Alan Alda: I cannot remain silent as Trump rejects science and endangers lives

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/29/alan-alda-vote-for-science-against-trump/

Alan Alda is an actor, writer and co-founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University.

Almost 63 million people voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but in 1983, more than 106 million people watched the last episode of “M.A.S.H.” So, it seems that by this president’s standard, I’m a bigger deal than he is.

But I don’t write here as a formerly famous person; I write just as a citizen who might have something in common with you. After spending a decade doing everything I could to get the Equal Rights Amendment ratified, I made a decision 37 years ago to keep much quieter in public about my political opinions. If I was going to make a contribution, it should be by doing what I was good at: writing and acting.

Since then, I’ve found that one of the things I’m also good at is helping scientists communicate more clearly. I’ve helped train more than 15,000 scientists around the world, so science is important to me — as it is to all of us. We swim in a sea of science, and perhaps, like fish who take water for granted, we take science for granted. But without it, we would stop breathing.

Which is where we are now. Science is at stake, as is our very breath.