Meet the Scientists Running for Office

Science doesn’t have opinions — and it’s not especially interested in any that you’ve got either. Science does have hypotheses, and it does have data and it does run a whole lot of experiments to get still more data. And then it has results. You may or may not like the results, but if the work has been done right, you don’t get to deny them. In an era in which facts must wrestle with “alternative facts,” that is a memo that fewer and fewer elected officials seem to have gotten — or at least they haven’t read it. For every researcher studying childhood development who concludes that sexual orientation is fixed from birth, there’s a politician saying nope, it’s a choice. For every epidemiologist or virologist who shows again and again that vaccines are safe and effective, there’s a politician who insists that somewhere in a Big Pharma lab, someone is sneaking autism sauce into the shots. For every environmental researcher who explains that climate change is real, deadly and in large measure our fault, there is a politician — actually there are lots and lots of politicians — who call it a hoax. (Worse, a Chinese hoax.) At last, it seems, the scientists have had enough, as a new TIME video makes clear. Faced with a President who originated the Chinese hoax canard, an Environmental Protection Agency Administrator who has said he “would not agree” that carbon dioxide is a principle caus...
Source: TIME: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news