Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among more than twelve thousand scientists who have signed open letters addressed to President-elect Donald Trump voicing concerns about the incoming administration’s attitudes toward multiculturalism, climate change, and the role of science in policymaking.
Scientists started speaking out about potential Trump policies even before he was elected. In September, 376 members of the National Academy of Science, including 30 Nobel laureates, released a letter emphasizing that climate change is real and warning against withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.
During the campaign, Trump dismissed climate science and promised to withdraw from that agreement. He has walked back that rhetoric slightly in recent days, saying he has an “open mind” about the Paris agreement. But his cabinet picks have also raised concerns — not only about climate policy — and the voice of the science community’s disapproval is growing.
Since the election, three additional petitions have garnered more than 12,800 signatures in support of multicultural inclusiveness, strong climate policy, and science-based decision making.
The letter with the most signatures started as an email chain among female colleagues and grew into what’s now called 500 Women Scientists. It’s a bit of a misnomer, as the petition currently has more than 10,500 signatures.
One of those women is oceanographer Lauren Mullineaux, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She doesn’t normally sign petitions, she said, but this one tapped into a couple of her core beliefs about science.
“One of those is that policies should be based on science. And science, to me, means data and observations, not opinions, necessarily,” Mullineaux said. “The other thing it tapped into was my feeling that science needs to be inclusive — it needs to cross nations, it needs to cross races, it needs to cross genders. We need everybody to be invested in science.”
That message of inclusivity was really at the heart of the women scientists’ letter. It included an eight-point pledge to work for a more equal and inclusive society and science community
At MIT, 332 faculty members from across the university released a similar letter this week. It affirms three core “shared values” that co-author Nancy Kanwisher, a neurobiologist at MIT, says she never thought she’d have to defend:
For Kanwisher, one lesson coming out of this election is that the scientific community has failed to communicate to the public how fundamentally important science is to society. This letter is not even step one, she says — it’s step zero.
“The first thing to do is to identify the problem and make a public statement, so here’s our public statement,” Kanwisher said. “Now we have a huge amount of work to be done on on multiple fronts, just one of which is to better communicate to the public the importance of science.”
Of course, this letter isn’t a unanimous statement by the MIT faculty, and there are far more than ten thousand women in science. But Kanwisher says she hasn’t encountered anyone who disagrees with the core values. Some opted not to sign her letter because of “nitpicky” differences of opinion about wording. Many others simply don’t know about the letter, Kanwisher says.
The concerns of the science community are not monolithic. For some, specific policy issues loom large. Three dozen scientists have signed a letter asking President Barack Obama to permanently ban oil drilling in the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast while he still has the power to do so. A letter organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists — now signed by more than 2,300 scientists, including 22 Nobel Prize winners — reaffirms some of the same values as the MIT letter, but with a greater focus on environmental policy and science funding.
While there have been few formal statements from the incoming administration regarding science funding, many scientists fear cuts are coming, especially for environmental science. Trump’s space policy advisor did say in interviews last week that earth science should perhaps be moved out of NASA to other agencies, such as NOAA or the National Science Foundation, both of which have much smaller budgets.
Kerry Emanuel, a prominent climate scientist at MIT who has been vocal in the past about his conservative political leanings, sees a dire future for climate and environmental research under president-elect Trump.
“It’s a little hard to predict, but I think there will be a brain drain, and it will take three forms,” Emanuel said. “Young scientists will move to different fields of science, older ones may retire early, and mid-career scientists may leave the country.”
That’s an extreme view, but it’s clear that many in the academic science community are approaching Trump’s presidency with trepidation and a healthy dose of defensiveness.
