Will Americans start seeing more lab coats at political rallies like the upcoming March for Science in the nation’s capital, San Diego and hundreds of other locations?

While many scientists have shied away from explicitly political actions in recent decades, the community throughout history has spoken publicly on a wide variety of social, technological and ideological issues. That has included everything from opposing fascism, nuclear proliferation and the Vietnam War to sitting on government panels that advise elected leaders on stem-cell research involving human embryos.

Sometimes history has proven the scientific majority to be correct, such as with the overall benefits of vaccination. At other times, history has shown that scientists are vulnerable to an assortment of biases, such as with eugenics research and the long-held view of sexual orientation as a lifestyle choice.

With the election of President Donald Trump, who denies that climate change is occurring and has threatened to shrink research budgets, scientists are again becoming more confrontational in their politics. They’re even taking to the streets, including the nationwide March for Science protests planned for April 22. Physicists, oceanographers and biomedical specialists are expected to join ranks with environmental leaders, K-12 science teachers and others at those gatherings.


It was almost a given that San Diego would be one of the rally spots. The region commands international acclaim as a hub of trailblazing science.

UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography is a premiere name in climate science, with six decades of pioneering work in the field. The area is also home to renowned people studying the brain, genetics, viruses, diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s, water quality, earthquakes, the Big Bang, customized medicine and many other subjects at the vanguard of science and health care.

While some in this region and elsewhere see the more visible activism as long overdue, others fear it will widen partisan divides. And some are keeping a low profile, partly because they’re worried about being blacklisted for receiving federal research dollars.

Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University and a prominent advocate for taking action to prevent climate change, speaks at a rally during the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 13, 2016. (Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP)


Trump first drew the ire of scientists while on the campaign trail by calling global warming a hoax. The concerns have ratcheted up as the president has tapped two key deputies who are openly hostile to climate scientists, left dozens of scientific advisory positions unfilled and called for double-digit cuts to environmental and biomedical programs.

Disturbed by the notion that America is losing a shared sense of what qualifies as fact, scientists and their supporters are starting to mount campaigns to champion science as a key part of the vision for the nation’s future. Their critics said this agenda unmasks what they’ve long known scientists to be: political creatures who aren’t open-minded in their work.

“This is the first time as scientists that they are defending science itself against what they see as the new government’s rejection of decision-making based on scientific reason and scientific consultation and scientific findings,” said Kelly Moore, a sociology professor at Loyola University Chicago who specializes in topics involving scientific and social movements.

H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow on energy and the environment at the Heartland Institute, an organization well-known for questioning consensus findings by the worldwide community of climate scientists, said it’s clear that scientists are simply trying to preserve their pots of government money.


“They’re destroying and hurting the credibility of their own field of science the more they enter into the realm of politics, speaking with a voice that is meant to persuade you to give them more resources,” Burnett said.

What’s undisputed is that from oncologists to anthropologists to climatologists, scientists are wading into activism all over the United States.

A political action committee called 314 Action, named for the first three digits of Pi, launched a campaign earlier this year to help scientists run for office against incumbent lawmakers the group labels as “anti-science.” Hundreds of people have expressed interest in becoming those electoral challengers.

Meanwhile, dozens of scientific organizations have publicly endorsed the March for Science, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society with more than 120,000 members. Additional supporters of this Earth Day event include national organizations like the American Geophysical Union and advocacy groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Coastkeeper Alliance.


EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt holds up a hardhat he was given during a visit to the Consol Pennsylvania Coal Company’s Harvey Mine in Sycamore, Pa., on April 13, 2017. (Gene J. Puskar / AP)

Think scientists aren’t political? These examples will make you think again »

“We want to come together as a group of diverse scientists and also people who believe in science to say that science upholds the common good, and we need science to be incorporated into policy-making,” said Joanna Spencer-Segal, a member of the march’s national steering committee and a physician-scientist at the University of Michigan.

Some scientists have spoken out publicly against the march, including writing opinion pieces in major news publications arguing that such an event could undermine the credibility for science.


Still others, such as David Victor, a professor of global politics at UC San Diego who studies climate-change policies, said the march and similar events will likely have little impact on the public’s perceptions of scientists.

“It will signal to the folks who care about science that there are lots of people who care about science, but they already knew that,” he said. “And it will signal to the folks who want to cut the federal budget to the bare bones that science is a well-organized interest group.”

The debate is happening as long-range projections are still being hashed out concerning the extent to which climate change would harm the environment.

For now, the public seems to hold scientists in relatively high regard.


An October poll by the Pew Research Center found that 76 percent of U.S. adults had at least a “fair amount” of confidence in scientists.

The only American institution that had more trust was the military, according to the survey. Elected officials came in last, with 27 percent of respondents having at least a “fair amount” of confidence and 19 percent saying they had none at all.

It’s uncertain what impact the march and similar campaigns will have on the American political narrative around science, but such efforts are worthwhile, said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University and a prominent advocate for taking action to prevent climate change.

“One of the ways that social movements work is by people standing up and being counted, and by building coalitions and building alliances among different sorts of people,” Oreskes said. “If the American people are prepared to stand out in the street and say, ‘We support science,’ that’s actually a hugely important thing.


“Scientists are in a challenging moment,” she added. “I think everyone sees now that the threat to science is very real and very profound.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading scientific voice on global warming, has predicted harm from drought, wildfires and crop failures that will likely increase dramatically toward the end of the 21st Century. (David McNew / Getty Images)

As evidence for human-caused climate change has continued to mount in the past decade, from record high global temperatures to melting ice caps, the opposition has broadened from outright denial of global warming to varying levels of skepticism. These critics also have said scientists are exaggerating their projections of the damage to come from climate change.

A leading skeptic is Myron Ebell, who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Ebell, who ran Trump’s transition team for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said climate change is likely happening, but that it’s unclear whether humans are causing it or how bad the effects will be.


“They know the ideal policies, the perfect economic set-up that’s going to get you what you want,” Ebell said ironically about scientists and Democratic policy-makers during a speech in March at the Heartland Institute’s 12th annual International Conference on Climate Change. “Those policies, once they enter the political realm, no matter how good they sound in theory, are always made as inefficient as, and in many cases, as criminal as possible.

“So what we have now as the result of … global warming policy since the early 1990s is a climate-industrial complex that is sucking our economy dry for no benefit,” he added.

There’s a significant amount of uncertainty about how powerful the impact of climate change will be and how successfully — or not — humanity will adapt.

The more conservative estimates — including those published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading scientific voice on this issue — have predicted harm from drought, wildfires and crop failures that will increase dramatically toward the end of the 21st Century.


For years now, surveys from all manner of pollsters have shown that a majority of Americans believe climate change is occurring and that human activities play some role in that process. But far fewer Americans have said they would make major lifestyle and purchasing changes because of climate change, with those figures dropping the most during economic recessions.

Ralph Keeling, a scientist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, plans to be a keynote speaker at the March for Science in San Diego. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / Union-Tribune)

As climate scientists try to win the hearts and minds of Americans, their opponents have tried to convince politicians and the public that dramatic efforts to curb the burning of fossil fuels are necessary.

The opponents’ strategies have included paying for billboard ads, funding the research of professors whose views run counter to the scientific consensus, lobbying Congress and mobilizing the public to target outspoken scientists who have called for greater government intervention to curb climate change.


Last month, a handful of minority-view climate scientists testified before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. They asked Congress to pay for “red teams” to conduct research looking into potential natural causes of climate change.

The panel included scientists who have long questioned the dangers of climate change, including Judith Curry, president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network and professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Roger Pielke Jr., a professor in the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Colorado; and John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and the state’s official climatologist.

Throughout history, being outspoken on controversial issues has sometimes led to significant consequences for the scientists involved.

In the early 1950s, for example, many scientists who opposed nuclear proliferation and testing were branded as communists by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and subjected to “loyalty checks” by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, according to historians.


“A lot of people would say that’s really when scientists became apolitical because so many jobs during the Cold War were federal jobs if you were a scientist,” said Audra Wolfe, a historian of Cold War science and author of the book “Competing With the Soviets: Science, Technology and the State in Cold War America.”

“You had to clear background checks, and any dabbling in leftist politics could make it impossible for you to get a fellowship or a job,” she added.

During the second half of the 20th Century, scientists embraced the apolitical mantle while taking up government advisory roles, Wolfe said. Influencing and informing policy-making from the inside became the rule, although there were a few exceptions. For instance: A good number of scientists, and science students, protested the Vietnam War and reconsidered their role in developing technology related to weapons systems.

With the election of Trump, scientists today seem to be grappling once again with the transition from the inside to outside political game.


“Watching scientists wake up to this conversation feels a lot like the late ’60s,” Wolfe said. “… It’s not about classified defense research, but it’s about what does it mean to work for the government? What does it mean to acknowledge that you’re being political?”

Today’s most vocal scientists on climate change have also had to grapple with personal attacks.

Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, said he has received death threats since the late 1990s. He’s also frequently the subject of critical messaging campaigns by groups such as the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

“Science and reason are under renewed assault now in the age of Trump,” said Mann, who plans to attend one of the science marches on April 22. “Scientists have a responsibility to make sure that our public discourse over issues of policy-relevant science is informed by an honest assessment of what the science has to say.”


Other scientists who have felt a responsibility to publicly spotlight the projected threats posed by climate change have taken lower-key approaches.

One of them is Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate researcher at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who has reached out to faith communities, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, with his message. Ramanathan, a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, played a significant role informing Pope Francis’s encyclical that called for big lifestyle changes to combat global warming.

“I am not involved in the March for Science,” he said. “I am trying my best to stay focused on discussing climate change in an apolitical forum.”

Speaking recently at the Bethel Seminary, an evangelical school at Bethel University in San Diego, he urged the audience to vote for candidates who are informed by science.


“There’s a 10 percent possibility that we missed something,” he said. “But the question is, do you want to hope on this 10 percent and send your children to this hot planet? My argument is to take action not because of the certainty but because of uncertainty. I can’t tell you which way it will go.”

Still other climate scientists are just starting to think about political activism.

Scripps climatologist Ralph Keeling, who is carrying on his father’s groundbreaking research tying the rise of carbon-dioxide levels to global warming, recently agreed to be a keynote speaker at the March for Science in San Diego.

The 60-year-old scientist said he’s never served on government scientific panels and never participated in an event like the march.


Keeling also said he’s still thinking about where he draws the line between science and activism. “I haven’t really defined it because I haven’t walk toward it,” he said. “I’ve stayed pretty clear of it. You don’t need to know where the border is to live in Kansas.”


Twitter: @jemersmith

Phone: (619) 293-2234

Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com

UPDATES:


This story was originally published on April 6, and it was updated on April 15.