Message at march: Science isn’t fiction
In a few months, Ariana Clealand will begin pursuing her childhood dream of building rockets and satellites.
But right now, she said, it’s a strange time to be an aspiring scientist.
The scientific community
is battling widespread distrust, basic research could face steep cuts and “alternative facts” have emerged as a new opponent to empirical truth.
“To know that we live in a society where we are blurring the line between fact and fiction … it’s a bit insane, really,” said Clealand, an 18-year-old senior at Dublin Jerome High School and soon-to-be aerospace engineering student at Ohio State University.
On Saturday, Clealand was one of perhaps thousands who gathered Downtown to promote the importance of science in policymaking and everyday life, and to call for its continued support.
“It’s hard to ignore something like this,” she said. “It’s really inspiring.”
The Columbus March for Science, coinciding with Earth Day, was one of more than 600 rallies held worldwide, from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to Brazil, Japan and the Antarctic.
In Ohio, veterinarians, ecologists, farmers, family physicians and retired professors gathered outside the Statehouse, where they were joined by other demonstrators dressed in white lab coats, bright orange NASA spacesuits and more than one dinosaur.
“Do you think everyone in this crowd is a Ph.D. scientist? No. They’re our neighbors and our friends, our teachers and doctors,” said Jenna Antonucci, an OSU microbiologist and march organizer. “People care.”
Some protesters held signs urging political action on climate change and health care. Others reminded that beloved smartphones, Lake Erie fishing and freedom from diseases such as polio all are products of publicly funded research.
“It’s all interconnected,” said Katey Borland, a comparative studies professor at Ohio State.
“In their daily life, I don’t think people think about how much science impacts them,” said Dr. Anita Somani, an OB-GYN at Comprehensive Women’s Care.
March for Science rallies across the United States were billed as nonpartisan, but scientists and supporters expressed deep concern about a political rejection of fact-based research.
Many cited the appointment of climate skeptics to cabinet positions and sharp budget cuts to scientific agencies as evidence of a diminished role for established science in the Trump administration.
“For a long time, people have thought of scientists as elites and eggheads too smart for their own good. Scientists are not as empowered Dr. Beth Liston, of Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, speaks to the March for Science crowd gathered at the Statehouse. The Columbus march was one of 600 similar gatherings around the world that coincided with Earth Day on Saturday.
as people think,” Borland said. “They need to be given respect and support.”
In a statement Saturday, President Donald Trump said his administration is committed to advancing research and that “we should remember that rigorous science depends not on ideology, but on a spirit of honest inquiry and robust debate.”
Although nearly all scientists and most countries
say humans are responsible for global warming and its consequences, Trump, his cabinet and many Republicans and Republican supporters say the science is slanted.
On Saturday, however, “There is no planet B” was a popular slogan for handmade signs held in the march.
“Suppressing science won’t stop climate change from happening, but it will
keep us from being prepared,” said Dr. Andrew Schamess, who practices internal medicine at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center.
Leading up to the march, the scientific community remained divided over whether the rallies would display the kind of advocacy usually avoided by scientists, whose work depends on objectivity.
But participants insisted that Saturday’s event was political, not partisan.
“Politicians politicize,” said Dr. Moses Ijaz, a psychiatrist at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital. “We don’t polarize. We’re here to educate … and we have evidence, research and data.”
Retired middle-school science teacher John Seryak showed up to the Columbus march wearing a decade-old lab coat signed by his last class at Revere Local Schools in northeast Ohio.
These days, Seryak said, he worries more about future schoolchildren than his former students.
“If we change course and our young people don’t receive science education, we are going to go backward,” he said. “Our whole culture is going to suffer.”
After listening to speakers at the Statehouse, marchers made their way along High Street to the Columbus Commons, where science demonstrations were held.
Wearing a pink “brain” hat knit by her grandma, 11-year-old Charlotte Larsen showed off a handmade sign reading “There Is no ‘H’ate in Science.”
“If there was no science, we would still think Earth was flat and we were the center of the solar system,” she said. “Without science, there’d be no facts.”