Scientists celebrated Earth Day by marching in support of science. The New York Times reports:
Thousands of scientists and their supporters, feeling increasingly threatened by the policies of President Trump, gathered in Washington on Saturday under rainy skies for what they called the March for Science, abandoning a tradition of keeping the sciences out of politics and calling on the public to stand up for scientific enterprise.
Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician who helped expose lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., and who addressed a rally before the march, called the protest the beginning of a movement to ensure that governments do not dismiss or deny science.
“If we want to prevent future Flints, we need to embrace what we’ve learned and how far we’ve come in terms of science and technology,” Dr. Hanna-Attisha said in an interview…
Its organizers were motivated by Mr. Trump, who as a presidential candidate disparaged climate change as a hoax and cast suspicions on the safety of vaccines.
Their resolve deepened, they said, when the president appointed cabinet members who seemed hostile to the sciences. He also proposed a budget with severe cuts for agencies like the National Institutes of Health — which would lose 18 percent of its funding in his blueprint — and the Environmental Protection Agency, which faces a 31 percent budget cut and the elimination of a quarter of the agency’s 15,000 employees.
Bill Nye spoke at one rally in Washington, D.C.:
“Without scientifically literate citizens, the United States — any country, in fact — cannot compete on the world stage,” Bill Nye the Science Guy told a cheering crowd at the March for Science in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. “Yet today we have a great many lawmakers — not just here, but around the world — deliberately ignoring and actively suppressing science. Their inclination is misguided, and in no one’s best interest.”
Nye touted the ways scientific discoveries have improved global quality of life, arguing that science is not merely “purview of a different, or special, type of citizen.” “Our numbers here today show the world that science is for all,” he said, and government must come to recognize that “science serves every one of us.”
I am happy to see them protesting, but it sure is pathetic that it is necessary to protest in support of science. The importance of science should be accepted by anyone elected to the presidency in the 21st century.