WASHINGTON, D.C.—People like Ashley Morris just don’t do this stuff.

American scientists research and write and teach. They vote, maybe sign a petition if they’re feeling especially indignant, but that’s it for most of them: politics are for the political scientists, not people running actual laboratories. Morris’s brand of march is a family hike on the trails of a Tennessee park.

On Saturday afternoon, though, she will be walking unfamiliar terrain: the streets of Washington, D.C. And the president of the Association of Southeastern Biologists, a professor who teaches genetics at Middle Tennessee State University, will be carrying the first demonstration sign of her life.

“My own young children recognize the value and importance of science,” Morris, 42, said Wednesday. “I march to show the administration that they should, too.”

The ascent of President Donald Trump has spawned an unusual wave of political activism.

The pink “pussyhats” of the massive women’s marches in January are now giving way to white lab coats. Thousands of scientists, science educators and professionals in scientific fields, plus thousands of people who appreciate them, will participate Saturday — Earth Day — in more than 300 scheduled March for Science events around the world, including one in Toronto and the main event in Washington.





The scientist-activist is far from a new concept; American scientists have been prominently involved in policy battles of all kinds, like the movements against dangerous pesticides and nuclear proliferation. Yet never before Trump have they felt compelled to take to the streets en masse in defence of science itself.

“It’s up to all of us to reclaim the importance of science and evidence,” said Kamyar Enshayan, 57, an agricultural engineer and director of the University of Northern Iowa’s Center for Energy and Environmental Education.

By the aggressive standards of recent Trump-inspired protest messages, the slogans of these marches will sound more like fortune cookies than calls to the barricades: Morris said her sign will read “Everyone needs science, science needs everyone.” But scientists’ very participation is an indication of dire concern — a departure from their long-held views about their appropriate role in American democracy.

Read the latest on Donald TrumpRead the latest on Donald Trump

Like Morris, many of the marchers say they were moved to action by Trump’s policies and statements: his severe proposed cuts to scientific programs at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, his dismissal of science on climate change, his general disdain for scientists.

Others, like University of Florida pharmacy dean Julie Johnson, say their involvement is less about Trump himself than an attempt to convey broader apprehension about what appears to be a diminishing public and political respect for scientific expertise.

Johnson, 55, is a leading figure in the study of pharmacogenomics, or how genes affect the way people react to drugs. She describes herself as “a very anti-political person.” But she has grown distressed by what she described as “what sometimes feels like a war on science among the public,” from left-wingers raising unfounded concerns about the safety of vaccines to right-wingers rejecting the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate.

She has never demonstrated before. On Saturday, she is not only marching but giving a speech at the event in Gainesville, Fla.

“I feel that scientists sort of have to stand up for a society that values truth, values facts, values data,” she said.

Uncontroversial in theory. Yet not in an America led by a vengeful president with a legion of supporters already skeptical of expert intellectuals. In fighting loudly for the value of objective truth in informing policy, scientists may be putting at risk the perception that they are objective.

The marchers’ decision to turn their profession into a visible political interest group has alarmed some of their colleagues, who worry that they risk being seen as just another bunch of aggrieved liberals out to embarrass Trump or gobble up taxpayer money. In a New York Times op-ed, geologist Robert Young wrote that the marches will end up inadvertently weakening science, further increasing “the wedge between scientists and a certain segment of the American electorate.”

When Hiranya Roychowdhury, 60, a science professor at New Mexico State University’s Dona Ana Community College, sent out an email broaching the subject of a march to a 100-person list of local colleagues, only four ended up telling him they would take part.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“There definitely is an atmosphere of fear in some quarters,” Roychowdhury said.

He believes increased visibility can only humanize scientists. His event in Las Cruces will feature an “Ask a Scientist” table to encourage people to talk to them.

Marco Cavaglia, 49, an astrophysicist and professor at the University of Mississippi, said he considers the local march he is organizing to be “more an outreach event than a cry for help or a protest,” showing the community that they are more than lab-dwelling monsters. But he also said he is attempting to make a statement against a trend of “people debating even hard evidence that should not be debated.”

“What will be the reaction? I live in Mississippi. This is not the most liberal of societies, so there is certainly the risk that it will increase polarization,” he said. “But I think it’s good for scientists to take a stand, take a position. We’ll see.”

Jerry Coyne will be staying home.

The well-known University of Chicago evolutionary biologist and writer said he is a progressive who demonstrated against racial segregation, the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa. But he said march organizers have harmed the cause by taking a “left-wing identity politics position” rather than sticking to indisputable scientific truths.

Like the women’s march before, the science march has been besieged from all sides by criticism over identity and inclusion.

Several scientists have dropped out of the march’s diversity committee, alleging that organizers have dismissed the long-standing inequity problems they claimed to care about. Even the announcement of “Science Guy” Bill Nye as an honorary chair was criticized by a smattering of scientists on identity grounds, as he is a white male.

Dissidents like Coyne, conversely, have heaped scorn on the organizers for tweets like one in January, later deleted, that asserted “colonization, racism, immigration, native rights, sexism, ableism, queer-, trans-, intersex-phobia, & econ justice are scientific issues.”

“They’re shooting themselves in the foot by allowing people to say these scientists are just another bunch of left-wing ideologues,” said Coyne, 67. “Which bears on the objectivity of scientists and the high regard in which they’re held by Americans.”

Even a science march free of identity politics would not be useful, Coyne said. If scientists want to persuade people, he said, they should write books, give talks and lobby politicians rather than “parading down the streets.”

Marchers, though, say Saturday is just a start of a new era of civic engagement.

Women’s marchers were energized into phoning their congresspeople and holding rallies and speaking out at town halls. Now scientists appear poised to conduct a high-stakes experiment testing what happens when they themselves become active participants in public life.

Read more about: