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Science is Political

A tanned white techbro with slicked back hair, and sunglasses stands with his arms spread in smug indignation. He wears a sport coat over a salmon color shirt with a popped collar, jeans, and white shoes: Science isn't political!* *Translation: "I don't have to think about how science is political because I don't feel personally affected."
A group of men and women move through a crowd playing or talking on their phones. When a government supports science in ways we like, we don't notice it.
In a sky blue panel, a white obelisk like structure with three points at the top is wrapped in a banner that says "Ivory Tower" At least the privileged ones don't notice: others have never had the luxury of living in a scientific utopia.
A flat stylized profile of Donald Trump's face in yellow and orange has the text overlaid: The election of Donald Trump has ended security for even the scientifically privileged, though.
In monotone blues is the pediment and pillars of the NIH building peeking from behind dark blue foliage. The National institutes for Health (NIH) fund a broad range of basic biology research through grants and other means.
Nancy Parmalee is a medical biologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is a white woman with shoulder length black hair and glasses. Nancy grimaces and looks to her left: [Trump]'s shown with the EPA that grants can be frozen with the stroke of a pen. If grants are frozen, research stops. There's no reason it couldn't happen to the NIH. Stem-cell research is especially vulnerable.
Former vice president Mike Pence, a pale pink white man with white hair, a sour scrunched face, and angry beady eyes like a bird stands at a podium with a finger raised: I am a Christian who believes that life begins at conception and that a human embryo is human life.... Scientific breakthroughs have rendered embryonic stem-cell research obsolete, effectively removing any perceived need to destroy human embryos. To the right, three scientists, one looking through a microscope look shocked at his statement because Pence is wrong: Substantial medical research still relies on embryonic stem cells.
Trump has already made threats against renewable energy development. Amanda Grennell, a material scientist at the university of Colorado stands before a field of solar panels and wind turbines. She is a white woman with a long reddish blonde braided ponytail: The resources we need to do science—equipment, supplies, graduate students & post-docs—will become more limited, slowing our research on renewable energy. Worst case scenario: policymakers are allowed to intervene in the grant selection process, allowing them to impede science that goes against their political agenda, or that they see as 'wasteful'.
On top of a large depiction the Canadian flag: A similar political attack on science happened very recently—right across our northern border.
Mika McKinnon is a geologist and science writer. She is a white woman in a blue hoodie and jeans. She wears glasses and her dark hair in a bun: ln [former Prime Minister Stephen] Harper's Canada, the public lost access to our science. Our government scientists were muzzled, census restricted, libraries tipped into dumpsters, and long-running research abandoned. Without access to data, we couldn't advocate for science-driven policy.
An old white man in a suit dumps a trash can full of papers into a roaring barrel fire. When funding is based on ideology rather than scientific criteria, it threatens the very ability to do science. But the human costs are huge too, not only for scientists who may lose their jobs.
A rusty fishing boat floats on a deep green ocean which takes the form of a large fish: For instance, a large proportion of the world's poorest people rely on fish for food.
David Shiffman is a Marine ecologist at the University of Miami. He is a white man with curly black hair and a goatee: Science-based fisheries management in the U.S. has been a rare area of bipartisan agreement. If the U.S. abandons our current practice of strict science-based fisheries management... fisheries may collapse. Caption: As Shiffman and others have pointed out, a "compromise" between scientific and unscientific policies isn't scientific.
On a flat green backdrop is a stylized fish skeleton: If a fish population needs a 90% reduction in fishing to recover, cutting fishing by 50% won't help it. The result: higher food prices and shortages, all because of an anti-regulatory attitude.
Caption: Climate change is the obvious example here. Compromise policies that solve nothing have been de facto for over 20 years now, despite strong consensus among scientists that we need strong action. A giant wave looms over the tops of skyscrapers as Trump stands in the foreground doing his little OK signs: Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!
Lisa Manglass is a health physicist and environmental engineer at Clemson University. She is a white woman with red hair and a yellow hard hat: History has demonstrated the damage that lack of oversight can cause to the public, especially in marginalized communities. Regulatory oversight is important to protect people and the environment from the risks of releasing chemical and radiological toxins.
A sickly stream of orange water pours into a drinking glass: Nuclear energy and waste disposal grab headlines, But we only have to look at the ongoing water-poisoning crisis in Flint, Michigan to see an immediate reason for regulation and oversight.
An arab man in a suit is stamped on the face, leaving "NO ENTRY" written across it. His one open eye forms the O of the "NO": Some of the people damaged are themselves scientists. Trump's executive order banning people from certain predominantly Muslim nations blocked a helluva lot more scientists (and doctors, and students, and...) from the US than it did “bad dudes.”
Caption: When scientists' identities as people are attacked, that hurts science too. Emily Willingham, white woman with short dark hair and a biologist and science writer, wrote in Forbes: "When a scientist shows up to do her work, she doesn’t leave her sex, her gender, her ethnicity, her physical features, her disabilities, her past or her perspective at home."
The Affordable Care Act (ACA, or "Obamacare") helps control health care costs, but the current administration has made it a priority to eliminate the ACA. Jesse Shanahan, a white fem presenting person with purple hair and an undercut is an astronomer, science communicator, and disability advocate: Scientists are first and foremost people, which means they have physical and mental health needs. Cuts to healthcare and government programs related to health can severely impact scientists in all fields, even more so if they are disabled!
Trump's style of leadership is capricious, authoritarian, and xenophobic.
Trump, sweating and smearing bronzer on his shirt, points to an folder labeled scrawled "Excecutiv Order": He rewards or punishes based on personal whims.
That's incompatible with science, as we've learned from the examples of Stalin, Mao, and Hitler. A yellow spotlight illuminates a dark blue brick wall and casts the shadow of a figure in a Nazi coat and hat. It looms over a man and a woman clutching red orange folders in their arms. Many scientists were murdered or fled these authoritarian regimes as refugees.
A close up of Pence's face, more sour and angry than ever, his beady little eyes are orange as he sweats profusely. VP Mike Pence is strongly opposed to civil rights for LGBTQ people, saying that employers should be able to discriminate in the name of religious freedom.
Pence stands in front of the doors to both a men and women's restrooms, barring the entry of a non-binary presenting person. Civil rights restrictions—such as "bathroom laws" targeting trans people—affect the many LGBTQ scientists both in their workplaces and in their private lives.
Cut into the negative space of a row of angry police in riot gear in batons are two black people, looking up worryingly at them: Scientists of color already face institutional racism, and Trump's "law and order" rhetoric echoes racist politicians past and present.
Raychelle Burks is a Chemist at St. Edwards University. She is a black woman with long, full curly hair: People tell me to “just focus on the job”. But how can I do my job if my students, my collaborators, my colleagues, and I aren't allowed to be who we are? If we're afraid all the time?
Science is political, and always has been. You might not have noticed it before, but you certainly will if the science we all rely on is taken away. A series of raised fists in various flesh tones each hold a tool of learning, from pencils to telescopes to beakers, and even a cute axolotl. The letters RESIST are written across the arms of the raised fists.

Description

  • The Nib

  • 2017

Originally published in 2017, science is under threat once again as right wing reactionaries set their sights on science and science journalist, wrongfully criticizing what they see as a "liberal bias" and falsely claiming that science shouldn't be political while actively using political power to tear it down.

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