Spurred by Trump administration policies, scientists are becoming more engaged in politics, the Los Angeles Times reports.
It notes the researchers have penned opened letters to President Donald Trump, protested in the streets of San Francisco during the American Geophysical Union annual meeting, and decried the immigration ban blocking people from seven countries from entering the US. A March for Science in Washington, DC, is also in the works and a political action committee devoted to science, technology, engineering, and technology called 314 Action has been established, the LA Times adds. The University of California, Berkeley's Michael Eisen has announced that he'll be running for the Senate.
"What has motivated them? Donald Trump," Shaughnessy Naughton, the PAC founder and chemist, says. "But the bigger picture is the feeling that science is under attack."
Representative Bill Foster (D-Ill.), a trained physicist, adds that scientists are also motivated by an increasing disregard for the truth. "In science, if you stand up and say something you know is not correct, that's career-ending," Foster tells the LA Times. "It used to be that way in politics, but not anymore. To see how far we have fallen, that is particularly disturbing to scientists."