In Boston earlier this week, Michael Stebbins, advisor to a new scientific lobby group, spoke with NNB about why and how scientists should become more politically active.
Adrianne Appel
As midterm election campaigns were heating up last month, a new group called Scientists and Engineers for America launched in Washington, DC, to right U.S. science policy, which it feels has gone very wrong.
SEFORA says it wants the decisions that Washington makes about science to be done in a rational way, without any ideological meddling or misrepresentation. It also wants to bring more integrity and transparency to the science policymaking process. Its platform spans issues of energy, national security, and the environment.
Established as a lobby group, SEFORA aims to run ”issue ads” on TV and radio and in newspapers and magazines, highlighting the best or worst in a policy or candidate. The group also plans to target specific races in the upcoming election but says it is here for the long haul.
Its 31-member board of advisors includes 14 Nobel laureates. One of the advisors, Michael Stebbins, director of biology policy at the Washington, DC-based Federation of American Scientists, was in Boston earlier this week to speak with MIT and Harvard scientists about the new group. He also spoke with Nature Network Boston.
The title of your talk at MIT was “Restoring Scientific Integrity.” What do you mean by that?
We’re referring to the misuse of science—that is, making a link between abortion and breast cancer on the National Cancer Institute website in order to mislead people; editing scientific documents so that references to global warming are removed. SEFORA is an aggressive move on the part of the scientific community to get science used properly in Washington, DC.
How are you going to convince busy scientists or those who shun politics to become politically active?
Within the first 24 hours of our launch, we had 1,000 members. After two weeks, we had 5,000. That’s amazing success. There is a lot of frustration out there.
Has all the response been positive?
No. We felt attacked by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. And Wesley J. Smith, a fellow at the Discovery Institute [an organization that supports the teaching of intelligent design in schools] wrote a piece in the Weekly Standard saying we have no business doing this. He basically said we’re a front for special interests and advocacy. I think a lot of these guys are afraid of us and they should be.
Why do you think a group like this is necessary?
All groups in Washington have a pit bull. The one group that doesn’t is scientists. We’ve built a pit bull.
[President] Bush’s policies have had a chilling effect on science policy and a chilling effect on a public that isn’t scientifically literate. [The public] is seeing the president say the science community is doing something wrong.
What specific issues or bills will you be lobbying for, or against, in the next two years?
We’re targeting specific races in Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, and Ohio. We will point out which candidates have reasonable scientific views. We can work at the school board level, the state level, all the way up to the Oval Office. We can’t say, “Vote for so and so.” But we can say, “Here’s Bob’s record on stem cells.”
We’re hopeful that in every single election, candidates will have to describe their stance on science issues.
There’s also the huge issue of how Congress gets scientific information since the Office of Technology Assessment [which provided Congress with analysis of scientific and technical issues during the 1980s and early 1990s] closed.
What activism is needed in Massachusetts?
I’m not familiar with all the issues here. But on the stem cell issue in Massachusetts, if you’ve got a problem with [Governor Mitt] Romney’s position, boot him out. If there’s speculation he’ll run for president, well, that’s exactly why scientists need to be involved.
Are you hoping for local chapters?
We’ve had a lot of interest. We would love that.
Does your organization lean left?
We’re not partisan at all. We would have just as much of a problem with someone on the left talking about bringing intelligent design into the schools as someone on the right.
What’s your take-home message to scientists?
Join our group. Make a video commercial for us. Write a blog for us. Organize a local event. We would like to see this community and all communities take an active role in policy. Ask your congressman his positions on science issues. Then send the answers to us. Do something, even if you only send an e-mail to your congressman.
And if you don’t like us, we’re not going to stifle dissent.