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From the Minneapolis Star
Tribune (May 19, 2007)
Editorial: Wise words in defense of seeking wisdom
When reason is under siege, reasonable people must speak.
Published: May 19, 2007
These are tough times to be curious -- especially if you've made a
vocation of it. After half a lifetime of theory and analysis, you might
go so far as to advance knowledge -- and then you'll really be up a
creek. These days, discoveries that society's leaders find inconvenient
are just as likely to be assailed as accepted. Such scorn has singed
not only unpopular findings, but the realm of science itself. It's an
ugly and ominous trend, which citizens should move to oppose.
Scientific revelation often challenges human conventions -- which
explains why people sometimes find it irksome. They found it so when
Copernicus and Galileo first spoke of heavenly revolution, and when
Newton stood firm with gravity.
That those heresies of yesteryear are now mainstays of modern thinking
seems to have cast little light -- for many of today's scientific
breakthroughs are waved away with the same breezy disregard that
dismissed gravity as "only a theory." Indeed, even long-established
science is getting the boot: A century and a half after its unveiling,
scriptural literalists are laughing off Charles Darwin's theory that
contemporary species evolved through natural selection over millions of
years. Sidestepping an avalanche of evidence reinforcing Darwinian
theory, its critics are pushing with worrisome success for
public-school teaching of "intelligent design" -- a fairy tale that
hardly qualifies as a theory.
This resistance to scientific scholarship is driven by fundamentalist
believers, who've found quite a friend in President Bush. The president
might be excused for showing sympathy to his most conservative allies.
But when doing so entails snubbing a commonplace of biology like
evolution -- which even Catholic schools teach without blinking --
something is very much awry.
And that flap is just the start. On a vast array of issues -- climate
change, reproductive health, sex education, stem-cell research,
environmental degradation and loads of others -- the policies of the
U.S. government flout scientific fact in favor of wishful thinking.
This is no way to run a society -- and America's scientists are gearing
up to say so. The vehicle for their voice is the Defend Science Project
-- formally organized this spring by U.S. scholars eager to mobilize
Americans against the pernicious attack on science. What do they want
you to do? Just visit defendscience.org to give the site a look and
sign their "Defend Science" statement. If you're at all curious, do it.
© 2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
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You can sign the Statement on this
website. Just click here to add your name to
the growing list.
Join in the battle to defend
science!
Scientists and Members of the Scientific Community:
• Sign and Circulate This Statement.
• Help Raise Funds to Have it Printed in Newspapers Across the Country,
and Internationally.
• Get This Statement Adopted by Scientific, Educational and Other
Associations and Institutions.
Members of the General Public:
• Reprint and Circulate This
Statement, Help Spread the Word, Contribute Your Ideas About How to
Wage This Crucial Battle & Join With People in the Scientific
Community and Others to Wage This Battle.
• Help raise funds to print the Statement in as many newspapers and
journals as possible, in the U.S. and internationally.
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