Gazette editorial: A million people marching for science

By: http://www.wvgazettemail.com

To some, the Women’s March benefitted from being a protest largely made up of white demonstrators. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Voisard

nspired by the gigantic Women’s March on Washington, a follow-up March for Science is scheduled for Saturday — Earth Day. It’s expected to draw perhaps 1 million participants, many in the nation’s capital and also in 300 other cities across 30 nations.

Organizers want to oppose conservatives who claim global warming isn’t real, and think vaccines cause autism, and believe gays can be made “straight” by prayer, and oppose the teaching of evolution and the like.

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“Recent policy changes have caused heightened worry among scientists,” organizers said. They also said political decisions must not rest on “personal whims and decrees” but on solid evidence.

Some major scientists fear the march will pull researchers into culture and morality struggles — supporting human rights, social justice and progressive liberalism — when they’re supposed to be neutral analysts. They’re uneasy because the march will be highly political, opposing President Donald Trump and Republicans.

Trump appointed two climate change deniers — Scott Pruitt and Rick Perry — to his cabinet, and proposes a commission on vaccines and autism.

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But science writer Miriam Kramer countered:

“Although the March for Science may not change anything about what the Trump administration plans to do in the next four to eight years, it will at least show that scientists — and those who support them — are a sizable group that should not be invisible to those running our country.”
The New Republic commented:
“Outlets like Fox News and Breitbart will likely characterize it [the march] as further proof that scientists are hopelessly biased and untrustworthy. Their viewers might buy it, but most Americans do not. Public trust of scientists is high: 76 percent of Americans have ‘at least a fair amount of confidence’ in scientists, the highest level of trust in any profession behind doctors and members of the military. Perhaps, then, the real value of the march will not be converting the non-trusting public, but educating them. Seventy percent of Americans cannot name a living scientist.”

Science is a search for knowledge, a trait innate to the species. The march spotlights this human endeavor