Sixty-eight Nobel scientists support Obama, criticize Romney

OCT 22, 2012

The media have paid only scant attention to the laureates’ partisan pronouncement.

As of early on 22 October, few major media organizations have picked up a story that broke last week in a New York Times blog : 68 Nobel scientists have issued an open letter urging all citizens to join them ‘in working to ensure the reelection of President Obama.’

The signers predict that ‘without leadership and continued commitment to scientific research the next generation of Americans will not make and benefit from future discoveries.’ They praise President Obama’s science record and sharply criticize Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, though without mentioning his name:

[President Obama’s] opponent supports a budget that, if implemented, would devastate a long tradition of support for public research and investment in science at a time when this country’s future depends, as never before, on innovation. He has also taken positions that privilege ideology over clear scientific evidence on climate change.

The 26 physicists among the signers include Donald Glaser, who became a laureate 52 years ago, as well as Alexei Abrikosov, Philip Anderson, Nicolaas Bloembergen, Leon Cooper, James Cronin, Jerome Friedman, Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow, Roy Glauber, David Gross, John Hall, Leon Lederman, John Mather, Douglas Osheroff, Arno Penzias, Martin Perl, David Politzer, Burton Richter, George Smoot, Joseph Taylor Jr, Charles Townes, Daniel Tsui, Carl Wieman, Frank Wilczek, and Robert Wilson.

The news has not appeared on paper at the New York Times and has not appeared at all at the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. Online postings have appeared at Science magazine and elsewhere.

Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.