedded in today’s woke military.

The Army’s reluctant recognition that gender-neutral standards do not work raises another question: With “diversity” assigned priority in today’s woke military, why would gender-neutral standards work any better in advanced training for the infantry or Special Operations Forces?

https://www.cmrlink.org/issues/full/army-scraps-genderneutral-standards-pushed-by-discredited-social-engineers

Lessons Learned

Unlike structural and other engineers who must respect rules of physics in the real world, social engineers constantly ignore the science of human biology and behavior.  Members of Congress should stop trusting social engineers whose claims repeatedly have been proven wrong.

There should be a long-overdue, in-depth review of all women in combat policies that are based on discredited social theories and experiments.  Instead of receiving testimony only from Pentagon officials who defend their own policies, congressional hearings should invite independent witnesses who are prepared to challenge the unsupported beliefs of diversity advisors and social engineers who are responsible for mistakes like the ACFT fiasco.

Reality compelled the Army to gender-norm the ACFT, and the Army’s stunning reversal set a new precedent likely to be extended to all combat arms communities, including Special Operations Forces, under the SOCOM Diversity & Inclusion Strategic Plan.

The next President and Congress should defund and abolish all Pentagon offices and mandates established to promote divisive percentage-based demographic quotas, not meritocracy and non-discrimination.

Responsible oversight requires principled steps to restore high, uncompromised standards and sound priorities.  Academic “experts” and un-credible advocates who are blinded by ideology should not be making policy for the only military we have.

Pseudo-science is the word for it if they're going to apply any term for it. I think that's true of all social sciences, including economics.

Lummy wrote:Pseudo-science is the word for it if they're going to apply any term for it. I think that's true of all social sciences, including economics.

Don't know about econ. It has produced some brilliant studies, Sowell, Friedman, Williams. It is unfortunate that it is overrun with buffoons such as Keynes, Reich, Krugman, and AOC

JMWinPR wrote:

Lummy wrote:Pseudo-science is the word for it if they're going to apply any term to it. I think that's true of all social sciences, including economics.

Don't know about econ. It has produced some brilliant studies, Sowell, Friedman, Williams. It is unfortunate that it is overrun with buffoons such as Keynes, Reich, Krugman, and AOC

Fuck all that. The answer is NO. Economics, like all social sciences, is just yarn spinning by kids trained in obfuscating everything like they know what they're talking about and you don't. Just ask their worthless professors. If there is a thread of honor among them, they will tell you that's pretty much exactly right. Throw all that shit out the window with the entire Bidette family and grab a gun.

Chinese communists absolutely do not care what you think, and neither do I. That's what I think.

You are either an American prepared to defend your country to your death, or you can get the fuck out.

Stop treating chicoms like they aren't going to eat you because they are.

Lummy wrote:

JMWinPR wrote:

Lummy wrote:Pseudo-science is the word for it if they're going to apply any term to it. I think that's true of all social sciences, including economics.

Don't know about econ. It has produced some brilliant studies, Sowell, Friedman, Williams. It is unfortunate that it is overrun with buffoons such as Keynes, Reich, Krugman, and AOC

Fuck all that. The answer is NO. Economics, like all social sciences, is just yarn spinning by  kids trained in to obfuscate everything like they know what they're talking about. Just ask their worthless professors. If there is a thread of honor among them, they will tell you that's pretty much exactly right. Throw all that shit out the window with the entire Bidette family and grab a gun.

Chinese communists absolutely do not care what you think, and neither do I. That's what I think.

You are either an American prepared to defend your country to your death, or you can get the fuck out.

Dude, WTF are you rambling about? Me thinks you've been using a standard duty bong continuously. A standard bong allows toxins to build in the stem. When overheated these toxins are drawn directly into the brain. There they convert neurons into morons. Sometimes the results are not reversible. Even so, please invest in a continuous duty bong, to mitigate any further loss of cognitive faculties

FWIW I would take any of the folks I mentioned opinions over those of Hanson, Sagan, Fauci, and Dr Greta, etc. I realize you think these folks are the epitome of real science, but have it your way, B.K.

JMWinPR wrote:

Lummy wrote:Pseudo-science is the word for it if they're going to apply any term for it. I think that's true of all social sciences, including economics.

Don't know about econ. It has produced some brilliant studies, Sowell, Friedman, Williams. It is unfortunate that it is overrun with buffoons such as Keynes, Reich, Krugman, and AOC

Okay. It would be valuable if someone like you reviewed the studies and flagged them according to your sense of their validity.

JMWinPR wrote:

Lummy wrote:Pseudo-science is the word for it if they're going to apply any term for it. I think that's true of all social sciences, including economics.

Don't know about econ. It has produced some brilliant studies, Sowell, Friedman, Williams. It is unfortunate that it is overrun with buffoons such as Keynes, Reich, Krugman, and AOC

Economics is a valid subject. If the government does X, then Y results. Fiat money with paper notes, leads to good times for a short while, than an horrific crash.

Government is objectively the WORST way to spend money - spending other people's money for things for other people. As Milton Friedman illustrated, it's the way to spend, where neither quality nor economy matter. Which is why government projects are always boondoggles.

Economics, VALID economics, can demonstrate that.

Trouble is, the lack of a moral base in the academic world. Rather than tell uncomfortable truths, the Elites find greater money and attention if they TWIST things to tell the Political Class what it wants to HEAR. Magic-Money-Tree theory...MMT Keynes, a century ago. They were much more in tune with what the leadership class wanted to hear, than the Laffer Curve - which has been demonstrated correct, the three times it's been applied.

That the grey, imprecise science has been so corrupted, does not discredit the science or eliminate its need. It only speaks of our moral vacuum in the upper classes.

Take "Inflation." Classical economics tells students what it is: Inflating the supply of currency, which causes EACH unit to have less value, manifested by rising prices.

The dishonest "economists" blame it on high wages, or low interest rates (artificially controlled, not market-discovered) or other red-herrings. IGNORING the REAL cause, even to changing the definition of the term.

Price rises are not inflation. Inflation results in price rises, but so does crop failure, war, social upheaval...any shortage.

Economists SHOULD be clarifying this. But since they're advocates of the failed economic system Marxism...they will not.