When Is It OK for Scientists to Become Political?
Michael Mann, a climate scientist who was reluctantly pulled into a public role, likens this response to the “If You See Something Say Something” catchphrase of homeland security. As Mann wrote in The New York Times last year:
“In my view, it is no longer acceptable for scientists to remain on the sidelines. I should know. I had no choice but to enter the fray. I was hounded by elected officials, threatened with violence and more — after a single study I co-wrote a decade and a half ago found that the Northern Hemisphere’s average warmth had no precedent in at least the past 1,000 years. Our “hockey stick” graph became a vivid centerpiece of the climate wars, and to this day, it continues to win me the enmity of those who have conflated a problem of science and society with partisan politics.”
For Mann, the lessons of his own experience make it clear that scientists must speak out on the consequences of their own work, or watch that work be dismissed or distorted.
“If scientists choose not to engage in the public debate, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by those whose agenda is one of short-term self-interest,” Mann wrote.
More: When Is It OK for Scientists to Become Political? : 13.7: Cosmos and Culture : NPR