Last Friday we attended a “Stand up for Science” rally in Seattle, Washington. Given that we both have science PhDs, have spent years doing research, and think science is a great tool for investigating the world, we were hopeful we’d find something to agree with. It wasn’t easy.
The rally was part of a national movement of “Stand Up for Science” events in dozens of cities, including one on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The ostensible purpose was to protest budget cuts to science funding as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. And certainly the rally we saw offered plenty of budgetary complaints. Some research scientists who had lost their jobs or funding told personal stories that tugged at our heartstrings. There was something palpable throughout the protest, however, that muddied those sympathetic messages: far-Left politics, and lots of it.
Multiple times, after dutifully declaring their personal pronouns, speakers mentioned the importance of preserving “diversity, equity and inclusion,” charged that “When they come after transgender people we must fight,” and lamented Israel’s “attack” on Palestine while asking “How many Palestinians have died in Gaza?” The crowd cheered, and held up numerous protest signs affirming these messages.
Many signs bore trans symbols (one said “Trans Girls for Truth!”), LGBTQ rainbows, Palestine flags, or progressive slogans like “Eat the Rich” (one of which was amusingly biologized as “Phagocytose the Rich”). Calls for DEI and “inclusion” were ubiquitous, with a popular slogan on multiple rainbow-colored signs saying, “Powered by Science, Strengthened by Diversity.” One sign echoed Luigi Mangione, the new progressive folk-hero currently awaiting trial for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, saying “Deny Fascism, Defend Science, Depose Oligarchy.”
There were plenty of classic “anti-fascist” (aka cultural Marxist) slogans on display. One sign said, “Science over fascism,” another read “Believe scientists, not fascists,” another promoted the hashtag “#fightfascism,” and another declared “Real Americans reject fascism.” Perhaps the strangest showed a picture of a pipet and declared, “This machine kills fascists.” So it seems everyone working in a biology lab must now support Antifa.
We saw an occasional upside-down American flag. One sign showed Trump’s face crossed out, saying “America has no king, it just has a traitor.” Others said “Trust Science Not Trump,” “Farmers Against Trump,” “Dump Trump … Send Elon to Mars,” “Trash Trump,” and of course “F*** Trump.” One sign seemed to yearn for the death of the President, saying “Compost Trump” on one side, while the other side asked, “Is he dead yet?” to which the answer “No” was given, followed by “F***.”
The rally also pushed scientism — the idea that science is the only valid source of knowledge. One sign read “Without Science, It’s All Fiction,” while another turned science into a religion: “Believe, Call, Repent … Science Saves.”
ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Amazingly, many in the crowd feigned ignorance that Left-wing ideology permeated the protest. Signs said, “Get your politics out of science!” or “Science is based on facts, not politics,” or “Science is Critical, Not Political.” Yet promoting an unholy union of science and politics is precisely what the “Stand Up for Science Rally” was about.
Most of the smart folks with PhDs at the protest seemed blissfully uninterested in the irony that they were protesting the interference of politics within science while they themselves endorsed the interference of politics within science. But, to his credit, one speaker got the point. Professor Chetan Seshadri of the University of Washington Department of Global Health told the audience precisely why their science funding was being cut.
“The root cause” of these budget cuts, he said, “is the erosion of trust in institutions” and “The erosion of trust in science by the voting public.” He then charged scientists in the audience to show more “humility” in how they do science.
Great idea! But if the rally wanted to reassure mainstream voters that taxpayer-funded science isn’t heavily infiltrated by Left-wing scientists-turned-activists, this absolutely was not the way.
Oh, and the rally repeatedly paid lip service to “academic freedom,” while trashing minority scientific views. The very ethos underlying the event was that “Science” represents a monolithic set of consensus ideas, and “Standing Up for Science” means not just promoting those viewpoints, but squelching those who disagree.
The public is rightfully repelled by this hypocrisy. In recent years they’ve witnessed too many politically motivated attempts to suppress credible scientists who challenged the consensus on Covid vaccines, pandemic lockdowns, evolution, climate change, and more. Here’s a final example.
One speaker at the main “Stand Up for Science” Rally in D.C. was Francis Collins, who headed the NIH from 2009 to 2021. As political scientist John West notes, while Collins played guitar at the rally, “Behind him stood … people carrying signs like ‘Trump Trashes Science,’ ‘He Musk Go,’ and … ‘Diabolical Oligarch Grifting Efficiently’ (DOGE).” Also appearing at the D.C. rally was science popularizer Bill Nye “the science guy,” who charged that those on “the other side” must “oppose this suppression of science” and stop “censoring science.” Yet Collins himself has become notorious for doing just that.
In 2020, Collins sought to dismiss credible experts and lockdown critics like Jay Bhattacharya as “fringe” and “not mainstream science.” But Bhattacharya wasn’t fringe. He was a professor at Stanford, and author of the Great Barrington Declaration — a warning from epidemiologists and public health experts that the lockdowns were doing more harm than good. Scientists like Collins used name-calling and rank-pulling to shout down credible minority scientific viewpoints.
For the record, we’re not “anti-vax” (we both got the Covid vaccine), but much more than that, we are pro-academic freedom. So is the public — and their disgust at politically driven intolerance in the scientific community led them to vote accordingly last November.
As a consequence, Bhattacharya is now poised to replace Collins as head of the NIH, hopefully heralding a new era of real intellectual freedom and objectivity — showing what it really means to “stand up for science.”
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Casey Luskin and Jonathan McLatchie are PhD scientists working at Discovery Institute in Seattle.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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