THE NEW YORKER: America’s Top Scientists Reprimand Donald Trump (Again)

By Carolyn Kormann

"More than five hundred and seventy members of the National Academy of Sciences published a statement on Monday decrying the Trump Administration’s “denigration of scientific expertise and harassment of scientists.” The members, who are acting independently of the N.A.S., represent many fields (social, biological, environmental, physical), but they note that the White House’s “dismissal of scientific evidence” has been “particularly egregious” in the case of climate change. They cite the Administration’s recent effort—led by Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and supported by President Trump—to hold a “Red Team/Blue Team” debate on the validity of global-warming research. “Such an exercise seeks to foster the erroneous impression of deep uncertainty concerning the reality and seriousness of anthropogenically driven climate change,” they write. . . . Benjamin Santer, a sixty-two-year-old atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, co-authored the statement with Ray Weymann, a retired astrophysicist, and Charles Manski, an economist at Northwestern University."

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https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/americas-top-scientists-reprimand-donald-trump-again

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Speaking Science to Power

By Ben Santer, Charles Manski and Ray Weymann

Today, on April 23, 2018, a statement was released by 317 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. It calls for “the Federal Government to maintain scientific content on publicly accessible websites, to appoint qualified personnel to positions requiring scientific expertise, to cease censorship and intimidation of Government scientists, and to reverse the decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Accord.”

We are the three writers and organizers of this statement. Although our expertise is in very different areas—economics, astrophysics and climate science—we share a common concern. It relates to the dismissal of science and scientific understanding by the current administration. This piece explains why we decided to write the statement, what we hope to accomplish with its release, and how interested readers can help to achieve the goals quoted above. 

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https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/speaking-science-to-power/