Scientists march around the world to get heard
The first March for Science organised across several US cities and around the world came under the radar of media organisations last week. Trump’s first budget, while declared dead on arrival in Congress, nonetheless starkly reflected his priorities. Along with cuts to environmental and climate science, he proposed to slash 18.3 per cent, or about $5.8 billion [Dh21.3 billion], from the National Institutes of Health budget for fiscal 2018. That would send a wave of disruption through biomedical research efforts across the country and around the world,” the paper said.
The Cleveland, meanwhile, examined the circumstances that led to a clarion call for such a march. “Science is a fact of life. You use it when you turn on the water, start your car or check your emails on your smartphone, but that doesn’t mean that science gets much respect... Should scientists don their lab coats [and bring some scientific games and exhibits] and take to the streets? That lack of respect seems to come directly from the top. President Donald Trump has questioned climate change, and turned his back on protecting the environment and on alternative fuels. And he doesn’t yet have a science adviser to counsel him on science and technology. It’s a role every president has filled since President Dwight D. Eisenhower officially appointed M.I.T. President James R. Killian as his first Special Assistant for Science and Technology in 1957. President Richard Nixon is the only president who left the position vacant, and then only after his two science advisers resigned, one by one,” the news outlet said.
The New York Times, however, struck a dissenting note and called the initiative “a terrible idea”. “Among scientists, understandably, there is growing fear that fact-based decision making is losing its seat at the policy-making table. There’s also overwhelming frustration with the politicisation of science by climate change sceptics and others who see it as threatening to their interests or beliefs. But trying to recreate the pointedly political Women’s March will serve only to reinforce the narrative from sceptical conservatives that scientists are an interest group and politicise their data, research and findings for their own ends. A march by scientists, while well intentioned, will serve only to trivialise and politicise the science we care so much about, turn scientists into another group caught up in the culture wars and further drive the wedge between scientists and a certain segment of the American electorate.”