A letter submitted to Science magazine in response to an editorial by its Executive Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of AAAS, Rush Holt, where he claims the march was non-partisan. Guess it was too harsh for them to publish.
In response to Rush Holt’s editorial of May 5:
To claim that the impetus to rouse the tens to hundreds of thousands to march for science on April 22 was not the election and policies of the Trump administration is disingenuous at best, absurd at worst. The anti-science and anti-intellectual rhetoric of Trump and his cronies, the transformation and gutting of the EPA, the extreme climate change denial, the embrace of conspiracy theories, the eschewing of fact and evidence, the appalling budget proposals…etc. all acted on the slumbering passions of scientists who would not have engaged in this march otherwise. The denigration of science and escape from evidence and reason has been ongoing for some time, but we can be quite sure that this march would not have happened had Clinton won the election. It’s considered wise that science be non-partisan, but dissembling about it when it very much is partisan, does no service to anyone, and may in fact do a disservice to many.
