Scientists go political in new organization

Ongoing frustration with the trivial role science has played in the current congressional elections, combined with a deeper sense that the Bush administration is ignoring and misusing science, has led a group of prominent scientists to form a national political advocacy organization with the intent of influencing elections and government policy.

Within a few weeks of its creation in September, Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) claimed nearly 5000 members. The group’s 19-member board of advisers includes eight Nobel laureates and President Bill Clinton’s former science advisers, physicists John Gibbons and Neal Lane.

The new organization evolved from a political group formed by several of the same scientists prior to the 2004 presidential election to support Senator John Kerry’s bid for the White House. “The theme all the way along has been frustration that the key [science] issues are not debated in the campaigns,” said physicist Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists and a founder of SEA. “It’s one thing [for scientific organizations] to write position papers, and it is another thing to get candidates to answer questions about where they stand on key science policy issues.”

Although the earlier organization, in which Kelly also played a central role, drew a strong and critical response from the administration and some Republicans on Capitol Hill (see Physics Today, August 2004, page 32 ), it formed too late to have much influence on the outcome of that election, said physicist Burton Richter, the former head of SLAC and one of SEA’s advisers. “But that effort got people thinking about developing a longer-term organization that looks to stay in the business of making science part of the political process,” he said.

Kelly said his intention is to make SEA a nonpartisan organization that won’t hesitate to criticize either Republicans or Democrats if they ignore or distort science for political purposes. The small SEA staff was scrambling in mid-October to post on the organization’s website background information and key votes of candidates in critical congressional races in which issues important to science are in play, said Mike Brown, SEA’s executive director.

Elections in Maryland, Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, and a few other states are being targeted because of debates over stem cell research, global warming, and intelligent design. “We can’t endorse candidates,” Brown stated, “but we can challenge statements made by candidates.”

He cited a recent letter signed by Republican Senator George Allen, who is running in a tight race for reelection against Democratic challenger Jim Webb in Virginia. The letter “said there is little evidence linking global warming to human activity,” Brown said. “As long as politicians can do that, say things like that, there is work for us to do. A big part of the challenge for us is to frame the debate, to develop the communication skills to get the voters to be aware of the issues.”

Although Brown, an attorney who has run congressional campaigns and worked on Capitol Hill, sounds like what he is, a political organizer, several of the scientists involved in the organization are also sounding political.

“I believe in what this new organization plans to do,” said Lane, currently at Rice University in Houston, Texas. “It’s long term, not just one election. In science we’re long past the time when we can assume that policymakers will give science a higher priority than anything else, so we have to continue to show them why it should have a high priority. We need to be much more active [in the political realm] and much more visible. We have to make sure the candidates recognize the issues and respect the integrity of science.”

In addition to posting a mission statement and a national agenda on its website, SEA organizers have developed a “bill of rights” for scientists and engineers. It calls for scientists to have the right to openly and freely discuss and publish any unclassified research “without fear of intimidation or adverse personnel action,” and states that “the federal government shall never intentionally publish false or misleading scientific information nor post such material on federal websites.”

The bill of rights says that appointments to federal scientific advisory committees “shall be based on … scientific qualifications, not political affiliation or ideology.” It also says the federal government “shall not support any science education program that includes instruction in concepts that are derived from ideology and not science.”

Nearly all of the points in the SEA bill of rights reflect concerns about abuses of science that have arisen during the Bush administration. “There is rather broad frustration with the administration’s attitude toward science,” Richter said. “The administration has an ‘adopt what you like, ignore what you don’t like, and suppress the rest’ attitude toward science.”

Presidential science adviser John Marburger has repeatedly and emphatically denied any abuse of science by the Bush administration (see Physics Today, May 2004, page 29 ), but many scientists are unconvinced. Indeed, Lane called the abuse of science in the current administration “unprecedented.”

But regardless of who is in the White House or controlling Congress, he said, “We want to be sure that they know what science is and that it hasn’t been manipulated or confused to point to the wrong answer.”

Lane said that most of the people currently involved with SEA are “probably Democrats,” and that he expects the organization to be attacked as “liberal” by politicians and others who don’t like the positions SEA takes. “Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion,” he said. “What we will do is explain what our organization is about and that we are supporting sound science.”