Scientists plant grass-roots effort for Obama in final days of contest

Science : Recently retired physicist Bernice Durand is using a career’s worth of contacts and organizational skills to build an unusual national grass-roots effort, focused on scientific issues, for Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate.Since September, Durand has worked with more than three dozen scientists who have placed articles or letters in 50-plus newspapers in 20 states, most of them considered still up for grabs. The scientists have also appeared on a handful of radio shows and been interviewed by reporters covering the campaign.Political analysts say Obama has captured the lion’s share of visible support among scientists. “It’s an enthusiasm chasm,” says Michael Stebbins, president of the Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) Action Fund, which set up a channel on YouTube for scientists of both political persuasions to explain their choice. As of press time, 22 videos have been posted--all by Obama supporters. “It’s been frustrating. We want scientists to come out and say why they’re voting for McCain,” says Stebbins.Campaign donation records indicate that some scientists are supporting McCain. One donor, mathematician Nakhle Asmar of the University of Missouri, Columbia, says “national security” was the reason he gave McCain $2300, the maximum allowed from an individual for the generalelection. Has he done anything more for the candidate? “I don’t have time,” he says, adding that he believes “both [candidates] will be good for education and science."Some who have volunteered for Obama say they would have preferred to remain nonpartisan but that the stakes are too high. Daniel Holz, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, worries that such activism could “compromise the scientific enterprise” bypoliticizing it. But the bigger problem, he says, is that “the scientific enterprise has already been compromised and politicized by Republicans.” White House science adviser John Marburger says he opposes “scientists using science to support their partisan views."The problem, he says, is that they could “lose credibility with the public.”