<div dir="ltr">

 <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/science-under-siege-scientists-fought-back.html"><div id="gmail-mainbody"><h2><font size="2">Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</font></h2><p>https://skepticalscience.com/science-under-siege-scientists-fought-back.html</p><h2>With science under siege in 2017, scientists regrouped and fought back: 5 essential reads</h2></div></a><div id="gmail-mainbody"><font color="#000000">              </font><h4>Posted on 11 January 2018 by Guest Author</h4><p class="gmail-greenbox">by <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/team#maggie-villiger"><font color="#0066cc">Maggie Villiger</font></a>, Science + Technology Editor, <em><a href="http://www.theconversation.com/"><font color="#0066cc">The Conversation</font></a></em></p><p class="gmail-greenbox">This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com/"><font color="#0066cc">The Conversation</font></a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-science-under-siege-in-2017-scientists-regrouped-and-fought-back-5-essential-reads-89261"><font color="#0066cc">original article</font></a>.</p><p style="text-align:justify">2017 may well be remembered as the year of alternative facts and fake news. Truth took a hit, and experts seemed to lose the public’s trust. Scientists felt under siege as the Trump administration <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-guerrilla-archivists-saved-history-and-are-doing-it-again-under-trump-72346"><font color="#0066cc">purged information from government websites</font></a>, appointed <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-politicians-think-they-know-better-than-scientists-and-why-thats-so-dangerous-72548"><font color="#0066cc">inexperienced or adversarial individuals</font></a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-administrations-zeal-to-peel-back-regulations-is-leading-us-to-another-era-of-robber-barons-84961"><font color="#0066cc">to science-related posts</font></a> and left <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-does-a-us-president-settle-on-his-science-policy-69953"><font color="#0066cc">important advisory positions</font></a> empty. Researchers braced for cuts to federally funded science.</p><p style="text-align:justify"><span>So where did that leave science and its supporters? Here we spotlight five stories from our archive that show how scholars took <span class="gmail-skstip gmail-advanced" id="gmail-skstip1">stock</span><span> of where scientists stand in this new <span class="gmail-skstip gmail-beginner" id="gmail-skstip2">climate</span> and various ways to consider the value their research holds for society.</span></span></p><h2 style="text-align:justify">1. A risk to standing up for science</h2><p style="text-align:justify">In April, the March for Science mobilized more than a million protesters worldwide to push back against what they saw as attacks on science and evidence-based policy. But some people in the research community <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-at-risk-if-scientists-dont-think-strategically-before-talking-politics-63797"><font color="#0066cc">worried about a downside</font></a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-scientists-engage-in-activism-72234"><font color="#0066cc">scientists being perceived as advocates</font></a>.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Emily Vraga, assistant professor in political communication at George Mason University, <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-march-for-science-participants-advocate-without-losing-the-publics-trust-76205"><font color="#0066cc">put the conundrum this way</font></a>:</p><blockquote><p>“On one hand, scientists have relevant expertise to contribute to conversations about public policy…. On the other hand, scientists who advocate may risk losing the trust of the public.”</p></blockquote><p style="text-align:justify">Maintaining that trust is imperative for scientists, both to be able to communicate public risks appropriately and to preserve public funding for research, she wrote.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Vraga and her colleagues’ research suggests that scientists don’t lose credibility when they advocate for policies based on their expertise. But there’s a distinction to be made between advocacy and mere partisanship – statements motivated by the science are received differently than if they’re perceived as driven by political beliefs.</p> <h2 style="text-align:justify">2. Rhetorical tools at the ready</h2><p style="text-align:justify"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199722/original/file-20171218-27591-17bzy4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199722/original/file-20171218-27591-17bzy4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip"></a></p><p class="gmail-figurecaption" style="text-align:justify"><span class="gmail-caption">Protesting is one thing, communicating a message is another.</span> <span class="gmail-attribution"><span class="gmail-source">Peter Cedric Rock Smith</span>, <a class="gmail-license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"><font color="#0066cc">CC BY-NC-ND</font></a></span></p><p style="text-align:justify">With the feeling that there’s a “war on science” afoot, savvy scientists are thinking about how to defend their work. University of Washington professor of communication Leah Ceccarelli says they can <a href="https://theconversation.com/defending-science-how-the-art-of-rhetoric-can-help-68210"><font color="#0066cc">look toward the field of rhetoric</font></a> for help in how to get their messages across. She writes:</p><blockquote><p>“Before dismissing this recommendation as a perverse appeal to slink into the mud or take up the corrupted weapons of the enemy, keep in mind that in academia, ‘rhetoric’ does not mean rank falsehoods, or mere words over substance.”</p></blockquote><p style="text-align:justify">It’s about building persuasive arguments, built on solid foundations, she says. Rhetoricians study effective communication – and they’re happy to open their toolbox to scientists.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Indeed, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/getting-a-scientific-message-across-means-taking-human-nature-into-account-70634"><font color="#0066cc">science of science communication</font></a> is becoming a hot area of inquiry, as practitioners <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-gorilla-suits-and-blowfish-fallacies-have-to-do-with-climate-change-72560"><font color="#0066cc">investigate and disseminate</font></a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/communicating-climate-change-focus-on-the-framing-not-just-the-facts-73028"><font color="#0066cc">various techniques</font></a> for effectively <a href="https://theconversation.com/inoculation-theory-using-misinformation-to-fight-misinformation-77545"><font color="#0066cc">spreading accurate scientific information</font></a>.</p><h2 style="text-align:justify">3. What you miss out on when science gets cut</h2><p style="text-align:justify">Scientists are always scrambling to secure funding for their research, and during the first year of the Trump administration, it seemed science projects were consistently on the budget chopping block.</p><p style="text-align:justify">Christopher Keane, the vice president for research at Washington State University, made the case that federal funding for science ultimately <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-the-federal-budget-funds-scientific-research-its-the-economy-that-benefits-80651"><font color="#0066cc">revs up <span class="gmail-skstip gmail-advanced" id="gmail-skstip3">region</span>al economies</font></a>, particularly when scholars within academia join forces with entrepreneurs in the private sector:</p><blockquote><p>“<a href="http://www.sciencecoalition.org/downloads/AMI_v3_4-17-17.pdf"><font color="#0066cc">Thousands of companies</font></a> can trace their roots to federally funded university research. And since the majority of federally funded research takes place <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/82xx/doc8221/06-18-research.pdf"><font color="#0066cc">at America’s research universities</font></a> – often in concert with federal labs and private research partners – these spinoff companies are often located in their local communities all across the country.”</p></blockquote><h2 style="text-align:justify">4. Slashing science projects hurts workers</h2><p style="text-align:justify">Ohio State University economist Bruce Weinberg described how <a href="http://iris.isr.umich.edu/"><font color="#0066cc">a unique data set</font></a> allowed him and his colleagues to <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-feels-the-pain-of-science-research-budget-cuts-75119"><font color="#0066cc">actually follow the money</font></a> on federally funded scientific research. Using administrative data, they were able to identify everyone paid to work on a research project, not just the few who appear as authors on any culminating journal articles.</p><blockquote><p>“This is valuable because we’re able to identify students and staff, who may be less likely to author papers than faculty and postdocs but who turn out to be an important part of the workforce on funded research projects. It’s like taking into account everyone who works in a particular store, not just the manager and owner.”</p></blockquote><p style="text-align:justify">The majority of people employed on research projects turn out to be somewhere in the training pipeline, whether undergraduates, graduate students or postdocs.</p><p style="text-align:justify">And to do all that work, Weinberg points out, labs need to purchase everything from “computers and software, to reagents, medical imaging equipment or telescopes, even to lab mice and rats.” Cut the federal funding for science and the economic effects will ripple out far beyond just university science buildings.</p><h2 style="text-align:justify">5. Basic research powers later patents</h2><p style="text-align:justify"><span><span class="gmail-skstip gmail-beginner" id="gmail-skstip4">Skeptic</span>s may wonder: What’s the big deal? So we take a few years off from funding some basic research. Does basic research really matter? </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/tracing-the-links-between-basic-research-and-real-world-applications-82198"><font color="#0066cc">As Northwestern University’s Benjamin F. Jones and Mohammad Ahmadpoor put it</font></a>, the:</p><blockquote><p>“‘ivory tower’ view of academic endeavors suggests that science is an isolated activity that rarely pays off in practical application. Related is the idea that marketplace innovation rarely relies on the work of universities or government labs.”</p></blockquote><p style="text-align:justify"><span>But is that right? To find out if basic research actually does <span class="gmail-skstip gmail-intermediate" id="gmail-skstip5">lead</span> to usable practical advances, they </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam9527"><font color="#0066cc">designed a study to investigate</font></a> the links between patentable inventions and scientific research. Jones and Ahmadpoor created a “social network” style map, which connects patents and science papers using the reference citations in each. They found that:</p><blockquote><p>“Among research articles that receive at least one citation, a full 80 percent could be linked forward to a future patent. Meanwhile, 61 percent of patents linked backward to at least one research article.”</p></blockquote><p style="text-align:justify">It’s impossible to predict which basic research projects will be important in the marketplace, but they wrote that a very high share of scientific research does link “forward to usable practical advances. Most of the linkages are indirect, showing the manifold and unexpected ways” in which basic research can ultimately pay off.</p><p style="text-align:justify"> <span></span></p></div></div>