This picture of Garry Cooper was taken at as he spoke to a crowd of almost 60,000 scientists and supporters, during the March for Science on April 22 2017. It was submitted to Naturejobs as part of the #ScientistAtWork 2018 photo competition. Cooper tells Rebecca Wild about the story behind the picture.
Entries to the #ScientistAtWork competition close on 31 March. You can find out more at this link.
Caroline Weinberg, an organizer for the upcoming march in Washington DC, expects smaller crowds than last year, although she admits her prediction may again be off the mark. “Last we expected 40,000 people, and we got around 100,000,” she says. She adds that most of the marchers in the nation’s capital city were concerned citizens, not practicing researchers.
In Washington DC and elsewhere, organisers envision events with fewer marchers, placards and chants but more advocacy-related activities. Weinberg and others aim to offer hands-on projects for those taking to the streets in Washington DC. In Berlin, Germany, organisers are planning a “local hero” programme where scientists will give public talks at bars, cafes and other venues. March-related activities in Portland, Oregon, will include speeches by local politicians and a science expo with at least 30 presenters, including a juggler who demonstrates the principles of physics.
The election and inauguration of Donald Trump for US president helped to spur marchers last year, and Weinberg says that she suspects that some scientists this year may be motivated to speak out against Trump’s recent budget proposal, which called for drastic cuts to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending plan . But she adds that the march and other forms of science activism shouldn’t depend on crises to draw interest and participation. “Our challenge is to build up a huge crowd and send a message that galvanizes everyone but to also make it sustainable,” she says. “We can’t allow our advocacy to be tethered to those moments.”
Roughly 15,000 people attended last year’s march in Portland, but that kind of enthusiasm will be hard to replicate, says Denesa Oberbeck, a behavioral neuroscientist at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland and a member of the steering committee for this year’s march. “There’s some fatigue and some burnout, but we need to keep fighting,” she says. “We have to maintain an activist stance.”
Kristine Wadosky, a cancer researcher at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, marched in Washington DC last year carrying a sign that read “Curing cancer is non-partisan.” This year, she plans to join the march in Chicago, Illinois, where she will give a talk on advanced prostate cancer for the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. She says that she’s just as energized about science advocacy as ever before, and she thinks that many other young scientists feel the same way.
This time, Wadosky says, she won’t need a sign to send her message, which isn’t especially complicated. “I just want to go to show that I’m a scientists, and I exist,” she says.
Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.
Suggested reading:
Growing pains
In support of the March
Reflections on a movement
[The views expressed are personal].
The protestors in Pune{credit}Sourabh Dube{/credit}
There is a need to focus attention on the current trajectory of scientific pursuits in India – we need rationality and scientific temper in our society, and for that, we need the scientists of today and tomorrow.
The process of rational thinking needs to be inculcated early in life by encouraging young children to ask questions, by providing avenues for finding logical answers, by discouraging blind faith and acts associated with the perpetuation of blind faith. In many of these contexts, formal education can help. Hence there is a clear need to develop curricula which encourage curiosity and experiment-driven learning and discourage faith-driven irrational approaches and unquestioning attitude to learning.
One of the major demands during our ‘India March for Science’ was to increase the budget on education and spend it on developing young minds to think rationally and critically. While the exact proportion of GDP that should be spent on education can be debated, there is no doubt that in India there is a clear need to increase governmental spending on education at all levels.
Another demand during the event was that spending on research in science should be increased. For the last many decades, every successive government has promised to increase allocation for science research for various departments. Departments affiliated to defence research have seen substantial increases in certain years but civilian science research departments have not been as consistently fortunate.
While it is true that in recent years the funds allocated during the budget speech by the Finance Minister of the country appears higher than the previous year and hence can be used to counter the scientists’ arguments that there is no budgetary increase, the larger reality is far less promising. Funding is unpredictable, with even inflation not allowed for in some years, it is seldom available on time, and it is terribly patchily distributed. The Director General of CSIR (the largest network of laboratories in the country) has admitted near bankruptcy, stipends of research personnel are being withheld or delayed; there is thus little doubt that the funding for civilian scientific research in India is sub-optimal.
Science research is a continuous, often long-term, process. It can’t start and stop arbitrarily. Hence there has to be an equivalence between the sustainability of efforts and sustainability of the associated funding. Also, just like in science education, rationality should be the mainstay of any science research. For this to be practised, development of reasonable models based on available data, refinement and testing of these models and evidence-based modification or rejection of the models should be the basis of scientific efforts and policy.
Funding for research where the outcome appears to be already defined is undesirable – a case in point is the Scientific Validation and Research on Panchgavya (SVAROP) project. The research aims to prove the usefulness of panchgavya, a concoction of five cow products (dung, urine, milk, curd and ghee) used in traditional Indian rituals. The Indian Science Congress, a major annual scientific meeting in the country, has also been used as a platform to promote pseudoscience. Such efforts undermine the basic tenets of science where research questions are asked with a hypothesis in mind and the knowledge gained is likely to support or refute the hypothesis. Instead, these regressive efforts foster superstition in society by pretending that pseudoscience is ‘science’.
The Indian march
At least 15000 people participated in the Indian march in several cities. About 700 people participated in the Pune march. Besides demonstrating solidarity with the global ‘March for Science’, the Indian students, teachers and researchers stressed on inculcating rational thinking in the society. The relevance of rationality in society was highlighted by the explicit and public reference to the work done over many decades in Maharashtra by the rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, an intellectual who was murdered for his stance against superstition.
{credit}Sourabh Dube{/credit}
August 9 was chosen for its historic significance as the day of the launch of the Quit India movement against erstwhile British rulers, with an implicit corollary of self-empowerment in making societal decisions. It is World Indigenous Peoples’ Day, underlining the most underprivileged sections of society in need of the empowering potential of science. It’s also Nagasaki Day, which reminds us that science disconnected with society can be used for horrific ends. Together, these reminders make the urgent point underlined by the march for science, that science must be recommitted and reconnected to society, and that society must rediscover the progressive potential of science and value it appropriately as an open-minded, fearless enquiry into causes.
We marched despite direct orders prohibiting some scientists from participating in the ‘March for Science’ and many refraining from joining due to perceived threats to their jobs and possible harassment. The practitioners of science who hit the streets were demanding freedom of speech to express their concerns, freedom for dissent and discussion, assurance of steady supply of funds for pursuing scientific research, provision of more funds for education for all.
In a democratic country such as India, these are basic demands to make. If a country’s scientific community need to take to the streets for such basics, there is serious need for introspection.
The march in Kolkata
I marched for science in New Delhi because the funding support for scientific research in India is sorely inadequate, having remained stagnant in the range 0.8%-0.9% of India’s GDP for far too long. Other countries with similar aspirations have provided financial support for science exceeding 3% of GDP. It is not difficult to imagine the crisis facing most Indian scientific institutions because of paucity of funds.
The education system that supplies the scientific manpower is also in bad shape. The public school system, where a majority of Indian children get their education, is deplorable. Many schools are without proper buildings, toilets, and playgrounds, have overcrowded classrooms, face acute shortage of teachers and are without laboratory facilities. As a result, a vast majority of children are deprived of the opportunity of being a part of the scientific manpower of this country.
The college and university system is also reeling under acute shortage of infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff, and funds for research.
The situation is crying out for urgent redressal, and the march demanded allocation of 3% of GDP for R&D and 10% of GDP for education.
A bigger area of concern is that in recent times attempts to spread unscientific beliefs and superstition are on the rise. Sometimes, unscientific ideas lacking in evidence are being propagated as science, patronised by persons in high positions. Untested personal beliefs of educational administrators and textbook writers are infiltrating the education system, and mythology is being taught as history.
This is vitiating the cultural atmosphere of the country. There is an article in the Indian Constitution (Article 51A) that demands every Indian citizen to develop a scientific temper, humanism and spirit of inquiry, and the current cultural atmosphere runs counter to that. The march demanded that the government uphold this provision of the Constitution.
Suggested links:
Thousands across India march in support of science
April 22 began with a drizzly ride on rented bikes through the streets of southeast D.C. to the Washington monument. I was accompanied by Dylan Jones, an outdoor recreation and environmental writer from West Virginia. “I typically opt for escaping civilization on Earth Day,” Jones said, “but today I decided to go straight into the heart of it.” We weaved through roads littered with people in rain shells and lab coats, carrying vibrant signs and rainbow umbrellas.
London March for Science: 22 April 2017 Credit: Getty/Nur Photo
A sighting of Doctor Who actor Peter Capaldi “marching alongside physicists, astronomers and biologists” at the London march on 22 April proved irresistible to Daily Mail headline writers, who wrote: ‘”What do we want? Evidence-based policy. When do we want it? After peer review: Boffins’ VERY academic chant as Doctor Who joins thousands protesting against Brexit during global March for Science.” Continue reading
On Saturday, April 22nd, myself and an estimated 11,000 other science supporters marched in Berlin. The event was part of the global “March for Science” that took place in over 600 cities worldwide. While the March here and everywhere else was a great success in putting a spotlight on the importance of research and the danger of building on false facts, I’m worried it won’t have a lasting effect on the public perception of science if we don’t improve our science communication.
The March for Science passes the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, Germany
Scientists across the United States are just now returning to their labs after a weekend of marching, waving signs and, in many cases, wringing out rain-soaked lab coats. The steady rain that fell Saturday, 22 April, on the March for Science in Washington DC didn’t dampen participants’ enthusiasm for standing up for “science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence-based policies in the public interest,” to quote the March for Science website’s mission statement.
{credit}Kate Carbone{/credit}
But now that the march is over, scientists have to face some important questions: What message did they deliver, what comes next and what does it all mean for their careers? Continue reading
ts movements are messy, external scrutiny is good, and mistakes are inevitable. But there are learning opportunities too, says Story Sylwester.When I was in graduate school, I learned to create classes using backward design. Backward design encourages setting goals and then planning a course of action to meet those goals. This strategy can be applied to almost anything in life. “What do I want for dinner?,” for example, can transform into “I need dinner to be quick” or “let’s get rid of what’s about to go bad in the fridge.”
Women in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, mark International Women’s Day on 8 March 2017 (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)
When Rebecca Solnit was born in 1961 some Ivy League universities did not admit women, a few Southern US colleges and universities only admitted whites, and some elite institutions still banned Jews. The Berlin Wall was erected that summer and the Cold War was at its height. Continue reading
