AAAS chief puts weight behind protest march

[nitpicker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39024648

AAAS chief puts weight behind protest march

By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News, Boston

6 hours ago

From the section Science & Environment

The head of the world's largest scientific membership organisation has given his backing for a planned protest by researchers in Washington DC. Rush Holt, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said that people were "standing up for science".
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Scientists across the US plan to march in DC on 22 April. "I've never seen anything like it in my entire career," the former Democratic congressman told BBC News. "To see young scientists, older scientists, the general public speaking up for the idea of science. We are going to work with our members and affiliated organisations to see that this march for science is a success."

Mr Holt made his comments at the AAAS annual meting in Boston as President Trump appointed a fierce critic of the Environmental Protection Agency as its head. Scott Pruitt has spent years fighting the role and reach of the EPA. Campaigners accuse him of being too close to the oil and gas industry, and allege that he is "lukewarm" on the threat posed by climate change.

Rush Holt says that the concern among US scientists has gone well beyond the usual uncertainty that comes with a change in the Oval Office. "It is partly because of the previous statements of the president and his appointees on issues such as climate change and vaccination for children which have not been in keeping with good science," the AAAS CEO told BBC News. "But mostly by what we have seen since the new administration has come in, [which] is silence about science. Very few appointments to positions are filled by people who understand science, very few comments about the importance of science; there is no science advisor in the White House now and we don't know whether there will be one. "And so the silence is beginning to sound ominous."

There has been unease among researchers ever since Mr Trump was elected in November. More than 600 professors from one of the country's leading research Universities, MIT, signed an open letter before his inauguration expressing their concerns.
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