Vox - March for Science: news and updateshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2017-06-16T12:26:54-04:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/151497252017-06-16T12:26:54-04:002017-06-16T12:26:54-04:00I talked to Alex Jones fans about climate change and vaccines. Their views may surprise you.
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<figcaption>On Alex Jones, HIV/AIDS epidemic was created by the US government and claims about global warming are based on “fake science” and only “<a href="https://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-climate-change/">promoted by politicians</a> to scare the public into accepting a vast expansion of government to supposedly stop ‘global warming.’” | Javier Zarracina/Vox</figcaption>
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<p>Meet the “Infowarriors” who quote Žižek and want Trump to protect the earth. </p> <p id="0ujz3R">Alex Jones’s show <em>Infowars</em> often feels like a dark comedy. </p>
<p id="8TyOKj">According to the conspiracy theory–fueled media titan, there’s a “fungal epidemic” causing everything from rampant brain tumors to Crohn’s disease. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08F80piyaW8"><em>Sesame Street</em>’s new autistic Muppet</a> was really designed to normalize autism, a disorder caused by vaccines. Bill Gates’s global health philanthropy is a mass eugenics effort. The HIV/AIDS epidemic was created by the US government. Claims about global warming are based on <a href="https://www.infowars.com/exposed-govt-climate-change-data-100-fabricated-by-noaa/">“fake science”</a> and only “<a href="https://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-climate-change/">promoted by politicians</a> to scare the public into accepting a vast expansion of government to supposedly stop ‘global warming.’” </p>
<p id="KTv1IQ">The conspiracy theories are plentiful, and Jones rolls them out — in his trademark guttural rasp — with mind-boggling rapidity.</p>
<p id="ZinXL2">But <em>Infowars</em> is not a comedy. Jones’s website (also called Infowars) now attracts <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/infowars.com">more than 6 million unique US users each month</a>, and Jones has a YouTube following of 2 million subscribers, which rivals that of many major media outlets. He can count the president of the United States among his acolytes. (“You have an amazing reputation,” then-candidate Donald Trump told Jones in a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-praises-9-11-truther-alex-jones/">2015 interview</a>.) </p>
<aside id="2s8VwS"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"I watched Alex Jones give his viewers health advice. Here’s what I learned.","url":"http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/6/15160486/alex-jones-vaccines-autism-gates-fungus-health-conspiracy-theories"}]}'></div></aside><p id="NaXSTP">I recently watched several hours of Jones’s show to understand <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/6/15160486/alex-jones-vaccines-autism-gates-fungus-health-conspiracy-theories">his wild</a> <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/6/15160486/alex-jones-vaccines-autism-gates-fungus-health-conspiracy-theories">and dangerous health claims</a>. But one question kept running through my mind: Who are his fans, and why are they so pissed off at the medical and scientific establishment? How much of what Jones says do they actually believe?</p>
<p id="7cEIDQ">I went to Reddit and posted requests in Alex Jones–related groups, asking to connect with people who regularly tune in to Infowars online or on the radio. Some who responded accused me of working for a “fake news” and “liberal propaganda” outlet. But others were generous with their time, offering to talk via phone, Reddit, and email. </p>
<p id="EJwCxx">The Infowarriors I spoke to didn’t fit the stereotypes. Most said they believed in climate change and the benefits of vaccines. Some were former NPR listeners who<strong> </strong>felt the mainstream media had let them down. Others were looking for interesting and alternative opinions online. Still others championed science and were glad scientists are <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/19/14331168/science-march-protest-2017">marching in the streets this week</a>. </p>
<p id="u8LgvT">Here are excerpts from the most enlightening exchanges. </p>
<h3 id="zKkma3">This fan from south Louisiana hopes Trump will tackle climate change</h3>
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<p id="ejoNNO">Peter is a cop from south Louisiana with a science degree from the University of New Orleans. When we talked, he quoted the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and told me about his travels around the world — to China, Egypt, Tunisia, Austria. (We changed Peter’s name and the names of the other fans in this article. All of them agreed to talk only under the condition of anonymity because of privacy concerns and fear of repercussions in their professional lives about their political views.) </p>
<p id="DNSrvk">Peter started following Alex Jones during the 2016 presidential election. But there were a couple of pivotal events in Peter’s life that primed him for being open to the messages on the show. </p>
<p id="cJ0If7">First, the George W. Bush years taught him to think critically about media coverage. “There was all of the vitriol toward mainstream media coming from the left in agitation with its support for these various wars. So I didn’t forget the media wasn’t to be trusted,” he said, referring to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html">New York Times</a> misreporting about Iraq and the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/15/michael-moore-on-the-iraq-war-the-liberals-backed-it.html">criticism that ensued</a>. NPR, which he used to listen to regularly, turned him off for “how apologetic they were toward the Obama administration’s wars and how vitriolic they were toward Trump.” (He now views NPR as “a DC-based think tank … [with] political positions [that] are just as contrived and preapproved.”)</p>
<p id="YSPVuP">The second incident that primed Peter for Jones: living through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The “mismanagement of Katrina is something I will never forget,” he says. And he’d long been skeptical of “mainstream media.”</p>
<p id="mAR2WT">On the show, Jones rails against “fake news” on mainstream media and suggests government is controlled by an international faction called the New World Order — big banks, billionaires, mainstream media, pharmaceutical companies — that is working against the interests of regular Americans. So these views resonated with Peter.</p>
<p id="iyHBx3">A registered libertarian, he thinks his vote for Trump is maybe the first he’s ever cast for a Republican. But Peter liked Trump because he seemed to be outside of the “DC establishment.” </p>
<p id="7QPGq7">There’s one issue where Trump and Jones rub Peter the wrong way: They each deny climate change and support funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. “As a Louisianan, I’m sensitive about environmental issues,” Peter said. “I don’t want to see Louisiana falling into Gulf of Mexico.” He wishes the left and right would come together to address the problem — and fast. “I want to see coastal Louisiana protected. I don’t want to see pelicans [dying]. … A lot of the earth is falling apart, and it’s going to take a lot of fucking effort to [fix it].” </p>
<h3 id="mcYKl3">This fan is rooting for the March for Science </h3>
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<p id="CNQnys">Mark is a software developer who started listening to Jones after 9/11.</p>
<p id="2hgkKG">Around that time, he was on a political forum and people were posting links to Infowars. “Most of what [Jones] was talking about was bizarre stuff — but he basically singlehandedly raised awareness about the Illuminati and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group">Bilderberg</a>. A lot of conspiracy stuff, so take it with a grain of salt. But it was interesting to listen to something other than mainstream media even if most of it was ‘out there.’” </p>
<p id="JOr7pz">Jones’s criticisms of medicine — that it’s too profit-driven and that it does more harm than good — have resonated with Mark, too. “Medicine is good,” he said. “But there is a problem with big pharma … I have my doctors always trying to prescribe medicines that I don't feel are necessary. I know overmedication is a huge problem. A lot of people are addicted to opioids. I think medicine has become big business, and when that happens, much like for-profit prisons, the financial incentive is to put people on [treatment] so they get the recurring revenue.” </p>
<p id="YZbJGw">These days, Mark — who backed Bernie Sanders in the most recent election — views Jones as “a major shill for Trump and the alt-right.” So he tunes in to Jones less often, mostly when he hears the odd show playing on local radio at night. But he still appreciates how Jones’s alternative views “get some crazy thought processes going.” </p>
<p id="5LfpLm">When asked about Jones’s denial of climate change, Mark told me it disappointed him. “Climate change is real. I don't think rational people can deny it. But here's how I approach Alex Jones: 90 percent of what he says is purely disinformation and propaganda, but the 10 percent where he speaks the truth is enlightening.” </p>
<p id="pus8bm">That’s part of the reason Mark also supports the March for Science. “When you have a leader like Trump who denies basic knowledge, you're going to have a lot of bad things happen.” </p>
<h3 id="zZaSOE">Nikolaj from Denmark hopes a Trump-like figure will rise there </h3>
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<p id="2KwNF0">The majority of the people who tune in to <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/infowars.com">Infowars online do so from America</a>. But there are international fans, like Nikolaj, an IT worker from Denmark.</p>
<p id="gtPMtx">“I have been listening to Alex Jones on and off for many years,” he said, “but I have been watching the show regularly since the primaries for the last US election.” </p>
<p id="UoM6ka">A libertarian, Nikolaj was careful to say Infowars is not the only media outlet he follows. “I believe that you are just as much of an idiot if you only watch Infowars as if you only watch CNN.” </p>
<p id="0dR5tp">But he likes the show for its “different perspective on things” and because it’s “not politically correct. They call stuff out as they are without having to wrap it in bubble wrap or ignore it altogether.” </p>
<p id="YAZcz3">Still, he too was annoyed by Jones’s denial of climate change. “Climate change is real, and it does bother me that Alex Jones — like every other conservative American media [player] — doesn't realize it.” </p>
<p id="n5ZwCB">On vaccines, Nikolaj’s views diverge with those on Infowars again. “I don't buy into the conspiracy that vaccines are some tool for creating autistic children or whatever the conspiracy is, and I would have no problem getting my own children vaccinated if I have some one day.” </p>
<p id="2Ffxfp">What does appeal to him is the message that the establishment has failed. “Corrupt politicians both in the US but also in Europe stay in power and can continue being corrupt without any repercussions. Almost all the politicians at the Senate/Congress level work only for special interests, and their own political gain.” </p>
<p id="MwctE0">As for the media, he doesn’t trust them either. “The media has let people down for many years, but now in the age of the internet it's really more a race to the bottom,” Nikolaj said.</p>
<p id="pboFl3">How could media regain his trust? “[“They] would have to be the frontrunners of the truth.” </p>
<p id="DfJC7h">For now, Nikolaj is hoping a Trumpian candidate will rise in Denmark. “My interest in American politics has been influenced by Trump. Because suddenly there seemed to be an outlier in the election, and not the same suits that have done nothing but been in government for their entire life. I hope we get a guy like that in my country one day.” </p>
<h3 id="gWXUQj">Infowarriors are too numerous to ignore</h3>
<p id="tFRjv3">The handful of fans I heard from for this story aren’t necessarily representative of the millions of people who listen to or watch Alex Jones. Others may be fervent climate denialists and vaccine refusers.</p>
<p id="FR9RXx">Nonetheless, these conversations were informative. I learned that Jones’s listeners felt let down by government, medicine, and the media. At a time when trust in many of <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-dont-trust-their-institutions-anymore/">America’s institutions has been on the decline</a>, this wasn’t entirely surprising. But they tuned in to the show for a range of reasons, not just out of disgruntlement: Sometimes Jones was simply entertaining, or his rants gave them new angles on the news.</p>
<p id="VFPAP0">Many also believed in science and the advances it delivers, which maybe shouldn’t be surprising. Public trust in science has actually <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/21798/chapter/4#20">held fairly stable</a> over the past couple of decades (though trust in medicine has declined significantly).</p>
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<cite><a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/21798/chapter/4#20">NAS</a></cite>
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<a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/21798/chapter/1#fi_3-1">Confidence in the Scientific Community</a> 1973 to 2013. Data from the General Social Survey on the percentage of US adults that say they have a “great deal of confidence” in the people running these institutions. </figcaption>
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<p id="WiLC4R">Right now, though, we’re living in a frightening moment — particularly for those who believe in the importance of science and worry about the fate of the climate. We have a president who has called global warming a hoax and who has perpetuated an unproven link between vaccines and autism. These sentiments from the White House are enough to <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/19/14331168/science-march-protest-2017">bring thousands of scientists to the streets</a> in protests scheduled for more than 500 cities and towns around the world. As Mark told me, “When you have a leader like Trump who denies basic knowledge, you're going to have a lot of bad things happen.” </p>
<p id="3cVUKU">Mainstream politicians on the left have mostly ignored the rise of fringe media figures like Jones, while Trump has embraced them. But the Jones fans have become too numerous to shove aside. And they raise some valid concerns: Mainstream media <em>c</em><em>ould</em> do a better job, as my colleague Dave Roberts has <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology">written</a>, of being “fair and consistent referees of policy and ideological disputes within the public square.” Medicine, in many cases, <em>has</em> failed to help people and sometimes does more harm than good. There <em>are</em> vested interests that have an outsize influence on lawmakers, and government sometimes fails people, which justifies some of people’s frustration with Washington. </p>
<p id="V1VyKY">This erosion of faith in institutions is something Trump identified and tapped into during the most recent election. He was clearly listening to some of the dark and deeply held views that are out there, instead of mocking them or ignoring them. It’s probably time for the rest of us to start listening too. </p>
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/20/15295822/alex-jones-fans-climate-change-vaccines-scienceJulia Belluz2017-04-29T10:44:25-04:002017-04-29T10:44:25-04:00Doctors have decades of experience fighting “fake news.” Here’s how they win.
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<figcaption>“Fake news” is old news for the medical community. | Viktor Gladkov/Shutterstock</figcaption>
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<p>Some lessons from the health community’s long battle with misinformation.</p> <p id="O8k3LB">Long before Hilda Bastian was a health researcher, she endorsed a practice she believes may have cost lives.</p>
<p id="ti2p0x">“I think people died because of me,” she said recently. “And I'll spend my whole life trying not to do it again and to make amends.” </p>
<p id="fj1Nip">In the 1980s, Bastian was skeptical of the medical establishment. As the head of <a href="http://homebirthaustralia.org/">Homebirth Australia</a>, she traveled the country and appeared on TV programs arguing that moms should have their babies outside the cold confines of hospital rooms.</p>
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<figcaption>Hilda Bastian on Australian TV advocating for home births in 1987.</figcaption>
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<p id="fe3VJ1">Then she learned babies born at home in Australia faced a higher mortality risk than those born in hospital at that time. The fact disturbs her to this day.</p>
<p id="I51vtJ">In the decades since, she’s become one of the most prominent thinkers in the world on scientific literacy and evidence-based medicine. She has dedicated her life to figuring out how to reach people with the best available health research and fight back against misinformation.</p>
<p id="fn1UI8">For her and many other health researchers and doctors, “fake news” and misinformation — problems that suddenly seem dire in light of Donald Trump’s election and the growing influence of sites like <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/6/15160486/alex-jones-vaccines-autism-gates-fungus-health-conspiracy-theories">Alex Jones’s Infowars</a> — are nothing new. And over the past 30 years, mostly under a movement called “evidence-based medicine,” they’ve come with up with tools and techniques to fight back against bunk. They’ve also learned hard lessons on what doesn’t work when it comes to using facts to change people’s minds and behaviors. </p>
<p id="Gy2g45">Their lessons can help all of us — journalists, policymakers, teachers, educators, and even just concerned citizens talking to friends over the dinner table — who care about evidence and want to empower others with it. </p>
<h3 id="YTZO4o">Lesson 1: Take time to explain why you believe something — not just what you believe and why your opponent is wrong </h3>
<p id="y00xnV">So how did Bastian switch over from home birth advocate to home birth critic? </p>
<p id="MxqHhy">It started with conversations with <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2014/01/01/voices-silence-strength-and-judith-lumley-a-women-in-science-mentoring-tale/">researchers in Sydney</a>, who were compassionate about her worldview and generous with their time.<strong> </strong></p>
<p id="8IIv52">In the 1980s, Bastian went to a workshop at a childbirth education conference and met a researcher, Judith Lumley, who wanted to help her understand medical evidence. Through Lumley, Bastian connected with others in the scientific community who took the time to explain not only the evidence behind home birthing but also how to understand its strengths and limitations. Here’s how Bastian described it on <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2017/01/04/when-science-polarizes-a-personal-activist-story-with-evidence/">her blog</a>: </p>
<blockquote><p id="JYJPB3">I didn’t change deeply held beliefs because someone convinced me in one discussion, or even a few. It was a process over years. The scientists and others who influenced me weren’t cheerleaders for the establishment. They were critical of weak research and arguments, regardless of whose interests it served. And they didn’t just expect people like me to believe them because they were experts. They wanted to increase the expertise of others in scientific thinking, especially community leaders.</p></blockquote>
<p id="mcosJQ">In that process, Bastian learned that you can’t simply change minds by telling people that what they believe is wrong and you have the correct information. If those researchers had gone after her and shouted about their beliefs, Bastian probably would have deepened her stance in opposition. </p>
<p id="xhbxgG">Over time, Bastian said, the researchers convinced her “by being credible and trustworthy,” not just appealing to emotion. They even inspired her to get into science. (By the late 1990s, the “proud high school dropout” was <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9694754">publishing research articles</a> on mortality risks related to home births; she’s now on staff at the National Institutes of Health and working on her PhD — her first degree.) </p>
<p id="njAYtU">When you win people over this way, Bastian added, it can take a while — but you’re more likely to bring others from the opposing community along. In her case, she stuck around Homebirth Australia, helping to get the practice regulated and develop national guidelines on safe home birthing.</p>
<p id="MQ2ut9">This process wasn’t easy. Bastian received death threats for her change of heart, and the harassment went on for years. Not everyone in the home birthing community appreciated her push for higher standards.</p>
<p id="E5l72r">Through her experience, she thinks there’s a lesson for people trying to fight against people skeptical of scientific evidence, like the anti-vaccine crusaders.</p>
<p id="Yy4mJ6">“[Pro-vaccine advocates] act as though there’s certainty about the effects of vaccines when there isn’t,” she said. “And each time they do that, they let their side down. If you’re on the anti side, you can just drive a bus through the holes in their arguments, and people are doing that.” </p>
<p id="WBAF2n">Of course, all medical treatments — including vaccines — carries risks and side effects, and sometimes vaccine advocates are too quick to pretend that research doesn’t exist. “It’s fighting bias with bias and it doesn’t work,” Bastian says. “It just creates more bias and polarizes people.” Instead, taking time to explain why you believe something — not just what you believe and why your opponent is wrong — can go a long way. </p>
<h3 id="XL6zRt">Lesson 2: Make sure your information is reliable and easy to access </h3>
<p id="4ZBTIC">In order to talk to others about evidence, you need to sort out which evidence is reliable, and find ways to make it readily accessible and understandable. And the evidence-based medicine movement, which started to catch on in the <a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1817042">early 1990s</a>, developed tools to do just that.</p>
<p id="pgOiNX">Back then, doctors were too often using single or cherry-picked studies, or what they learned in medical school or from their mentors, to inform their decisions about their patients’ best care. These one-off studies and old lesson plans didn’t always represent of the totality of the research. </p>
<p id="1dIF3N">So a group of doctors, researchers, and patients began to organize themselves to solve the problem: to figure out how to sort evidence, and get all the best research digested for doctors so they could use it at the bedside when they needed it, rather than just relying on whatever study they came across that day or what their mentors told them.</p>
<p id="Ro3EFP">These researchers built up a repository of high-quality <a href="http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/research-topics/bringing-it-all-together-for-the-benefit-of-patients-and-the-public/using-the-results-of-systematic-reviews/">"systematic reviews,"</a> most notably through the <a href="http://www.cochrane.org/">Cochrane Collaboration</a>. The reviews used statistical methods to bring together and sort all the best science on specific medical questions, and presented that evidence in a coherent summary. </p>
<p id="m34wdS">This effort was revolutionary. Systematic reviews added empirical heft to medicine. They helped doctors more easily access and make sense of a wider selection of data, and they often corrected misconceptions about important health issues — like the <a href="http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/4/874.full">advice</a> that it was best to put newborns to sleep on their stomachs, a practice that actually increased babies’ risk of death. </p>
<p id="hoPbLc">But Bastian — one of the founding Cochrane members — said she realized pretty quickly that the group had to reach beyond doctors and find ways to connect with other communities if they really wanted to have an impact. By 1999, she’d helped get “plain language summaries” added to Cochrane reviews. These summaries appear outside the paywall and articulate, in a few jargon-free sentences, the findings of a systematic review. Here’s one example from the systematic review about vitamin E supplementation during pregnancy: </p>
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<cite><a href="http://www.cochrane.org/CD004069/PREG_vitamin-e-supplementation-pregnancy">Cochrane</a></cite>
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<p id="r7XJGm">Bastian’s objective was clear: “Instead of waiting and hoping journalists would pick something up and write an accurate story, or putting out press releases to go with a piece of research and [hoping journalists would] pay attention to a press release, I thought the answer was to write the finished [summary] yourself and put it inside the research.” </p>
<p id="1ykg9s">Today, the “plain language summaries” are the most translated and most read parts of the giant Cochrane library, and journalists like me, as well as patients, rely on these reviews to contextualize the research we’re reporting on every day. They made the best research accessible and easy to understand. </p>
<h3 id="8FqERF">Lesson 3: Teach them while they’re young </h3>
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<cite><a href="http://www.informedhealthchoices.org/">Informed Health Choices</a></cite>
<figcaption>A page from one of Oxman’s cartoon books for children. </figcaption>
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<p id="wPPaIc">Just making high-quality evidence more available doesn’t always stop bogus claims from taking off, of course, and many people often lack the tools to think critically about the information they’re given.</p>
<p id="tjYtzp">That’s a problem Andy Oxman, a researcher based in Norway who has studied how to help people make informed health choices for more than 30 years, has become obsessed with. After working with health professionals, journalists, and policymakers over the decades, he noticed that “most adults don’t have time to learn, and they have to unlearn a lot of stuff."</p>
<p id="u7rScd">So he started to wonder whether children might be more amenable subjects for learning how to assess evidence and claims. To put this idea to the test, in 2000 he visited his then-10-year-old son’s class.</p>
<p id="yUynU3">“I told them that some teenagers had discovered that red M&Ms gave them a good feeling in their body and helped them write and draw more quickly,” Oxman said. “But there also were some bad effects: a little pain in their stomach, and they got dizzy if they stood up quickly.” </p>
<p id="nHCBzK">He challenged the kids to try to find out if the teens were right. He split the class into small groups and gave each group a bag of M&Ms. </p>
<p id="pA4A7l">The kids quickly figured out they had to try eating M&Ms of different colors to find out what happens, but that it wouldn’t be a fair test if they could see the color of the M&Ms. In other words, they intuitively understood the concept of “blinding” in a clinical trial. (This is when researchers prevent study participants and doctors from knowing who got what treatment so they’re less likely to be biased about the outcome.)</p>
<p id="pSOvJk">Within an hour of grappling over how to test the M&Ms, the children seemed to grasp basic concepts about testing health claims. “That convinced me that’s the age to start,” Oxman said. </p>
<p id="kDTb3L">So he’s been working with other researchers from around the world to develop curricula — cartoon-filled books, podcasts — for schoolchildren on how to instill critical thinking skills at an early age. He’s tested their impact in a big trial involving 15,000 schoolchildren in Uganda.</p>
<p id="BXGfiE">We don’t yet know whether this method will work because the results haven’t been published — but whether or not the trial fails, it’ll bring us closer to answering an important question about information right now: How do you prevent dubious claims from catching on in the first place? </p>
<p id="MTC4Ss">Stanford University professor <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/16/8034143/john-ioannidis-interview">John Ioannidis</a> also sees the most hope in early childhood education, and agrees children should be empowered with basic skills on critical thinking. He told me that waiting to teach clinicians the standards of evidence-based medicine late in their training doesn’t always work. </p>
<p id="RPxbPU">“They’ve already been exposed to things that are so un-evidence-based, and the same principle applies to the general public,” he says. “We need to start early on, to make people understand that basing decisions on fair tests, on science, on evidence is important.” He would like to see basic courses on how to seek out high-quality information and appraise it taught alongside math and reading. </p>
<h3 id="xnDNfs">Lesson 4: Evidence is necessary but not sufficient</h3>
<p id="TEQQnh"><a href="http://sph.berkeley.edu/s-leonard-syme">Leonard Syme</a>, considered the father of social epidemiology, helped invent a critical field of health research. But he also looks back and thinks many of his efforts over the years failed because researchers like him were too out of touch with the needs of the people they were trying to influence. </p>
<p id="3Tr3Gg">In the early 1970s, he started running a 10-year, $555 million study that involved 350,000 people. The focus: changing participants’ behaviors on three risk factors — high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and smoking — that the scientific community knew increased the risk of disease and death. </p>
<p id="mQp3ml">“I devoted 10 years of my life to that project,” Syme said. “When the results came up with no change at all — nobody changed behavior! — that was really shattering for me.” </p>
<p id="EIYVZS">Another study, based in a community in Richmond, California, also focused on different interventions to get people to cut back on smoking. After five years, again, they had made no dent in the smoking rate. </p>
<p id="NzEMXP">Syme did some soul searching. He reflected on how Richmond’s economy centered on ship yards that sent food and ammunitions to the Europe during World War II. When the war ended, the city had been left without jobs, in poverty. “There’s air pollution, high crime,” he said. “The city’s devastated.” </p>
<p id="sraH64">“If you ask the people there what problems were on their mind, I promise you smoking would not be on their list. But I didn’t pay attention to that because I was a public health expert.” </p>
<p id="TlExwZ">It occurred to him that public health experts needed to meet people where they are and better connect to their contexts. </p>
<p id="ZhsFpi">“The cold, hard statistics I trained in just don’t do it,” Syme said. Or, as Benjamin Djulbegovic, a cancer researcher and<strong> </strong>evidence-based medicine thinker at the University of South Florida, put it: “Evidence is necessary but not sufficient for decision making or changing behaviors.” </p>
<h3 id="sVFP6Z">Lesson 5: Don’t be afraid to hold misinformation peddlers to account </h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="dr. Oz senate hearing from flicker" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NcSbRoF02IoOhSHSt8ebIYdmxqU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3609712/14258880899_498e5909f4_k.0.jpg">
<figcaption>Dr. Oz being admonished for misrepresenting science on his TV show in a 2014 Senate committee hearing. "I don't get why you say this stuff because you know it's not true," Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill told him.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="zKx1rV">Sometimes you can’t sway people with research, or compassion, or generosity. Sometimes there are high-profile misinformation peddlers who need to be held accountable. In these cases, try shame. </p>
<p id="pUbWcb">I heard about this tactic a while back from <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/12/27/7423229/ben-goldacre">Ben Goldacre</a>, a British author, physician, and longtime <a href="http://www.badscience.net/">slayer of bad science</a>, when I talked to him about how he decides which quacks to take down in his writing. "Mocking people who misuse science is a really useful gimmick for communicating how science works," he said. </p>
<p id="KO3Zbv">Over the years, Goldacre has taken on everyone from sloppy journalists to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Pharma-Companies-Mislead-Patients/dp/0865478007">pharmaceutical executives</a>, vitamin proprietors, and disingenuous academics. He has illuminated the evidence, and lack thereof, behind <a href="http://www.badscience.net/2004/09/rusty-results/">detox foot baths</a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/nov/16/sciencenews.g2">homeopathy</a>, and <a href="http://www.badscience.net/2004/03/waxing-sceptical/">ear candling</a>. He once got his <a href="http://www.badscience.net/2007/02/ms-gillian-mckeith-banned-from-calling-herself-a-doctor/">dead cat the same certificate</a> as a famous British nutritionist just to demonstrate how bogus her credentials were. </p>
<p id="9PT8oq">Now a professor at the Oxford Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, Goldacre produces work that has changed policy about clinical trial transparency, among other areas of health. </p>
<p id="lcmKW5">But he doesn't just go after cranks for the sake of it; he uses their stories to educate people about science. And he shames those in positions of power who give them the credibility to have an impact.</p>
<p id="Jc5qW6">"Going after people who facilitate the cranks is more likely to produce long-term benefits and also more closely reflects where the true source for the problem lies," he explained. "I can tell you who hates having their name in the paper, and that is journalists, editors, broadcasters, and policymakers. They are used to being able to hide in the shadows, anonymously, and if you can call them out by name, I think that changes their behavior quite well."</p>
<p id="1HFThA">He has a point. I once criticized an <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/10/8009973/toronto-star-hpv-vaccine">anti-vaccine story in Canada's largest newspaper</a>. My reporting — one voice in a chorus of criticism — pointed out that the paper's editor-in-chief was in denial about its bad coverage, and that he was ridiculing well-meaning critics. (In a memorable turn of phrase, he called me a "bathwater gargler.") The result? A <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/25/botched-newspaper-expose-of-hpv-vaccines-dark-side-reveals-dark-side-of-news-business/">rare retraction</a> of the story.</p>
<p id="ziRkRf">Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, agreed with Goldacre's advice. "Oprah Winfrey should be ashamed of how she helped give Dr. Oz a platform. People who put Dr. Oz on TV should be embarrassed," he said. "I advocate naming and shaming, not just naming and shaming the public figures who mislead people but the institutions that give them platform.” </p>
<p id="WahHOu">Naming and shaming takes strength, and fighting for facts takes time, knowledge, compassion, and patience. But there is hope. Just remember Hilda Bastian. </p>
<h3 id="E3WtYu">Further reading:</h3>
<ul>
<li id="swiSGh"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/5/7482871/types-of-study-design">The one chart you need to understand any health study</a></li>
<li id="qvs5in"><a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/6/15160486/alex-jones-vaccines-autism-gates-fungus-health-conspiracy-theories">I watched Alex Jones give his viewers health advice. Here’s what I learned.</a></li>
<li id="XakwpI"><a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/23/11098968/health-journalism-ethics">Why reporting on health and science is a good way to lose friends and alienate people</a></li>
<li id="9Nn9I5"><a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/16/13426448/trump-psychology-fact-checking-lies">Trump understands what many miss: people don’t make decisions based on facts</a></li>
</ul>
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/14/15262034/fight-fake-news-doctors-medical-communityJulia Belluz2017-04-29T09:20:01-04:002017-04-29T09:20:01-04:00Canada fought the war on science. Here’s how scientists won.
<figure>
<img alt="A pro-science protest on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, in 2012. Stephen Harper’s government had proposed steep cuts to many research programs." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0s8vmtiuiF_bjL7lSzngQBoGLpA=/0x0:4272x3204/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54522895/GettyImages_613954688.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A pro-science protest on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, in 2012. Stephen Harper’s government had proposed steep cuts to many research programs. | Bruce Campion-Smith / Toronto Star / Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="b7RdwL">Last weekend’s March for Science brought a renewed sense of purpose and urgency to Earth Day — and the momentum should carry on at Saturday’s People’s Climate Movement March. Collectively, these mass demonstrations — the March for Science alone attracted more than 15,000 people to DC and thousands more in satellite cities — send a clear message that President Trump’s full-scale assault on the basic tenets of science on numerous fronts is among his most unforgivable sins of willful fiction. It is heartening that people are willing to take to the streets to defend the primacy of civilization’s most effective tools for establishing what the facts of the case really are in this strange age of aggressive <em>alt</em>s. </p>
<p id="C20TFa">For Canadians like me, the March for Science, in particular, brought not just encouragement but a sense of déjà vu, tinged with relief. For President Trump is not the first chief executive of a major Western nation to wage a war on science. Until Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was voted out of power in 2015, it spent nearly a decade as the free world’s chief aggressor on this front. Under Harper, the Canadian government waged a steady attack on science and data the administration deemed unnecessary or unhelpful to its agenda. Harper cancelled the long-form census — the government’s most important data-gathering tool — and slashed budgets for climate science programs. He mothballed vital environmental research labs and rewrote environmental protection legislation in the fine print of budget bills. </p>
<p id="zkCXw8">The Department of Fisheries, a frequent regulatory opponent of the oil and gas projects Harper’s government was pushing, saw some of the deepest cuts: When it was forced to shutter the majority of its libraries, books full of irreplaceable research wound up in dumpsters. Media access to government scientists working on climate and environmental topics all but vanished, and in several egregious cases individual scientists were directly muzzled, forbidden to speak at all in public about their work. Harper also pulled Canada out of the Kyoto treaty and became a notorious heel dragger at international climate talks. </p>
<p id="0dZ3GX">In the summer of 2012, in the wake of the introduction of Harper’s most aggressively anti-science budget, a few hundred protesters marched from an Ottawa conference center hosting a biology symposium to Parliament Hill, in a protest styled as a mock funeral for the Death of Evidence. As in the March for Science last weekend, many of the Ottawa marchers were working scientists who’d never before participated in a protest. Many wore white lab coats to signal their allegiance to a set of principles long assumed to be above the partisan fray. </p>
<p id="SKvSbx">Five years later, the Canadian government and its institutions are back in the hands of leaders who respect the scientific method and value the expertise of scientists on their payrolls (and beyond). Granted, the American war on science promises to be a much meaner and more reckless battle than the Canadian one, led as it is by a president and administration whose erratic, know-nothing tendencies are without analogue in any democratic nation, ever. (Stephen Harper, despite his many sins, respected the basic tenets of democracy and had a knowledge of what government was for that extended beyond last night’s Fox News broadcast.) </p>
<p id="UGNxop">Still, the Canadian war holds some useful lessons as America’s defenders of science transition from their first fledgling protest to the longer fight. </p>
<h3 id="6ILVmw">
<strong>1</strong><strong>)</strong><strong> Marching was the right way to start</strong>
</h3>
<p id="N1Oe7V">There is a scientific angle to every public policy debate, but science rarely stands on its own as a political issue. And because science is everywhere in modern society, embedded in nearly every aspect of daily life, it is often taken for granted. And because <em>scientists </em>generally don’t think of their work as subject to the whims of a given administration or legislative body (in much the same way we don’t think of the weather as being susceptible to such whims), they are not usually well organized to respond to direct political attacks. For all these reasons, as Canadians learned in the aftermath of the Death of Evidence march, a street protest is an excellent way to catalyze a movement in defense of scientific principles when they are under attack.</p>
<p id="ETJRtd">Protest marches are typically used to push an issue up toward the top of the public agenda and to pressure politicians, but in the case of science, advocacy is really only a small part of their utility. Far more important, at least in the Canadian case, was the value of a march as an organizing tool. The Death of Evidence march in Ottawa attracted fewer than a thousand people and caused merely a minor media stir. But it triggered a three-year campaign that steadily built resistance against the Conservative government’s cuts to research funding, its silencing of government scientists, and its intransigence on climate policy. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="In the Canadian War on Science, the role of Donald Trump was played by Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pictured) " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/c_hIw_XVnsC_5UhzmfpyCD2Obh0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8430307/GettyImages_107031039.jpg">
<cite><a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?artist=Peter%20Macdiarmid&family=editorial">Peter Macdiarmid</a> / Getty</cite>
<figcaption>In the Canadian war on science, the role of Donald Trump was played by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="xHAIHn">Scientists needed the catalyst of the march to nudge them out of their labs and create a political arena of their own; once unleashed, they proved to be a potent force. In 2012, Harper’s Conservatives were at the zenith of their power in Canada, gleefully slashing science budgets amid punditry proclaiming a permanent rightward shift in the country’s politics. The march of the lab coats seemed a noble but futile gesture. Cuts to obscure research programs were far off the media radar and low on opposition party agendas. Yet a mere three years later, Harper’s hostility to inconvenient truths helped topple his government. It’s telling that one of the first and most wildly popular initiatives of Justin Trudeau’s new government in 2015 was to reinstate the long-form census and several other data-gathering and research initiatives that had been mowed down in Harper’s anti-science onslaught.</p>
<h3 id="jLbRWT">
<strong>2</strong><strong>)</strong><strong> Marching is only a start. The biggest challenges are still to come.</strong>
</h3>
<p id="mFvKjO">It’s encouraging that American scientists and their supporters have been so quick to take to the streets in opposition to Trump’s nascent war on science. It’s crucial now that the fledgling movement continue to organize and grow. This was the real long-term value of the Death of Evidence march — it helped launch a nationwide network of activist and advocacy groups to track the government’s meddlings and muzzlings, share information, and maintain steady pressure on the government and on opposition parties to keep science on the agenda. </p>
<p id="ZgpnaL">This started with the march’s organizers, who formed a permanent organization called <a href="https://evidencefordemocracy.ca/en">Evidence for Democracy</a>. But it came to include formal and informal networks on university campuses and in think tanks across the country. Not only did this create a platform for continued action against the war on science, but it gave the media a go-to voice any time the issue came up — one that couldn’t be easily dismissed. Science was too broad a category to be smeared by hard-right partisans, and beyond those partisans, it turns out, people invest a lot of credibility in the unified statements of scientists. Claiming space in the public domain – on campuses and in political forums, in the press and on social media – is the necessary next step in the resistance to Trump’s war on science. Citizens are more eager to see this happen than scientists likely expect.</p>
<h3 id="BQVYDu">
<strong>3</strong><strong>)</strong><strong> Science can be a winning wedge issue because no one wants to be against it</strong>
</h3>
<p id="cqwXS7">One of the first clear signs that Prime Minister Harper — who had ignored not just protest but all dissenting opinion for much of his six years in power — had heard the calls from the street in 2012 was a shift in tone in the way he discussed new pipeline projects. His government’s gutting of Canada’s environmental regulations in its spring 2012 budget – the casus belli for the Death of Evidence counterattack — was widely understood as an effort to streamline approvals for big energy and resource projects. But by August, Harper was insisting the approvals would be “decided scientifically.” His cabinet ministers added similar lines to their talking points. A very calculating regime decided there was no upside to being seen as anti-science.</p>
<p id="snmhHq">On the braying surface of it, Donald Trump would appear to care little for such niceties. His hostility to not just science but verifiable facts of all sorts is well documented. But take a closer look at <a href="http://publicpool.kinja.com/subject-statement-from-president-donald-j-trump-on-ea-1794561815">the rote statement</a> Trump issued on Earth Day. Read past the silliness about how “economic growth enhances environmental protection” to see what he says in the third paragraph: “Rigorous science is critical to my Administration’s efforts … My Administration is committed to advancing scientific research.” </p>
<p id="kfxrEE">Now, I’m certain Trump didn’t write that statement, and it’s highly likely he didn’t even read it before it was released under his name. Still, <em>someone</em> in the Trump White House knows that there’s real political danger, long term, in being too contemptuous to science in general. (Also of note: Rick Perry, who barely understands his own job, felt obliged to tweet out support for Texas’ wind industry on Earth Day.)</p>
<p id="ELfKSK">A boilerplate paragraph in an instantly forgotten official statement clearly doesn’t signal any real change in the Trump administration’s staggering hostility toward the EPA and climate science and the National Institutes of Health. But it does hint that Trump’s minions understand that beyond his evidence-deficient alt-right base, most Americans think of science as a positive thing. Exploiting this wedge between immediate sledgehammer policy goals (building pipelines, for example) and the broader worldview and base of support was crucial to the success Canadian scientists had in putting the war on science on the public agenda. If scientists can make it clear they are not just another Democratic/liberal/loser protest voice in the chorus of Trump’s opponents but a distinct group arguing that attacking science is bad for everyone, they will help their cause a great deal.</p>
<h3 id="0Rm38Z">
<strong>4</strong><strong>)</strong><strong> Personal stories and small, specific absurdities are more powerful than fact</strong><strong> </strong><strong>sheets and dramatic outrage</strong>
</h3>
<p id="3bebxS">As Vox’s David Roberts <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/28/14074214/climate-denialism-social">has argued eloquently</a>, climate change campaigners have learned by now — or should have — that you will not be able to truth-bomb your way to political victory over opponents who are in thrall to an entirely distinct reality, a reality untethered to observable phenomena. Piles of facts, reams of data, careful analysis, thoughtful conclusions — all the stuff of actual science is useless on this battlefield. This is a war of images and emotions and tribal allegiances. </p>
<p id="6wyORb">In Canada’s war on science, much of the vital momentum the pro-science movement built — including a huge slice of the media coverage it received — came via individual scientists telling heartfelt stories about their experiences and journalists detailing the small, striking absurdities being endured. The government’s decision to order Department of Fisheries scientist Kristi Miller not to speak about a major 2011 paper on declining salmon populations kept her out of the press for a couple of days. But her story soon <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Ottawa+silences+scientist+over+West+Coast+salmon+study/5162745/story.html">supplied incontrovertible evidence</a> of governmental interference, involving officials at the highest levels of government. It would be told and retold dozens of times.</p>
<p id="TYCWK1">The small and specific triumphs and outrages are the stories that stick with people. Very few Canadian scientists were ever directly muzzled by the Harper government, but the few like Miller who were became flashpoints. A <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/technology/story/1.1288091">crazy story</a> about the bureaucracy spending an entire day debating whether it could offer a comment on an innocuous news report about a new government study on the varying causes of snowfall mattered as much as reports on the loss of multimillion-dollar research labs. The traction already gained by the brief, exhilarating run of rogue tweets about climate change from the Badlands National Park Twitter account shows the same dynamic at work in Trump’s war on science. It’s absurd to try to silence a National Park. Most Americans understand that absurdity, even in Trump’s America. Exploit that.</p>
<h3 id="r2baO3">
<strong>5</strong><strong>)</strong><strong> Follow the data. And archive it.</strong>
</h3>
<p id="hQGhSC">In the midst of the media air war, there is vital behind-the-scenes work to be done to save irreplaceable data and research and find safe haven for it until Trump’s war is over. This was something many Canadian scientists didn’t realize until it was too late, and the government was already shuttering Department of Fisheries libraries and piling research files into garbage bins. Preserving or duplicating the data is valuable for its own sake — and is something American government scientists already realize and have begun to act on — but it’s also a powerful publicity tool. Destroying data is as egregious an affront to the most basic Enlightenment values as is book-burning. And if that destruction is made visible to the public, it’s damning. Exploit that, too.</p>
<h3 id="f3uAmF">
<strong>6</strong><strong>)</strong><strong> The good guys in the lab coats will win the war</strong>
</h3>
<p id="6NYSXJ">When scientists took to the streets of Ottawa in 2012, it was a very dark time for Canada. We were climate pariahs, our scientists showing up at international conferences of their peers with government communications staffers in tow, lest they stray too far from the party line. Canada’s government was in the hands of what one National Research Council scientist I interviewed for my book <em>The War on Science </em>likened to small-town hardware store merchants, uninterested in any knowledge that didn’t produce cash on the barrel. </p>
<p id="rey9Ky">Donald Trump, of course, is much, much worse — an incurious, self-absorbed man-child surrounded by calculating zealots of all the nastiest stripes. There are already casualties. Canadian universities and tech companies are already finding that the world’s best and brightest are being drawn north of the border by Trump’s assault on science and reason. Stephen Harper didn’t like his government producing data and reports that ran counter to his policy goals; Trump seems contemptuous of knowledge itself. </p>
<p id="diLGTV">Still, this is maybe the most important lesson of Canada’s war on science for those fighting the one now underway in Trump’s America: You will win. <em>Science </em>will win. It may incur some grave wounds along the way, but in the end, <a href="http://time.com/4650144/trump-science-war/">science will endure</a> in what remains the world’s leading nation for advanced research and technological development. And a government that openly embraces the knowledge now scorned may soon(ish) come to power. Science may even come back stronger than ever. Here in Canada, no one had ever cheered the long-form census until it got taken away. Now that it’s back, it’s being treated like a national treasure. In as little as three years or so, let’s hope, your data-gatherers and scientists, too, will be greeted as liberators. </p>
<p id="EPYsc6"><em>Chris Turner is the author of </em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-Science-Muzzled-Scientists-Blindness/dp/1771004312">The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Willful Blindness in Stephen Harper's Canada</a> <em>and four other books on climate change, sustainability, and technology. His new book on Canada's oil sands and the future of energy will be published by Simon & Schuster in September. He lives in Calgary. Twitter: @theturner.</em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="W8Tphq">
<p id="PctuWx"><a href="http://vox.com/the-big-idea">The Big Idea</a> is Vox’s home for smart discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at <a href="mailto:thebigidea@vox.com">thebigidea@vox.com</a>.</p>
<p id="bewmDG"> </p>
<p id="cQsWMd"> </p>
<p id="IKM5Ly"> </p>
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/4/29/15479888/harper-war-science-resistance-march-climateChris Turner2017-04-23T11:28:20-04:002017-04-23T11:28:20-04:00Tens of thousands marched for science in more than 600 cities on 6 continents
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pILNmnUxMRG73akN69R1FJPJYT4=/0x136:1632x1360/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54403259/FullSizeRender.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Eliza Barclay/Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“This recast Earth Day revived the democratic feel of the original.”</p> <p id="TffKpi">Three months after the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/1/22/14350808/womens-marches-largest-demonstration-us-history-map">largest demonstration</a> in US history, Saturday’s March for Science again brought droves of people into the streets to celebrate their values and protest the Trump administration and its policies.</p>
<p id="SPA3D3">And like the Women’s March, the demonstrations happened not just in front of the symbols of political power in Washington, DC, but in cities and towns across the country and around the world. In all, organizers say people marched for science on Earth Day in more than 600 cities and towns across six continents.</p>
<p id="CVn5Fy">While the crowds were far smaller than the record-breaking Women’s March in January, many of the March for Science events attracted thousands of participants. Reuters <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-earth-day-usa-march-idUSKBN17O09F">reports</a> that some 15,000 joined the march in Washington, DC, while 12,000 participated in Los Angeles and 2,000 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/science/march-for-science.html">turned out</a> in Oklahoma City. </p>
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10156498029301509/"></a><p>Aerial footage shows the massive crowds marching for science in Chicago http://cnn.it/2pQDONW</p>Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cnn/">CNN</a> on שבת 22 אפריל 2017</blockquote></div>
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<p id="oAjIBf">Their messages and chants varied from calls to protect the Environmental Protection Agency’s funding to the words of Neil deGrasse Tyson: “The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” (You can read my colleague Brian Resnick’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/22/15395472/march-for-science-earth-day-signs">dispatch</a> from the Washington march to get a sense of what scientists and science enthusiasts there had to say to Trump.) </p>
<p id="mzESPx">Historians said the March for Science was distinctly different from other Earth Day events celebrated in the US. </p>
<p id="2Bv4hG">“Breaking 46 years of precedent, it was more about the ways we know nature — science — than about nature-saving,” environmental historian <a href="http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/history/people/faculty/sellers.html">Christopher Sellers</a> of Stony Brook University told me. “Odd as it would have seemed just a few years ago, this recast Earth Day also revived the democratic feel of the original.” </p>
<p id="eUN56V">But Sellers notes, “For the first time in a generation, the main event wasn't heavily scripted and did not need a slate of celebrity entertainers to draw its audience. Braving the drizzle in DC, an overflow crowd came not just to listen but to march.”</p>
<p id="OdjtDi">We rounded up photos and videos from marches in London, San Francisco, New Orleans, Dallas, Raleigh, Greenland, Berlin, Sydney, Tokyo, Dublin, and Uganda. Have a look:</p>
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<p lang="und" dir="ltr">Wow!!!<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/sciencemarchsf?src=hash">#sciencemarchsf</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/marchforscience?src=hash">#marchforscience</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ScienceMarchDC">@ScienceMarchDC</a> <a href="https://t.co/hNAbRprCZb">pic.twitter.com/hNAbRprCZb</a></p>— March For Science SF (@ScienceMarchSF) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScienceMarchSF/status/855889385941737472">April 22, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Keep Greenland cool <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/marchforscience?src=hash">#marchforscience</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ScienceMarch?src=hash">#ScienceMarch</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SciMarGreenland">@SciMarGreenland</a> <a href="https://t.co/6sMN9T8MF0">pic.twitter.com/6sMN9T8MF0</a></p>— Tasha Snow (@TashaMSnow) <a href="https://twitter.com/TashaMSnow/status/855782409949900801">April 22, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Daisy the Science Pup leading <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ScienceMarchLdn?src=hash">#ScienceMarchLdn</a>! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MarchForScience?src=hash">#MarchForScience</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ScienceMarch?src=hash">#ScienceMarch</a> <a href="https://t.co/PUX407ERSr">pic.twitter.com/PUX407ERSr</a></p>— Adorable Dogs (@AdorableD0gs) <a href="https://twitter.com/AdorableD0gs/status/855883515405246465">April 22, 2017</a>
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<p lang="in" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/marchforscience?src=hash">#marchforscience</a> in Uganda! <a href="https://t.co/R7DZWGdCs8">pic.twitter.com/R7DZWGdCs8</a></p>— Ayana Elizabeth J. (@ayanaeliza) <a href="https://twitter.com/ayanaeliza/status/855818342279589888">April 22, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ScienceMarch?src=hash">#ScienceMarch</a> New Orleans with 1500 anthropologists. And a total of 5000 marchers. <a href="https://t.co/EWDkhFiRhp">pic.twitter.com/EWDkhFiRhp</a></p>— Ann Gibbons (@evolutionscribe) <a href="https://twitter.com/evolutionscribe/status/855855175575236608">April 22, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Great turnout to March for Science in Birmingham, Alabama!! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/sciencemarch?src=hash">#sciencemarch</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/scimarchbhm?src=hash">#scimarchbhm</a> <a href="https://t.co/2xRneHYIQY">https://t.co/2xRneHYIQY</a> <a href="https://t.co/gyPPQaWpJT">pic.twitter.com/gyPPQaWpJT</a></p>— Karla Archer ❄️ (@karlaarcher) <a href="https://twitter.com/karlaarcher/status/855852286274351104">April 22, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/sciencemarch?src=hash">#sciencemarch</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ScienceMarchSyd">@ScienceMarchSyd</a> timelapse <a href="https://t.co/G9tcZiJbqW">pic.twitter.com/G9tcZiJbqW</a></p>— Ketan Joshi (@KetanJ0) <a href="https://twitter.com/KetanJ0/status/855627858349178880">April 22, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">March for Science Tokyo! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ScienceMarch?src=hash">#ScienceMarch</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/marchforscience?src=hash">#marchforscience</a> <a href="https://t.co/aaFepnTHaP">pic.twitter.com/aaFepnTHaP</a></p>— Science March Tokyo (@SciMarchTokyo) <a href="https://twitter.com/SciMarchTokyo/status/855616246208839680">April 22, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/marchforscience?src=hash">#marchforscience</a> Salt Lake City <a href="https://t.co/vNCyhcmzuM">pic.twitter.com/vNCyhcmzuM</a></p>— Wayne Padgett (@ecodude2) <a href="https://twitter.com/ecodude2/status/855901717388378112">April 22, 2017</a>
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https://www.vox.com/2017/4/23/15395786/march-for-science-worldEliza Barclay2017-04-22T19:00:01-04:002017-04-22T19:00:01-04:00The March for Science was a delightfully nerdy celebration of discontent
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<p>The 20 best signs I saw at the March for Science.</p> <p id="oJKyQr">Thousands of scientists and science enthusiasts <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/19/14331168/science-march-earth-day-route-livestream-signs-speakers">braved</a> cold, rainy weather on Saturday to march in Washington, DC, in the name of disciplines they love, the research and discoveries they value, and the policies they oppose. And they came bearing signs — some of the cleverest, most creative, hilarious ones we’ve seen in an already protest-heavy year.</p>
<p id="lUKBKa">Many in the crowd said they never imagined they’d be out at a rally for science support. </p>
<p id="56ANFK">“It never occurred to me that a politician <em>wouldn’t</em> support science,” Amy Blackmer, a marcher from Richmond, Virginia, said. “Caring about science isn’t new, but thinking that I have to fight for it is.” </p>
<p id="qkBhpT">For Blackmer — who held a sign that said, “My sister was a patient at the NIH” — scientific research is personal. Her sister, who suffered from mesothelioma, had to have a lung removed and her diaphragm replaced by Kevlar. “We asked the doctors what we could do to help. They said, ‘Vote for people who will fund us.’ We need that now more than ever.” </p>
<p id="4L9rRt">Walking across the wet turf of the National Mall on Saturday, I kept hearing this refrain. “I’ve never thought I had to march, but things are so severe I had to be here,” May Ann Ti, a former engineer from Sterling, Virginia, said. “So severe, even the nerds are here,” her sign read.</p>
<p id="Yxmxmw">The march represented a sort of coming-out party for many scientists flexing a fledgling political muscle. In the past, there have been values voters and working-class voters, but “science voters” has yet to be a constituency. Perhaps with the Trump presidency — and the cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and science funding that may come with it — that’s changing.</p>
<p id="zmvP1h">Charlotte Froese Fischer, an 87-year-old atomic physicist, has had quite a career: She’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Froese_Fischer">authored</a> more than 300 scientific papers on atomic structure, and is still working hard to make fusion energy a reality. But until today, she had never attended a political rally of any kind, let alone one for science. “I always thought science was important, and this is an opportunity to express it,” she told me. </p>
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<figcaption>Physicist Charlotte Froese Fischer at the march with her daughter. </figcaption>
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<p id="HGVHii">“I think this [march] jump-starts everybody and lets everyone know you’re not alone.” says Kelly Charles, from Voorhees, New Jersey. </p>
<p id="HLc6ZL">Among the non-scientists in the crowd who got into the spirit was Dara Moss, a DC resident who works in digital advertising. She had a profane message for Trump in binary. (Think zeroes and ones. It’s the building block of computer coding. It might have been the nerdiest sign I saw.) “A lot of us were comfortable over the last eight years,” she says. But the president “fired up a group of people who wouldn’t normally come out and do this sort of thing.” </p>
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<p id="hW7Wzp">And come out they did. Common chants included, “Nerds united will never be defeated," and, “Science not s.” The crowd unleashed a deafening roar when Bill Nye — one of the country’s most famous science celebrities — took the main stage. He got a louder reception than Questlove, the Roots musician who co-hosted the festivities. </p>
<p id="FRsSWO">Some of the signs needed some decoding, like this one from high school physics teacher Caitlin Sullivan of Silver Spring, Maryland.</p>
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<p id="5Z4Ty1">“I teach the things students remember when they are older and voters,” she says. “They need to know that evolution is real, DNA is real, climate change is real.”</p>
<p id="KI56Lc">Pictured in the middle here is Corbin Shefelbine, age 9, from Boston. He had to explain to me several times that the figures represent “Laplace's equation,” which is a type of differential equation. I asked him why he likes science. “It makes up everything,” he said. </p>
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<p id="kvmk2D">Chuck Flannigan, from Cumberland, Maryland, was out to show support for mortuary science (it’s “rarely represented,” he says) — and, of course, for Carl Sagan. </p>
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<cite>Brian Resnick / Vox</cite>
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<p id="y3Va1l">Spock could have been made an honorary co-chair. His visage was on signs everywhere. </p>
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<p id="jHKcnf">Data, also a <em>Star Trek</em> character, was well represented.</p>
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<p id="tvCBvK">Another delightful nerdy touch to this march: brain hats, or “thinking caps,” a riff on the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/1/21/14342942/womens-march-inauguration-trump-protest-goals-feminism-demands">pussy hats</a> that so many women sported during the Women’s March in January. Genetic counselor Ellie Sine shows off one she’s been knitting for weeks. </p>
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<p id="r4Hu3H">This man, who asked not to be named, explained this sign to me several times. I still don’t get it. </p>
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<p id="GAHmta">“I’ve never thought I had to march, but things are so severe I had to be here,” May Ann Ti, said.</p>
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<p id="QqKF0q">Rebecca Bradman, on the right, shows off her biology education in her sign about climate change. </p>
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<p id="59ORek">“Got Polio? Me Neither. Thanks Science!”</p>
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<p id="qW4vg5">This was a very common sign, a riff on Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan.</p>
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<p id="tDjfhW">Brenda Clough, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Clough">a science fiction author</a>, says she marches for science because without real science, there would be nothing for the imagination to use to write fiction. </p>
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<p id="Ko2lxE">Beaker — from <em>The Muppet Show </em>— was almost as popular as Spock. </p>
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<p id="OlSezX">“We were mad scientists. Now we’re furious.”</p>
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<p id="HNj58r">Alas: There was a lot of pi, but no pie. </p>
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https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/22/15395472/march-for-science-earth-day-signsBrian Resnick2017-04-22T16:20:14-04:002017-04-22T16:20:14-04:00The March for Science on Earth Day, explained
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<figcaption>Scientists, science advocates and community members gather in Copley Square in Boston on Feb. 19, 2017 for a Rally to Stand up for Science | Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The Trump administration is cutting science budgets and denying research. Scientists are pushing back.</p> <p id="zCp3cd">On Earth Day, April 22, thousands of people descended on the National Mall in Washington, DC, and took to the streets in cities across the globe — in the name of science. </p>
<p id="IQ9Hwa">Inspired by the success of the January 21 Women’s March on Washington, the <a href="https://www.marchforscience.com/">March for Science</a> celebrated the scientific method and advocate for using evidence in decision-makng in all levels of government. Though the event’s website didn’t explicitly mention Trump, it was a protest of his administration’s policies, including his proposal to cut billions in funding for scientific research. </p>
<p id="ykyS8R">The march drew a lively crowd — and the nerdiest protest signs you can imagine. Here’s what you need to know about it. </p>
<h3 id="wA5ZcS">What will happen at the March for Science? </h3>
<p id="EdsYD9">On April 22, science-friendly individuals gathered on the National Mall, and in dozens of satellite marches across the United States and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/18/scientists-take-streets-global-march-truth">even around the globe</a>. The Earth Day Network — the nonprofit that organizes Earth Day events every year — took the lead on programming for the march. </p>
<p id="gWfsPD">The main event was co-hosted by Questlove (of the Roots and <em>The Tonight Show</em>) and Derek Muller (who runs a popular science YouTube channel). Jon Batiste and Stay Human (the band for Stephen Colbert’s<em> Late Show</em>) served as the house band. </p>
<p id="X5EQHB">And there were four main attractions.</p>
<p id="P2CVpk"><strong>1) A roster of speakers and science heroes </strong></p>
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<p id="Rd6eii">The main march programming took place on the north side of the Washington Monument, with a main stage facing the South Lawn of the White House. </p>
<p id="Ld81jR">Around 10 a.m., a series of speakers took the stage. They included:</p>
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<li id="Out3Wa">Bill Nye — you know, the science guy</li>
<li id="QjmEFj">Mona Hanna-Attisha — a pediatrician who played a crucial role in blowing the whistle on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan</li>
<li id="1Ik4oe">Rush Holt<strong> </strong>—<strong> </strong>Former congressman and current CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science </li>
<li id="owW8ep">Lydia Villa-Komaroff — a biologist who helped discover the process by which bacteria can produce human insulin</li>
<li id="6fw7Av">Christiana Figueres — one of the key architects of the Paris climate agreement </li>
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<p id="l8TlKj">(You can see a list of <a href="http://www.earthday.org/2017/04/12/earth-day-march-science-rally-teach-ins-take-place-april-22-national-mall-washington-d-c/">speakers</a> here.) </p>
<p id="R1kDNO"><strong>2) A series of “teach-ins”</strong></p>
<p id="sIwYP8">The march programming puts a strong emphasis on education and helping the demonstrators think about how to get further involved in science activism. </p>
<p id="fkfzhk">The Earth Day Network set up a series of 20-plus <a href="https://whova.com/portal/registration/earth_201704/">“teach-ins</a>,<a href="https://whova.com/portal/registration/earth_201704/">”</a> with a vibe that was part science fair, part TED talk. </p>
<p id="NSm1wb">These teach-ins focused on specific topics in science and science communication, and how to move the needle. Sessions included “How to Stop Your Climate Denialist Uncle in His Tracks,” “Protecting Wildlife in an Era of Climate Change,” and one giving marchers tips on how to “protect forests from hungry beetles” and “track threatened wildlife.” </p>
<p id="8RPIOd"><a href="https://whova.com/portal/registration/earth_201704/">Find more information on the teach-ins here</a>. </p>
<p id="pVtHAh"><strong>3) A march toward the Capitol </strong></p>
<p id="wGeKKX">At 2 pm, the crowd marched down Constitution Avenue toward the Capitol building (a little over a mile). </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lOuhcK3ObpmF2g_3ju2sP5BzVdo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8363121/Screen_Shot_2017_04_18_at_11.07.08_AM.png">
</figure>
<p id="ZSIST9"><strong>4) The nerdiest protest signs imaginable</strong></p>
<p id="0mnOUA">The marchers didn’t disappoint. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AKjuJjZG45W7vQQPmshnZw9rp6A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8389101/Screen_Shot_2017_04_22_at_4.13.18_PM.png">
<cite>Brian Resnick/Vox</cite>
<figcaption>Science marchers and their signs.</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/d1U73TdXp0pzIncIqqrP5-43uUU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8389113/Screen_Shot_2017_04_22_at_4.17.39_PM.png">
<cite>Brian Resnick/Vox</cite>
</figure>
<h3 id="Lxw0eA">Where did the satellite marches take place? </h3>
<p id="sj5PXg">There are 518 official satellite marches in the United States and across the world, from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1370365819682440/">Quezon City in the Philippines</a> to <a href="https://www.marchforscience.com/satellite-marches/">Blantyre, Malawi</a>.</p>
<p id="i9RjLt">You can s<a href="https://www.marchforscience.com/satellite-marches/">earch for the satellite marches here</a>. There are marches in all 50 US states. (There will also be a live stream of the DC event.) </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PASGBVpvsZHdqL4IaQzjXX4RF4I=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8366177/Screen_Shot_2017_04_18_at_4.46.40_PM.png">
</figure>
<h3 id="yVCtIX">Will it be live streamed? </h3>
<p id="O6YfuZ">Yes! Right here:</p>
<div id="TkdOAd"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nNz8GO-d9wI?wmode=transparent&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<h3 id="jTgx2G">Scientists have more reasons than ever to march against Trump </h3>
<p id="2DGYiA">At the very least, the Science March was a celebration of the scientific method and its ability to inform policy. With Trump in the Oval Office, scientists have been losing seats at the policy-making tables. The hope is that the march will leave an impression: Science matters. </p>
<p id="yJ56zE">Already Trump is calling for a dramatic reduction in the amount of money the US government spends on scientific research, he’s scaling back efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency to combat climate change, and overall, he seems to disregard or not seek out advice from scientific efforts. He has yet to name a top White House science adviser, and it’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/science-technology-white-house-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">unclear if he ever will</a>. Meanwhile, science skeptics in Congress are emboldened. The House recently <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/30/15112704/transparency-epa-bills-not">passed two bills</a> that (under the guise of transparency) would stifle scientific research and expertise at the EPA. </p>
<p id="1fHDWF">It’s the gravity of these concerns that helped the March <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/will-they-or-won-t-they-what-science-groups-are-saying-about-joining-march-science">attract support from the scientific mainstream:</a> Major science advocacy groups and publishers, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the Association for Psychological Science, and <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/will-they-or-won-t-they-what-science-groups-are-saying-about-joining-march-science">many others</a>, have endorsed the march and are encouraging their members to attend. </p>
<h3 id="8YqthQ">What will the march accomplish? </h3>
<p id="pawWPy">Scientists have long been active in Washington, putting pressure on Congress and advocating for funding for their work. Groups like the AAAS and AGU do a lot of this work. But the grassroots movement that’s propelling the March for Science is a bit different. It’s like an awakening of “scientist” as a political identity. </p>
<p id="gTP4vg">At the very least, the event may inspire some of its attendees to go on to greater political action. “Protest is also an opportunity to create what we call ‘collective identity,’” Dana R. Fisher, a sociologist who studies protest movements, <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/2/7/14458608/science-march-on-washington-pros-cons">said in an </a>interview. “It’s about getting sympathizers, people who agree with the cause, to be activists.”</p>
<p id="YezwOh">The marchers may then be more ready to mobilize when or if the administration lashes out against the nation’s scientists. “It’s so important to take the energy and excitement from the march, go back home, and carry it into legislatures offices, and hold them accountable,” says Shaughnessy Naughton, a chemist who runs 314 Action, a political action committee dedicated to getting more people with a science background to run for public office. (Just two days before the march, 314 held an information session for scientists thinking about making the leap into public service.)</p>
<p id="3YreyW">There’s also a consequence the scientists have to wrestle with: A March for Science could be self-defeating. If the public gets the impression that scientists are liberal crusaders, it will be a hard mental image to break. (More on that <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/2/7/14458608/science-march-on-washington-pros-cons">here</a>.) Many scientists have long been hesitant to get into the political fray. And some worry that further activism will make future fights for science funding more difficult and more partisan. </p>
<p id="XYXeGS">But that concern didn’t stop thousands of scientists and allies from demonstrating. And it could be just the beginning. </p>
<h3 id="DHDyrj">Is this the same thing as the People’s Climate March?</h3>
<p id="Ar6l1c">No. That’s a separate event taking place the next week, on April 29. It will focus more on climate issues, but it will overlap with the Science March in the sentiment that the Trump administration is not heeding scientific experts’ calls for action on climate change. </p>
<h3 id="PkXDJ8">Who started the March for Science, and why? </h3>
<p id="03yjzP">On the day of the Women’s March on Washington, Jonathan Berman, a biology postdoc at the University of Texas Health Science Center, was reading a Reddit thread about an article headlined <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/all-references-to-climate-change-have-been-deleted-from-the-white-house-website">“All References to Climate Change Have Been Deleted From the White House Website</a>.” One <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/5p5civ/all_references_to_climate_change_have_been/dcojgl0/">comment</a> caught his eye: “There needs to be a Scientists' March on Washington.”</p>
<p id="9KSn23">“The only way to make things happen is to do them,” Berman <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/2/7/14458608/science-march-on-washington-pros-cons">told me in February</a>. So he purchased the web domain MarchForScience.com, and set up a Facebook and Twitter account. The march will “send the message that we need to have decisions being made based on a thoughtful evaluation of evidence,” he says. And all of a sudden, he had a movement. (Some 521,000 had “liked” the march on Facebook as of Tuesday.)</p>
<p id="heLVdW">But the march organizers are also trying to thread a tough needle with their goals: opposing the anti-science policies of the Trump administration, while furthering the message that science is not a partisan issue. (How precisely to thread the needle on these issues — and how strongly to add issues of diversity, identity, and inclusion to the roster of march causes — has been an <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/22/science-march/">ongoing debate</a> around the event.) </p>
<p id="vkGzfx">As the group’s website <a href="https://www.marchforscience.com/">asserts</a>: </p>
<blockquote><p id="zuT5e7">Anti-science agendas and policies have been advanced by politicians on both sides of the aisle, and they harm everyone — without exception. Science should neither serve special interests nor be rejected based on personal convictions. At its core, science is a tool for seeking answers. It can and should influence policy and guide our long-term decision-making.</p></blockquote>
<h3 id="z9eRcB">How many people will show up?</h3>
<p id="6OOGhg">Unclear. The March for Science isn’t releasing any estimates, though there is a lot of interest in the event. In the week after its founding, the Science March received 40,000 emails from people who wanted to volunteer. But thousands — maybe even tens of thousands — showed up. </p>
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/19/14331168/science-march-earth-day-route-livestream-signs-speakersBrian Resnick2017-04-22T15:44:41-04:002017-04-22T15:44:41-04:007 things we've learned about Earth since the last Earth Day
<figure>
<img alt="earth" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PqnyW2IXJ1FxxjMb_e8anpKQAg0=/0x340:2040x1870/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54391243/North_America_from_low_orbiting_satellite_Suomi_NPP.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Hey that’s us. | (NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="d36cgq">This year’s Earth Day, April 22, will be dominated by <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/19/14331168/science-march-earth-day-route-livestream-signs-speakers">March for Science rallies</a> taking place in Washington, DC, and dozens of other cities around the world. </p>
<p id="gn7pBI">But I also like to mark Earth Day by looking at some of the best new discoveries we've made about this breathing, seething, never-dull planet of ours — the only place in the universe where life is known to exist.</p>
<p id="v5yJiu">After all, a lot has changed since <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/15/when-the-earth-moved?currentPage=all">the very first Earth Day</a> in 1970. Back then, America's most urgent environmental problems were smog and water pollution. In the years since, we've made <a href="https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/progress-cleaning-air-and-improving-peoples-health">remarkable progress</a> mopping that up, only to confront fresh challenges like global warming and <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/9/10/6131139/ocean-acidification-fastest-300-million-years">ocean acidification</a>. Even today, our knowledge of the Earth keeps evolving with each passing year. We've uncovered <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/3/6901009/scientists-are-still-discovering-new-mountains-on-earth-mainly-on-the">new geological features</a>. We've brought endangered species <a href="http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/teacher_resources/best_place_species/back_from_the_brink/">back from the brink of extinction</a>. We've transformed the atmosphere, for better and worse.</p>
<p id="Cr98Zr">So here's a list of some of the most surprising, hopeful, and worrisome things we've learned about Earth since the last Earth Day:</p>
<h3 id="XN24WA">1) Scientists (sort of) discovered an entire new continent: Zealandia!</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JKM6aku-xo_jZbDXRKanzSASnyo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8386705/58a4840401fe586a018b4955_800.png">
<cite>(<a href="http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/27/3/article/GSATG321A.1.htm">Mortimer et al., 2017</a>)</cite>
</figure>
<p id="FrHHNn">Okay, scientists didn’t discover New Zealand this year. It’s been sitting there for ages. But in February 2017, a team of researchers led by geologist Nick Mortimer <a href="http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/27/3/article/GSATG321A.1.htm">published a paper</a> arguing that we should take a second look at this corner of the world. Because New Zealand isn’t just a tiny island nation. It’s arguably part of a unique 1.9-million-square-mile <em>continent</em>, not too different from North America or South America.</p>
<p id="AKSorP">Scientists have been collecting data on the slab of continental crust that surrounds New Zealand and New Caledonia for decades (much of which is underwater, of course). Over time, they’ve come to realize that this landmass has a distinctive geology and well-defined structure that separates it from the nearby continent of Australia. If you follow certain definitions of what constitutes a “continent,” Zealandia is its own thing.</p>
<p id="0kMfxv">This isn’t just a pedantic name change. The realization that Zealandia is actually an independent continent could help scientists better understand “the cohesion and breakup of continental crust," the authors write.</p>
<p id="hVETQT">But don’t go ripping up your geography textbooks just yet. There’s no official definition of “continent,” and scientists will likely be debating this for years. (Much like there are still <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/25/15052084/make-pluto-planet-again">debates</a> over whether Pluto is a “planet.”) But it’s a good reminder that scientific discoveries don’t always have to entail new, never-before-seen objects. Sometimes they entail looking at familiar objects with fresh eyes.</p>
<h3 id="CMExp7">2) We've found dozens of new species — like this fluorescent frog...</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EKxugwypAYc6Y_bMTzkrj6aIuPs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8386819/giphy_downsized_large.gif">
<cite>(<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/first-fluorescent-frog-found-1.21616">Nature</a>)</cite>
</figure>
<p id="aVMjHr">At this point, scientists have described about 1.5 million different species on the Earth. That <em>sounds</em> like a lot, but <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6118/413.short">estimates suggest</a> there are<em> </em>at least another 4 million species waiting to be documented. And we’re finding hundreds every year.</p>
<p id="NGaDSd">One nifty discovery came in March, when researchers <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/first-fluorescent-frog-found-1.21616">published a paper describing</a> the South American polka dot tree frog, which gives off a green-blue glow when placed under ultraviolet light. The frog doesn’t glow it the dark, exactly; instead it absorbs light at short wavelengths and re-emits it at longer wavelengths. (Glow-in-the-dark creatures, like fireflies, are known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence">bioluminescent</a>.) But only a few species can pull off this trick — and this is the first known fluorescent amphibian.</p>
<p id="8JdIIH">The past year has brought a wealth of other new species into view, too, from <a href="http://www.livescience.com/58644-big-furry-spider-discovered-in-cave.html">a cave-dwelling spider with red fangs</a> in Mexico to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38366118">a ghostly octopod nicknamed “Casper”</a> on the ocean floor that, alas, may be under threat from deep-sea mining. Last September, a genetic analysis even revealed that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/science/a-quadruple-take-on-the-giraffe-its-four-species-not-one.html?_r=0">there are <em>four </em>distinct species of giraffe</a>, not just one, as previously thought.</p>
<h3 id="qirOWK">3) But we’re also losing species at an alarming rate</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Q2ntMzgPHfL1io2ggyuHBmUzQ00=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8366731/Screen_Shot_2017_04_18_at_5.47.08_PM.png">
<cite>Scott M. Denderson / <a href="http://www.aprilthegiraffe.com/">April the Giraffe</a></cite>
<figcaption>Giraffes aren’t gone yet, but they’re certainly in serious trouble.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="ZeplOp">Sadly, it can’t all be good news.</p>
<p id="XHGAKO">One of the reasons scientists are rushing to discover and describe as many species as they can is that <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/6/11/5797636/the-world-is-facing-a-major-extinction-crisis-here-are-ways-to-avoid">we’re also <em>losing</em> a great deal of wildlife</a> at a shocking rate. As human civilization expands, and cities, farms, and mines proliferate, natural habitats and wilderness keep shrinking, driving many species to the brink. Global warming is also expected to drastically transform the historical range of a great many plants, birds, and animals — and many species may prove unable to adapt.</p>
<p id="WVEZyE">Last June, scientists <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/14/first-case-emerges-of-mammal-species-wiped-out-by-human-induced-climate-change">announced</a> that the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent native to the Great Barrier Reef, has likely gone extinct as sea-level rise had inundated the small island it called home. If so, this could likely be the first known mammal to go extinct due to global warming (scientists have already blamed the changing climate for <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011102121.html">wiping out a few frog species</a>).</p>
<p id="SimB3Y">Ecologists keep warning that many, many more extinctions could soon follow if we don’t act quickly to protect what wildlife remains. Giraffe populations <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/8/13882626/giraffe-extinction-vulnerable-iucn-red-list">have declined 40 percent in the last 30 years</a>. More than <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/23/14351224/primate-extinction-report-ahhh">half of all primate species</a> are sliding down the path toward non-existence. One enormous challenge of the 21st century is making sure that Earth’s rich biodiversity doesn’t just end up a distant memory, seen only in museums and old photos. (Here are <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/6/11/5797636/the-world-is-facing-a-major-extinction-crisis-here-are-ways-to-avoid">a few ideas for slowing further extinctions</a>.)</p>
<h3 id="PyXMPA">4) The world’s oldest fossils may have been found in Canada — at least 3.7 billion years old</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cO2pnYXY8PujkhtJlMpESnVFOFo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8386921/32341758634_e64e129f61_k.jpg">
<cite>(<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/uclnews/32341758634/">Matthew Dowd/Flickr</a>)</cite>
<figcaption>Haematite filament attached to a clump of iron in the lower right, from hydrothermal vent deposits in the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt in Québec, Canada. These clumps of iron and filaments were microbial cells and are similar to modern microbes found in vent environments. </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="TUCCIB">The history of human civilization can be condensed into less than 10,000 years, a blink of an eye in geological time. Earth, of course, has been around far, <em>far</em> longer than that, a timescale that’s often staggering to contemplate.</p>
<p id="mtr9xA">In March 2017, scientists with the University College of London <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0217/010317-Worlds-oldest-fossils-unearthed/#fossils">announced</a> they had unearthed layers of quartz in Canada containing “microfossils” of bacteria that once lived underwater near hydrothermal vents, feasting on chemical reactions involving iron for their energy. The kicker? These rocks were thought to have formed between 3.7 and 4.3 <em>billion </em>years ago — which would make these the oldest fossils ever found.</p>
<p id="Hk7D7j">To put this in perspective, the Earth was thought to have formed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth">about 4.54 billion years ago</a>. The first oceans likely appeared <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth#Water_in_the_development_of_Earth">about 4.41 billion years ago</a>. Somehow, the earliest forms of life wriggled into existence not long after that. (By “not long,” of course, I’m talking hundreds of millions of years. No big deal.)</p>
<p id="FRcYPw">“Our discovery supports the idea that life emerged from hot, seafloor vents shortly after planet Earth formed,” lead author Matthew Dodd said when the results were announced. To be sure, measuring the exact dates of rocks this old is a tricky task, and scientists will likely debate their precise age for some time. Previously, the oldest known microfossils were thought to be embedded in 3.4-billion-year-old rocks found in Western Australia, though there’s dispute over whether those fossils were biological.</p>
<h3 id="tRyvv4">5) A new type of cloud was added to the official cloud atlas: Asperitas</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yuYhQvweJifeS35U6YPJnAcpkfk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8386975/5858_main_altocumulus_stratiformis_opacus_asperitas_clouds.jpg">
<cite>(<a href="https://www.wmocloudatlas.org/clouds-supplementary-features-asperitas.html">World Meteorological Organization</a>)</cite>
<figcaption>The Asperitas cloud: characterized by localized waves in the cloud base, either smooth or dappled with smaller features, sometimes descending into sharp points, as if viewing a roughened sea surface from below. </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="khZ22b">The <a href="http://www.wmocloudatlas.org">International Cloud Atlas</a> has been used to train meteorologists since the late 19th century. And there haven’t been any new clouds added in decades — which makes intuitive sense, since you’d assume we already know everything there is to know about the sky above us.</p>
<p id="2qqda6">But that all changed this year.</p>
<p id="eHfGag">Ever since 2006, the delightfully named Cloud Appreciation Society, a group of British weather enthusiasts, has been photographing and documenting an unusual type of turbulent cloud that can’t be found anywhere in the atlas. After much prodding and formal debate, the World Meteorological Organization agreed that this was indeed a distinct formation and added this new cloud, <a href="https://www.wmocloudatlas.org/clouds-supplementary-features-asperitas.html">dubbed the Asperitas</a>, to its taxonomy.</p>
<p id="rDFktP">“Asperitas,” the new edition of the atlas <a href="https://www.wmocloudatlas.org/clouds-supplementary-features-asperitas.html">says</a>, “is characterized by localized waves in the cloud base, either smooth or dappled with smaller features, sometimes descending into sharp points, as if viewing a roughened sea surface from below.” You can see more lovely pictures <a href="https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/asperitas-world-met-day/">here</a>.</p>
<p id="9TJQbc">The Cloud Appreciation Society, for its part, <a href="https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/asperitas-world-met-day/">hailed</a> the recognition of the Asperitas cloud as a triumph of citizen science, noting that the rise of smartphones has enabled non-scientists to document all sorts of phenomena in the world around us — and allow scientists to form a much richer picture of this planet of ours.</p>
<h3 id="CUCaXR">6) The Great Barrier Reef is in more trouble than we thought</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Photo of a healthy and unhealthy fire coral" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O9P99MQiITWHOi51ajuhmuU8G8Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8365681/Pasted_image_at_2017_04_18_03_43_PM.png">
<cite>The Ocean Agency/XL Catlin Seaview Survey/Richard Vevers</cite>
<figcaption>Photo of a fire coral that experienced severe bleaching in the 2016 mass bleaching event</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="nmHJTi">Coral reefs are often dubbed the rain forests of the ocean. They cover just 0.1 percent of the sea floor but are home to 25 percent of marine fish species. They sustain vital fishing industries, and they’re popular spots for divers and snorkelers.</p>
<p id="nG7Vjx">Unfortunately, these reefs are also <em>extremely</em> vulnerable to rising ocean temperatures and global warming. When the waters get too<em> </em>hot, the living coral polyps that build the reef expel the <a href="http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/corals/coral02_zooxanthellae.html">zooxanthellae</a> that live in their hard skeletons and provide them with nutrients. Once that happens, the coral start suffering and take on a ghastly white color — known as “bleaching.” During severe bleaching events, many coral can die, which in turn hurts all the marine life that depend on the reef.</p>
<p id="SNRReN">Over the past year, Australia’s majestic Great Barrier Reef has been absolutely walloped by unusually warm ocean temperatures and <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/18/15272634/catastrophic-coral-bleaching-great-barrier-reef-map">has suffered back-to-back bleaching events</a> — the first time that’s ever happened. Huge swathes of the reef <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/11/29/13781434/great-barrier-reef-coral-dead">are now dying</a>. Worse, these bleaching events are expected to become increasingly common in the future if the planet keeps heating up, and the reef will struggle to recover. At a certain point, much of it will be gone for good.</p>
<p id="eQqJpc">Now, there are steps Australia can take to try to salvage its reef — or at least give it a fighting chance in the face of global warming. Humans can limit fertilizer and sewage runoff that further damage the coral. We can avoid overfishing key herbivores like the rabbitfish that nurture the reefs by clearing away excessive algae. </p>
<p id="Hsi1s9">But ultimately, limiting climate change is the crucial step if we don’t want to see these ecosystems vanish forever. "At 2°C [of global warming]," Mark Eakin, who runs NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program, <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/11/29/13781434/great-barrier-reef-coral-dead">told me last year</a>, "we are likely to lose numerous species of coral and well over half of the world's coral reefs."</p>
<h3 id="EtfJ0y">7) But humans also showed that they can come together to tackle big environmental problems</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Giant Pandas Play After Snow In Hangzhou" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aJvf8jxhcg0ZyOX1WntOZvooxLA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8387087/506189554.jpg">
<cite>Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Giant pandas, coming back from the brink of extinction.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="7glOjn">I'm going to end this list on a more hopeful note. Humans have done a lot of damage to this planet and the other species on it, it’s true. But we’ve also shown a remarkable ability to <em>save</em> other species, to restore ecosystems, to blunt the harm we’ve caused.</p>
<p id="Es2gaN">Over the past year, we’ve brought the giant panda <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/giant-panda-no-longer-endangered">back from the brink of extinction</a>, thanks to concerted conservation efforts. Scientists <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-31/healthy-tasmanian-devils-released-to-test-vaccine-efficacy/7802672">are developing a vaccine</a> to protect the endangered Tasmanian devil from dying in the face of a lethal facial tumor disease. Just this spring, ecologists at the Smithsonian Institute <a href="https://nationalzoo.si.edu/conservation-ecology-center/news/scimitar-horned-oryx-calves-born-wild">announced</a> that the scimitar-horned oryx, a sort of antelope once extinct in the wild, had been reintroduced in Chad and was now breeding again.</p>
<p id="ESTrOi">“Although some of these achievements may seem limited in scope,” wrote Andrew Balmford and Nancy Knowlton in <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/225">a recent <em>Science </em>essay</a><em>,</em> “much of conservation depends on the accumulation of small-scale advances across the planet.”</p>
<p id="o9oJM2">Humans have banded together to do much bigger things too, the authors note. More than 5 percent of the world’s oceans <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55798#.WPqvdrvyu2w">are now Marine Protected Areas</a>, up from 1 percent a decade ago. The nations of the world <a href="http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/21/14988436/global-coal-boom-decline">are making remarkable progress</a> in bolstering clean energy and moving away from coal, a key driver of global warming. Yes, these efforts are still insufficient in the face of some of the massive environmental problems we’re facing. But it’s hardly all doom and gloom. </p>
<p id="4XQIrJ">Just as humans are capable of making astounding discoveries about this planet, we’re capable of altering its trajectory. The idea behind the original Earth Day was that we can harness human ingenuity to alter that trajectory for the better. There are certainly signs of that, if you know where to look.</p>
<p id="lJ7lbc"><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/7/8352381/anthropocene-NASA-images">15 before-and-after images that show how we're transforming the planet</a></p>
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/22/15378240/earth-day-2017Brad Plumer2017-04-22T09:01:19-04:002017-04-22T09:01:19-04:00Science is already political. So scientists might as well march.
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<img alt="BOSTON, MA USA - FEBRUARY 19, 2017: Protesters hold up signs at the Stand Up for Science Rally in Copley Square Boston." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sE4sPkf5MYsip1e--ZKoKPFafHA=/0x0:4344x3258/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54334683/science_march_boston.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The Stand Up for Science Rally in Boston’s Copley Square, 2/19/2017. | (<a href="http://shutterstock.com/">Shutterstock</a>)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The institutions and people who do science can’t remain neutral toward the Trump administration’s threats. </p> <p id="xhEDRS">On April 22, Earth Day, tens of thousands of people will assemble in Washington, DC, and several dozen satellite cities to <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/19/14331168/science-march-earth-day-route-livestream-signs-speakers">march for science</a>. </p>
<p id="jniA18">What does that mean, exactly, to march “for science”?</p>
<p id="CmLdkf">I have some thoughts on that — on how to make sense of the controversies around the march (as <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/24/15028396/march-for-science-diversity">covered by our own Brian Resnick</a>) and the larger question of science’s relationship to, well, Donald Trump.</p>
<p id="FkqehR">First, though, a side note on the reality of the march. The fact is, the vast majority of people who attend it won’t care much about the somewhat abstruse issues I dig into in this post. Nor will they be familiar with the controversies among and about the organizers. </p>
<p id="ZGWont">They will just show up because they’re angry at Trump and science is cool. And that’s pretty amazing, when you think about it — a testament to the incredible depth of civic energy and engagement that Trump has unleashed. People have awakened to a broad-based <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology">assault on US institutions</a> and they want to do something, so they’re putting their bodies in the street, for <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/18/14310520/womens-march-washington-dc-protest">women</a>, for <a href="http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/2/7/14458608/science-march-on-washington-pros-cons">science</a>, for <a href="https://350.org/april-29-2017-lets-march/">climate</a>, for <a href="http://taxmarch.org/">transparency</a>. It’s all to the good.</p>
<p id="bv00GP">So this post isn’t really about the march itself. It’s about some of the thornier issues it has raised regarding science’s place in society and its relationship to politics. </p>
<p id="KSUkZj">I want to begin by distinguishing two different ways of thinking about science — or rather, two different things that “science” refers to. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to call them science-theory, or science-t, and science-practice, or science-p. (Hopefully that won’t get too annoying.)</p>
<p id="LENDgP">They are very different, and keeping them distinct will help us figure out exactly what people are marching for and arguing about.</p>
<h3 id="oT5EIJ">The idea of science, in the abstract </h3>
<p id="sIAynZ">Science-t is the scientific method itself, the idealized essence of science. It claims nothing beyond what the empirical evidence supports. </p>
<p id="tNTrrw">That sounds simple, but in fact it is intensely difficult and profoundly unnatural. We humans were not shaped by evolution to identify truth. Why would we be? Membership in a tribe has far more survival value than objective accuracy. </p>
<p id="inkLPw">We are built to seek out social connection and identity, a sense of rootedness. We crave an understanding of the world and our place in it. We don’t necessarily want or need truth for that, just good stories. So we instinctively round out our worldviews with stories, myths, inherited assumptions, and speculation. </p>
<p id="7E9qBz">It would take years of meditative, ascetic practice for an individual to fully overcome this — to truly and directly see only what is in front of her. We can’t all be monks, so instead we solve for the problem at the collective level. Science-t is a kind of social technology meant to counterbalance our individual propensity to error, through mutual fact-checking. </p>
<p id="owk3Qk">In order to restrict its practitioners to what can be supported with evidence, it imposes a strict set of rules and procedures. </p>
<p id="oT1pNC">Structured experiments produce observations. Scientists posit hypotheses to explain the observations. If those results can be replicated in other experiments, confidence in the hypotheses increases. Eventually hypotheses become theories, and mutually reinforcing networks of theories.</p>
<p id="W2NChK">There is no such thing as empirical evidence sufficient to support certainty, so science-t offers none. In contains only probabilities and error bars, degrees of confidence on a continuum. Ultimately, everything is defeasible, subject to revision. Certainty is the domain of other human discourses, ideology and religion. </p>
<p id="zU969h">Similarly, there is no such thing as empirical evidence sufficient to adjudicate moral and prudential disputes. Science-t cannot bypass or short-circuit politics. The evidence can only tell us what is, not what should be.</p>
<p id="Ec9zXp">Political debates should be informed by our best current understanding. They should not involve falsehoods. But even those are moral and prudential judgments, not derived from science-t. </p>
<p id="WvCE8z">Science-t can help us figure out which policies help the sick and vulnerable, but it cannot tell us whether, or how much, we ought to help them.</p>
<p id="LbHX6m">Similarly, science-t can tell us what effects air pollution and carbon emissions will have on public health, but it cannot tell us whether we ought to prevent that suffering, or how to weigh that suffering against other rights and obligations. </p>
<p id="tVfmiT">Similarly, science-t can tell us that vaccinations don’t cause autism, but it is silent on whether we ought to vaccinate children. That is a moral (and prudential) decision. </p>
<p id="Z8Kc8y">And finally, science-t might help us determine what effects diversity and representation have on institutions, but it cannot tell us whether subaltern populations should be better represented. That is a moral (and prudential) question. </p>
<h3 id="BUXoiC">Why “science-based policy” is a bit of a misnomer</h3>
<p id="zY9c75">Science-t can help us identify problems. It can help determine which policies will have which effects. It can help establish a common baseline of facts. But it cannot tell us whether the problem is worth solving, or how to weigh the costs and benefits of solving it. Ultimately, the choice of policies, though ideally <em>informed</em> by science-t, is <em>based</em> on moral and prudential considerations. All human decisions are.</p>
<p id="Fz9qQ5">Now, let me be clear: I personally favor reducing carbon emissions, vaccinating children, and making institutions more diverse and representative. To say that these are moral (and prudential) judgments, not scientific judgments, is not some kind of <em>demotion</em>. It doesn’t demean those judgments or make them purely subjective. Improving society’s moral and prudential decision-making is something everyone is always and already involved in; there’s no sense pretending science-t can do the job for us.</p>
<p id="wie8QV">The point is, science-t is about empirical evidence and nothing beyond it. </p>
<h3 id="xzQNDD">The practice of science, in the real world</h3>
<p id="m8LtX2">In the real world, the ideals of science-t are embodied by science-p, the actual institutions, norms, and people doing science. Science-p is different from science-t in two vitally important ways.</p>
<p id="7Ne2aA">First, because it is composed of human beings, science-p never reaches the ideal of science-t. Work — lab research, surveys, field studies — is inevitably colored by personal history, professional and financial pressures, desire for recognition, and fear of failure. Replication is often absent or woefully inadequate; theories are often driven by hype and media attention; peer review is often weak. (Read Resnick on <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/3/14/11219446/psychology-replication-crisis">science’s replication crisis</a>.)</p>
<p id="ocx12V">It is a constant struggle for science-p to approximate the ideals of science-t. Which brings us to the second difference.</p>
<p id="x5fWUL">While science-t involves only first-order concerns about properly structured experiments, evidence, replication, etc., science-p, as a set of social institutions and norms, deals with a whole set of second-order considerations regarding its own institutional health. Science-p must be concerned not merely with doing good science-t, but with <em>the conditions that make doing good science-t possible</em>. (I made the same point about journalism in my <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology">post on tribal epistemology</a>.)</p>
<p id="i99kBi">The overarching issue facing science-p is how to get as close as possible to the ideal of science-t. That inevitably involves questions that are not themselves scientific. What’s the best way to fund science? How transparent should scientists be expected to be about funders, methods, and data? What steps should science-p take to diversify itself? To what extent should science-p engage in political lobbying? What role should science-p play in government rule-making? These are moral and prudential considerations about the health of institutions.</p>
<p id="j1W5Ty">A certain sort of person (see: cognitive scientist and popular author <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/is-science-political?utm_term=.sxZm5kNjN#.noVlAr7G7">Steven Pinker</a>) thinks that the way to keep science-p healthy is for scientists and scientific institutions to remain silent on contested questions of values and policy. In this view, scientists, at least in their capacity as scientists, should confine themselves to that which can be supported by science-t, their only proper interest and authority. The way this is usually phrased is that they don’t want science “politicized.” </p>
<p id="ceGvZn">This seems a bit naive. Science-p has always been political, both outwardly, in the uses to which it is put, and inwardly, in the way it reflects society’s inequitable racial and gender power structures. Scientists Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Sarah Tuttle, and Joseph Osmundson remind us of this in their bracing (if occasionally over-the-top) <a href="https://theestablishment.co/we-are-the-scientists-against-a-fascist-government-d44043da274e#.ku7gdek8d">cri de coeur against the Trump administration</a>. </p>
<p id="6YuAxK">More broadly, science-p is a set of institutions and norms amidst others, in a larger social ecosystem. It is part of the polity, so it is inescapably political. </p>
<p id="lQPNWO">The germ of value in Pinker’s argument is that scientists should not claim to speak on moral and prudential considerations as representatives of science-t. Again, science-t cannot speak on what is good or wise, only what is.</p>
<p id="6RLKn0">But there’s no reason scientists shouldn’t speak out on moral and prudential matters as representatives of science-p — that is, as representatives of the institutions that keep science-t alive and healthy. </p>
<p id="LYherB">The government agencies, research institutions, laboratories, and academies that do science-t must concern themselves with how good science-t can continue getting done. That might mean pushing for more funding (which Trump is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/trumps-science-health-budget/519768/">cutting</a>), more diversity, or more STEM education and outreach. It might mean protesting attempts by House Republicans to <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/340/6133/670.summary">politicize the National Science Foundation grantmaking process</a>. It might mean marching.</p>
<p id="uMTR8h">This distinction between science-t and science-p helps illuminate two of the controversies around the march. </p>
<h3 id="pMSA7Q">Diversity is hugely valuable to science-p</h3>
<p id="RKjIfy">First, much of the online fighting over the march has been about diversity and inclusion. Several early organizers have quit over the larger organizing committee’s ham-handed handling of these issues.</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I left the <a href="https://twitter.com/ScienceMarchDC">@ScienceMarchDC</a> organizing committee in March due to a toxic, dysfunctional environment and hostility to diversity and inclusion.</p>— Jacquelyn Gill (@JacquelynGill) <a href="https://twitter.com/JacquelynGill/status/853666551375048704">April 16, 2017</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<p id="X10HEF">In my experience — particularly my extensive experience as a white male — what motivates some scientists to resist these kinds of considerations is that they truly do have no place in science-t. At heart, science-t is nothing but a set of procedures meant to <em>screen out</em> positionality. The whole point is to determine what is true independent of any culturally specific perspective. In theory, a scientist’s background, race, socioeconomic status, etc. should not matter. </p>
<p id="mydM5d">But we do not live in theory (science-t). We live in practice (science-p). We are all shaped by our backgrounds and the social infrastructure in which we operate. Any social monocrop (say, all white men) will only mass produce the blind spots and biases of its individual members. By bringing more perspectives to the table, diversity makes the social technology of science-t — mutual checking, correcting, amending, and building — <em>more effective</em>.</p>
<p id="Dnzn1g">What’s more, closed systems cannot thrive. An institution that replicates society’s larger inequities also replicates its enormous waste of potential talent. Bringing in traditionally excluded groups brings in new energy and new ideas. (Meanwhile, Trump’s immigration policies are <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/31/14453566/trump-muslim-immigration-ban-foreign-university-students">driving foreign science students away</a>.) </p>
<p id="kTUV46">What’s more, precisely because science-t is a cosmopolitan ideal, operating independently of parochial perspectives, it can welcome anyone. It’s a point well-made in an essay by <a href="http://thebulletin.org/let-science-be-science-again10668">particle physicist Yangyang Cheng</a>, for whom science was a path from humble beginnings in China to the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, at Cornell University. “Despite the tainted history and current flaws of science,” she writes, “I, as a member of the underrepresented, still place my unwavering faith in its power as the great equalizer.”</p>
<p id="lGtpbM">In short, diversity and inclusion make science-p healthier and thus make for better science-t. They are not external, “political” considerations, they are, or should be, core concerns of anyone who supports science-t. That’s why they deserve a place at the heart of the march.</p>
<h3 id="zPeEUZ">The purported danger of “politicizing” science-p</h3>
<p id="6WbJ14">In a New York Times op-ed, geologist Robert Young <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/opinion/a-scientists-march-on-washington-is-a-bad-idea.html?_r=0">warned</a> that a march for science, “while well intentioned, will serve only to trivialize and politicize 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.”</p>
<p id="zA78QE">I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that horse is already out of the barn. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in the culture wars, but the culture wars are interested in you. Scientists are already caught up; the wedge is already driven.</p>
<p id="Ljb4in">The primary reason, as I have <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology">explained at tedious length</a>, is the decades-long campaign by right-wing media to convince its audience that America’s core institutions are irredeemably corrupted by leftists — government, academia, media, and science are the “four corners of deceit,” in Rush Limbaugh’s phrase.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Rush Limbaugh" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k8ex5QEiGZhXmnsn8yXDn6U16TY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4093794/Rush4CornersofDeceitUniversePIX.jpg">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/04/29/the_four_corners_of_deceit_prominent_liberal_social_psychologist_made_it_all_up" target="_blank">RushLimbaugh.com</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="lE1zPx">Science, like media, has done a piss-poor job of defending itself against this onslaught. And now, with Trump ascendant, things have reached the level of crisis. Republicans are defunding research, politicizing grantmaking, diminishing science’s role in the agency rulemaking process, and flat out refusing to accept conclusions they don’t like.</p>
<p id="6BB7Ro">That Republicans have been denying climate change for so long has made it seem familiar, but it remains incredible, a brazen rejection of scientific institutions and practices. They called society’s bluff and got away with it. And it turns out to have been a harbinger, a waystation on the road to what looks more and more like a wholesale rejection of empirics. </p>
<p id="IjOF3t">The conditions that make good science-t possible — robust, well-funded, independent institutions and a basic respect for accuracy — are under intense and immediate threat. </p>
<p id="YylAGy">We should not pretend that science-t itself dictates an answer to this debate, or to any political struggle. </p>
<p id="JbylXL">But we should also not pretend that science-p can remain silent. The institutions and people who do science, as well as all the people who value them, cannot remain neutral toward a threat to the conditions that make science possible. </p>
<p id="kDFsJH">The March for Science is (another) sign that those who believe in cosmopolitan values and democratic institutions are feeling some of the intensity that has, for too long, been the almost sole province of their tribalist opponents. Flaws of planning and communication aside, it cannot help but be a positive thing when thousands of people assemble to reaffirm that science is cool. </p>
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/19/15282820/march-for-science-politicalDavid Roberts