Over 2,000 scientists urge Trump to respect scientific integrity and independence [View all]

[think]

Over 2,000 scientists urge Trump to respect ‘scientific integrity and independence’

By Juliet Eilperin and Chris Mooney November 30

Call it the opening shot in a brewing war over scientific integrity in the future Trump administration.

More than 2,300 scientists, including 22 Nobel Prize winners, have issued an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump and the 115th Congress, urging them to “adhere to high standards of scientific integrity and independence in responding to current and emerging public health and environmental health threats.”

The letter underscores the extent to which many scientists, who have worked with the Obama administration to address climate change, pandemics and other major policy issues, are worried about whether Trump and his deputies will slash science funding and overhaul the way several federal agencies operate. While it does not directly refer to President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, many of the signatories spent years fighting the curbs imposed on federal scientists during that time.

Andrew Rosenberg, who directs the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy and whose group organized the letter, said he and other scientists have become concerned both by comments Trump made over the course of the campaign and some of the people who have been advising him on energy, the environment and public health.

~Snip~

The list of distinguished signatories, who hail from all 50 states, includes medical scientists, physicists and many climate researchers. The Nobel laureates include Harold Varmus, who headed the National Cancer Institute under President Obama; David Baltimore, the former president of Caltech; and Mario Molina, who helped discover the role of chlorofluorocarbons in depleting the ozone layer. James Hansen, the longtime NASA researcher who had previously denounced George W. Bush’s administration for interfering with his ability to communicate publicly the science of climate change, also signed the letter....

Read more:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/30/22-nobel-prize-winners-urge-trump-to-respect-scientific-integrity-and-independence/?utm_term=.bcdfc3904135