March of the mad scientists
Protesters cite growing anti-science bias
The collective IQ at the Ohio Statehouse — and in the nation’s capital — will soar astronomically today as thousands of scientists participate in the worldwide March for Science.
What was planned as a march on Washington has spawned more than 500 satellite events on nearly every continent. Scientists are worried about a growing antiintellectualism and hostility to fact-based government policy.
Scientists generally aren’t the overly excitable type. They can spend years observing, theorizing, researching and experimenting. So when they take a stand, it’s worth heeding their concerns.
Some are worried about scientific integrity under the Trump administration — they are among other truth-tellers under attack — but this is not an anti-Trump march. “The anti-science bias has been growing in our culture and in our government for some time,” Columbus march organizers note on their website.
We’ve seen this in the long fight between creationism and evolution theory. The fossil record — and even bacteria evolving into antibiotic-resistant strains — conclusively supports the latter; but in 2016, we are still arguing about it at statehouses and school boards.
Likewise, many well-educated and intelligent parents have bought into shaman science of the anti-vaxxer movement. Others consider it more natural to allow children to be exposed to crippling and deadly diseases than to immunize them. They’ve lost confidence in science that doesn’t conform with their beliefs. And they are agnostic to verifiable facts.
This sums up our current problem.
Today’s marches are a nonpartisan event to celebrate and promote science and STEM education. Young people, especially minorities, need to see science as vital and exciting.
It’s somewhat regrettable that march organizers chose Earth Day for the event, because in many people’s minds, it tangles the defense of scientific inquiry and integrity in the politically fraught issue of climate change. But Trump, through his executive actions and his administration’s proposed budget, has attacked legitimate climate-change research and is whacking away at environmental policy.
In all areas of science, budget cuts, censorship of researchers and disappearing data could affect grants, research and data collection for generations. Columbus City Councilwoman Elizabeth Brown worries about a proposed 18 percent federal budget cut for the National Institutes of Health. In 2017, Ohio State University received $55 million from NIH for 152 research projects, while Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s research division received $13 million.
Brown is among the scheduled speakers at the Columbus rally on the Statehouse lawn, to start at 10 a.m. The march to Columbus Commons will follow.
While today’s march is a single-day event, we hope it is the beginning of a longer conversation about the role science plays in our lives. When scientific inquiry is at risk, our futures are at risk.
We have looked to science to solve our most fearsome problems, and we’ve celebrated its achievements. Photographs and front-page headlines across the world announced the 1903 flight of the Wright Brothers and, in 1969, Ohioan Neil Armstrong becoming the first man on the moon.
The Dispatch headline of April 12, 1955, reads “Polio Whipped.” The Salk vaccine had been found safe and effective. Modern anti-vaxxers would have been viewed with disbelief by the parents who stood in line to get those first vaccines, that their children might never know this scourge.
Reason and fact must prevail, or else ignorance will threaten our future and our scientists will end up like Galileo, persecuted as a heretic for saying the Earth revolves around the Sun.