{"articles":[{"id":393,"title":"March for Science Coming to D.C. and a Town Near You April 22","html_content":"

by Causes | 4.18.17

On Earth Day, April 22, organizers are planning a March for Science in Washington, D.C. as the \"first step of a global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health, safety, economies, and governments\" according to the March’s official website.

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In an interview, one of three honorary co-chairs, Lydia Villa-Komaroff, argued against the March being characterized as exclusively an anti-Trump march:

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\"Support for science has been falling for quite some time. And discussions about whether or not science is valid have been going on since long before Trump entered the political scene. These two trends have been building to the point where many of us feel that we need to make the case for science in as nonpartisan a way as possible.\"
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In her planned remarks she hopes to focus on the importance of governmental support for foundational research, highlighting the work of scientists in the 1960’s around bacteriophages. At the time, no one knew the future use for the findings. It was a “quirky piece of biology off in a corner” and led directly to the entire biotech industry.

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\"We have to find a way to support creative science that we don’t know the value of. When we learn something wonderful about how the world works, it expands the realm of possibility for all of us, from artists to patients to the average citizen.\"
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514 satellite marches are planned around the country and the world — from places like Pittsburgh, PA and Portland, OR to Edinburgh, Scotland. One of the march organizers from Pittsburgh, Rebecca Tasker, said \"the event promises to be ‘a giant science party,’ with a positive theme.\"

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Congress members have also come out in support of the March. In an op-ed for The Hill Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) calls for participants to stand up for the \"importance of science and the integrity of truth,\" pointing to the administration’s moves away from efforts to combat climate change as evidence that they are participating in a “legacy of denial and duplicity.”

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There are those that oppose the March. Some have argued that staging a march only reinforces \"the narrative from skeptical conservatives that scientists are an interest group and politicize their data, research and findings for their own ends.\" Others have accused the organizers of not actually marching for science, but against social and economic policy, with little understanding of the mechanics of how human behavior changes:

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\"...we've another scientific specialty which deals with those sorts of things--economics. That's what it is about, the allocation of scarce resources so as to meet humans wants and desires. And thus if we want to change the way that humans are allocating resources then that's the science we're going to have to use. It's worth noting that pretty much all economists are against those uses of regulation to control emissions. Not because they don't believe or trust the climate scientists. But because the economists have their own expertise. Not in climate science of course--but in what you need to do to get humans to change their behaviour.\"
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For their part, scientists are not only using the March to register their political concerns, some are using it as an opportunity to do more science. Sociologists and other scientists who do survey research are planning multiple team efforts to poll march participants about their participation and views on what is appropriate political behavior for scientists. Researchers hope to better understand \"what is driving people to act now and what their actions say about the status of science in today’s fractious political culture.\"

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Organizers are planning to take the science of march documentation into their own hands, too. When asked about the tendency for crowd numbers to be underreported, Jackie Wirz of the Portland march assured reporters they’ve got it covered, \"We're scientists. We have drones\".

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Sounds like a giant science party to us.

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Do you support the March for Science? Use the Take Action button to tell your reps what you think!

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— Asha Sanaker

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(Photo Credit: Brad Hoc via Flickr / Creative Commons)

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