Scientists wade into politics with criticism of Donald Trump
Despite trying to stay neutral, belief in science is already a political marker in the US
New York — Last week, The Lancet, the well-respected British medical journal, published a report excoriating the Trump administration for leveraging racism and class anxiety to push environmental policies that killed tens of thousands of people.
Not long ago such an article would have been an outlier. Though political conservatives in the US have waged a war on science going back to evolution in the classroom, the vast majority of scientists — and scientific journals — made it a point not to fight back directly. Many thought their research would speak for itself and that their neutrality enhanced their legitimacy. ..
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