Signs From The March For Science
April 22, 2017 1:52 PM   Subscribe

CNN has a slideshow (doesn't reload entire page for each image) of 11 signs from the March For Science. WaPo has their own single page picture set. Time has a decidedly anti-Trump editorial selection. Boston gets really nerdy, which is sort of expected.
posted by hippybear (106 comments total) 42 users marked this as a favorite
 


From St. Paul: "This march would be twice as big if the control group didn't have to stay home"
posted by Flannery Culp at 2:07 PM on April 22, 2017 [138 favorites]


Ursus Comiter was at the Providence, RI, march and shared a picture of a sign that had a giant toy resistor on top.

(This being New England, I mistook it for a lobster trap float in the blurry phone picture.)
posted by wenestvedt at 2:10 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Fun.

We're visiting Chicago and the march was quite odd to me. It was blindingly white, not just in the participants but in issues raised (for example, the Muslim ban is a massive problem for the scientific and medical community, but I saw literally only one sign about immigration or xenophobia). Also the march was extremely extremely quiet, and relegated to a narrow strip in the park. For a seasoned protestor from Oakland, this was all quite odd.

On the plus side, I believe the march was very big (from what I could see), with lots of kids, and yes, many pun-filled signs.

I'm pretty sure we're going to have to get a lot more rowdy to end this nightmare, but I'm glad to see scientists as a community doing something.
posted by latkes at 2:18 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]


And another roundup from Mashable...
posted by cheshyre at 2:34 PM on April 22, 2017


A Reddit thread with a picture from the Boston march at the top:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/66wxrs/seen_at_the_march_for_science/
posted by wenestvedt at 2:34 PM on April 22, 2017


March for Science on Facebook, which includes photos from marches around the world, and there's the #MarchForScience hashtag on FB and Twitter.

Science Magazine has a live coverage post/roundup.

the Muslim ban is a massive problem for the scientific and medical community, but I saw literally only one sign about immigration or xenophobia

March for Science.com has a blog post to address this issue -- Everyone Can Advocate for Science: Tips for Immigrants Supporting Science.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:35 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I had a bit of a Life of Brian moment at the Brisbane March for Science when in the distance I heard the speaker say "Science not salads."
posted by drnick at 2:36 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


My nephew in DC (10 years old) had a sign that said, "Got polio? I don't. Thanks, science."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:40 PM on April 22, 2017 [21 favorites]


Years ago, we introduced our kids to Thomas Dolby and now they love to walk around the house shouting "Science!"
posted by 4ster at 2:40 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]


I was sad about missing the Boston march. Then I saw this sine and then I was even sadder.
posted by solotoro at 2:42 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]


That's literally the least Thomas Dolby track ever across his entire career. He did others that mimicked it in the years following it, but it's not his oeuvre.
posted by hippybear at 2:43 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I wonder what Spicer will have to say about this? I'd like to know, for the empirical evidence, of course.

He probably won't say anything.
posted by adept256 at 2:44 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I went to the local march, and it was great. But at the same time, some of the messaging made me uncomfortable, as someone proficient with the philosophy of science. It makes me feel uncomfortable to see science presented as providing facts, rather than theories coherent with observable data. One sign said, "there are no alternative facts in science", and that just doesn't seem right. I think it is worth celebrating, as clearly and forcefully as we can, the epistemic humility central to the scientific process and the role of rational doubt in adjudicating between theories.

But those are small potatoes, of course​, compared to the giant 9/11 truther poster I was unfortunately behind for most of the march.
posted by meese at 2:46 PM on April 22, 2017 [43 favorites]


My fave: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
posted by Slothrup at 2:49 PM on April 22, 2017 [20 favorites]


What, jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel construction girders?

Everyone knows that! #conspiracy #infow@rs #bullshit #insidejob
posted by hippybear at 2:49 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


March for Science.com has a blog post to address this issue -- Everyone Can Advocate for Science: Tips for Immigrants Supporting Science.

I would have liked to see non immigrants also showing solidarity for their immigrant (or perceived as immigrant) colleagues. Likewise there were few signs about reproductive rights, surely a science issue.
posted by latkes at 2:50 PM on April 22, 2017 [6 favorites]


I almost cried. Good people out there.
posted by brambleboy at 2:51 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Love this
posted by infini at 2:51 PM on April 22, 2017 [36 favorites]


No really, I want every question in the next White House press conference to be 'Mr. Spicer, there's a huge protest about the lack of logic, reason and rationality, what is the White House's response?'
posted by adept256 at 2:55 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]


This was my favorite one that I saw today in Boston. I think it perfectly sums up everything.

I only decided to attend at the last minute so I didn't get to put a lot of effort into a sign. Luckily our friend had some spare cardboard and some markers on the train so I was able to throw this (front, back) together.

It was a raw, wet, cold day but the turnout was amazing. It was my first ever protest/march/rally.
posted by bondcliff at 3:06 PM on April 22, 2017 [9 favorites]




I've been getting shots of the poster I made from marches all day. It's been pretty nice, but not as nice as the custom sign I made for my son.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:21 PM on April 22, 2017 [17 favorites]


I'm embarrassed to have to ask, but could someone explain the "R = p x L/A" from Buzzfeed for me, please?
posted by Paul Slade at 3:32 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]




From what little I heard (I was there with my son, who made his own not quite philosophy of science approved sign, but he's 4, so it was a quick trip without a lot of listening-to-speakers opportunity) at our local march, diversity and immigration was well centered. The only chant that the volunteers were leading (and thus the only one that really got anywhere--introvert nerds are not good at this) was "Build bridges, not walls, Pittsburgh science is for all."
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:34 PM on April 22, 2017 [8 favorites]


A small but spirited crowd turned out today in Ketchikan, Alaska. My sign read:
(in large print) Ignorance is NOT strength.

(smaller) Publicly funded science supports our community and strengthens our nation.
and on the back..
SCIENCE makes America great..
..not some orange-tinted blowhard.
We were met at the end of the march route by my neighbor and his band, who played a set of science-themed songs for the crowd. Organizers had also planned a series of science-related presentations along the way. The presentations were supposed to have included a short talk on deer and salmon biology by an employee of the US Forest Service but when we reached the USFS the march organizers were told that the presentation had been cancelled at the last minute because it was "not compatible with the directive they had received," I guess because if anything is going to topple this administration it's going to start with a bunch of well-meaning liberals in Alaska listening politely to a government biologist telling us how much you can learn from deer poop..
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:36 PM on April 22, 2017 [15 favorites]


robocop is bleeding, I saw your poster hanging up in a shop (as a decoration, not on sale) last week and thrilled a little (for you). :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 3:37 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


who played a set of science-themed songs

Please tell me the entire set list was covers from the Singing Science Records!
posted by hippybear at 3:39 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


My own sign was just a picture of a resistor and "RESIST".

So of course someone had to try and quiz me on how many ohms the resistor I drew was and I couldn't remember because I have to look that shit up every single time. I'm not an electrical engineer, I just play one when the puns are convenient.

And then some dude came by and mansplained political action to me. I guess it wouldn't be science without some mansplaining, though.
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:43 PM on April 22, 2017 [37 favorites]


I guess it wouldn't be science without some mansplaining, though.

Well, actually...
posted by hippybear at 3:45 PM on April 22, 2017 [34 favorites]


A friend suggested E pur si muove would make for good signage.
posted by klausman at 3:49 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


> who played a set of science-themed songs

Please tell me the entire set list was covers from the Singing Science Records!
Afraid not, but my neighbor is, if anything, a bigger nerd than I am and leads a band which specializes in songs about paleontology and marine biology. The tunes they played for the marchers included songs about:
  • rockfish conservation
  • the story of the T. Rex fossil at the Smithsonian
  • the order of geologic ages
and some others I'm forgetting.. (They don't take themselves at all seriously, so it's more enjoyable than it may sound..)
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:50 PM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]




So of course someone had to try and quiz me on how many ohms the resistor I drew was and I couldn't remember because I have to look that shit up every single time. I'm not an electrical engineer, I just play one when the puns are convenient.
Next time feel free to counter by challenging them on whether they can remember the resistor code sequence themselves without relying on a mnemonic that contains negative gender or racial stereotyping.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:54 PM on April 22, 2017 [11 favorites]


A few of my favorites from the San Francisco march. "Save Christmas! If the North Pole melts, Santa will drown!!!" came complete with a drowning Santa drawing, but it's hard not to love the parent/infant matching Smokey Bear Park Ranger costumes.
posted by zachlipton at 3:55 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Got polio? I don't. Thanks, science."
I had a college classmate who contracted polio literally weeks before the vaccine became publicly available. He was never discouraged by anything and worked as a DJ at the college radio station where he could cue up records by using his non-functioning arm holding down the disc and then pull it up with masterful timing and coordination while turning up the volume with his good hard. One of the most amazing things I ever saw in a radio studio.

jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel construction girders?

Who believes the people who built the WTC actually used quality steel???
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:03 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


I volunteered at the Indianapolis march today. Duties: arrive early (7 a.m.!) to help set up; answer questions and help anyone who needs help; keep an eye out for anyone making trouble or acting suspiciously (I didn't see any; it was a very peaceful march) help direct marchers; clean up afterwards.

Got quite a few pictures of good signs, too. A few of my favorites: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. (OK, the last of those isn't really science specific, but it's too good not to highlight.)

And a few I really liked but didn't get pictures of:
"When Voldemort is president we need a nation of Hermiones" (carried by a young girl)
"My favorite word is 'why'" (carried by a toddler)
"Prayers are comforting, but research $ fights cancer"

And yes, there were some I could quibble with, but I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Plus, I think pic #2 above will pass muster with the philosophy-of-science sticklers.

On preview:

A friend suggested E pur si muove would make for good signage.

I saw one of those! The English translation ("And yet it moves") was also on the sign.
posted by Chuck Carroll at 4:08 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


"When Voldemort is president we need a nation of Hermiones"

Can we turn this into a major cultural movement, perhaps expanding the metaphor but containing the awesomeness of worldview that is bottled in this statement?

I want to live in THAT alternate reality.
posted by hippybear at 4:11 PM on April 22, 2017 [24 favorites]


I put together a collection of some of the better signs I saw in STL.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 4:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


It's the equation for electric resistance passing through a medium.
posted by hippybear at 3:34 PM on April 22 [+] [!]


Thank you, hippybear. Reminds me of the T-shirt a mathematician wore to a taping of Qi A few years ago. It showed the mathematical notation for log to the base 4 x 2 to the power of wit. That's "halfwit" to you and I, of course.
posted by Paul Slade at 4:21 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


As you may know if you read the political threads, I busk (play music) on the MBTA in Boston. After November 8 I made a vow to donate my tips to local nonprofits when possible. I threw together a set of science-themed songs (lots of TMBG and Monty Python) as well as '80s synth pop for the music and technology theme. I decided to donate my tips to the Science Club for Girls, a mentoring organization that works with girls interested in STEM.

For a bunch of reasons (bad weather, busted amp) I didn't make as much as I hoped, but I will be making a $15 donation to the SCFG on Monday. I know times are tight, but I invite my friends here to join me in supporting their work.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:26 PM on April 22, 2017 [9 favorites]


OMG Emperor SnooKloze. Nelly's hometown for the win.

"It's getting HOT in here. So take off all your COALS"
!!!!
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:33 PM on April 22, 2017 [11 favorites]


"Make America Think Again"

LTIC
posted by Twang at 4:34 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thank you pxe2000, from the mother of a girl interested in all things STEM. My favorite sign was one that daughter made me clarify because she recognized a swear word in it (she's 6). "Science. BECAUSE ITS NOT OK TO JUST MAKE SHIT UP"
posted by Bacon Bit at 4:45 PM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]


For my own signs I had "Empirical Evidence Strongly Suggests1 it May2 be Raining."
1 60% +/- 8.2% likely
2 Subject to Peer Review


and

"As goes a nation's dedication to science, so goes its health and its prosperity."

Mostly I learned that I need to make my signs quippier.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 4:50 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


In my grand tradition of making more signs than I need, with help from my dog.
posted by redsparkler at 4:53 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


The best sign I saw in San Francisco:



Don't believe in Climate Change? Think of SF. A few years ago, it was cool.





I also saw a big black dog in the crowd with a sign on its back: "Alternative Cat".
posted by blob at 4:54 PM on April 22, 2017 [18 favorites]


We went to the MPLS march, which was very large - one of the largest marches on the capitol I've ever seen here, other than the women's march. It was relatively white and relatively middle class, but there were a number of students, researchers and other attendees of color (that is, I've been to whiter protests here), and some effort had been made to make sure the speakers were diverse. US Rep Betsy McCollum gave a pretty good speech which pointed out how much harm the Muslim ban and anti-immigrant sentiment were doing to science and urged us to vote "for science" at the next election.

My favorite speech was one from a young guy who sounded to be a relatively recent immigrant from East Africa (due to a quirk of layout, we could not see the stage) about how he had gone from thinking that he could not be interested in science because of his religious beliefs to seeing that science and religion were compatible and now seeking a [slightly inaudible, again due to quirk of layout] science-related career. There was, relatively speaking, a lot about god at this march, given that it was a science march. But honestly, this is - in various ways - a fairly religious part of a fairly religious state. We've got a large practicing Muslim population in and around the Twin Cities, we've got a large Native community with a fairly active discourse about different Native spiritual traditions, we've got a lot of Christians, we've got a lot of pagans, etc. So I figure that actually, a lot of people do need to sort out how they feel that science and religion interrelate, so why not talk about that?

It was a pretty quiet march - not much chanting, which was a big surprise to the relatively-recent MPLS transplants I attended with. The most motivated of our number got a bunch of chants going ("When herd immunity is under attack/What do we do?/Stand up, get vaccinated!") People seemed surprised by the chanting, actually, which was a little weird.

Basically, it seems clear that scientists need to engage with the community more effectively, because a lot of the people who are going to really get it in the neck from Trump's attacks on the EPA were not heavily present at the march. One of my co-attendees was talking a lot about Science for the People.

On the whole, yeah, ok, it wasn't perfect but I think I've seen worse beginnings.
posted by Frowner at 5:11 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]


I'm going to two or three rallies a month now and I'm really, really over signs. The vast majority are too clever by half.
posted by eamondaly at 5:25 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


This might be my favorite, rates high on both nerdy and angry axes.
posted by peeedro at 5:35 PM on April 22, 2017 [12 favorites]


...resistor code sequence themselves without relying on a mnemonic that contains negative gender or racial stereotyping.

Ooh ooh that's my cue!

When I was an undergrad (in 1995!) the EE teaching lab featured a mnemonic painted on the wall that was both misogynist and racist. Now I teach a large EE lab course and those fucking mnemonics are the bane of my existence. May I propose:

IT'S A RAINBOW, PEOPLE. NO MNEMONIC REQUIRED.

Seriously: construct it, don't memorize it. First one is black, last one is white, rainbow in the middle. No mnemonics. Any mention of mnemonics is an invitation to revisit a past that doesn't deserve it.
posted by range at 5:58 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


A friend suggested E pur si muove would make for good signage.

I had this sign! I saw someone else with "And yet it moves" too.
posted by yasaman at 6:15 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I brought this sign to NYC

A bunch of people took pics, with both smartphones and SLRs, but I couldn't find any good pics of it on Instagram.
posted by ikea_femme at 6:26 PM on April 22, 2017 [14 favorites]


I saw "E pur si muove". Roomthreeseventeen, I saw "Got polio? I don't. Thanks, science." so I guess that was your nephew!
posted by acrasis at 6:38 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was also very concerned about philosophy of science issues, so my sign was just the punchiest version of the scientific method I could think up: QUESTION HYPOTHESIZE TEST REPORT REPEAT. Somebody actually used it as a chant at some point, which was flattering. I kind of liked that the march (I was at the Seattle one) was relatively quiet, because chanting a message in unison only works for me if I'm 100% sure I'm behind the message and even then it sometimes weirds me out.
posted by fermion at 6:59 PM on April 22, 2017 [10 favorites]


I went to the local march, and it was great. But at the same time, some of the messaging made me uncomfortable, as someone proficient with the philosophy of science. It makes me feel uncomfortable to see science presented as providing facts, rather than theories coherent with observable data. One sign said, "there are no alternative facts in science", and that just doesn't seem right. I think it is worth celebrating, as clearly and forcefully as we can, the epistemic humility central to the scientific process and the role of rational doubt in adjudicating between theories.


This is where science can easily be used to manipulate public opinion for the sake of corporations. The dangers of marijuanna, the safety of leaded gas and cigarettes are some that come to mind and the manipulation of the discourse has only gotten worse since then.
posted by psycho-alchemy at 7:12 PM on April 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


"the discourse has only gotten worse since then"

Um... the safety of leaded gas and cigarettes aren't even a part of the discourse anymore, with the opposite of those things being accepted as truth now, and the dangers of marijuana are becoming largely debunked. I'm curious about what discourse has gotten worse in the past 30 years that you are talking about, that the public scientific discourse is now worse about than it was back then.
posted by hippybear at 7:17 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Um... the safety of leaded gas and cigarettes aren't even a part of the discourse anymore

No, but now half the population is inclined to believe the Clair Pattersons of our era are conspiring to strangle us all in red tape, and the Du Ponts are plucky whippersnappers who will save the day.
posted by ocschwar at 7:28 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Here are some of my own photos of the signs and people at the San Francisco March - a lovely day.
posted by twsf at 7:55 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


TBH the attitude I see mostly these days (I'm not on the front lines, so I can stand to be corrected) is that who cares if this is poisoning those downstream from us / killing the watersheds/springs that are headwaters / going to create problems for the grandchildren born today, let's make sure business/capitalism runs ahead full steam because that's how we gain prosperity.
posted by hippybear at 8:13 PM on April 22, 2017




The local march here was pretty sizable (maybe not surprising since we've got the big state uni here) but was also kind of quiet. Cheerful, lots of signs and babies and dogs and people chatting (including a group of three guys I walked past debating how the holodeck would really work) but also sort of an air of mildness. Definitely not the fiercer energy of the women's march. Honestly I think it may be that we're all a little tired and ground down but determined to at least show up and make a statement anyway.

There was a powwow at the university that was taking place while people were gathering, so a lot of folks stood around to watch and applaud the dancers before walking the short march route. That was pretty great.
posted by PussKillian at 9:26 PM on April 22, 2017


Here's my sign, I decided to just put it on a lab coat. Pretty good turnout in Fort Worth. I was interviewed by a local university newspaper reporter who was wearing a fedora-ish reporter hat, and that was fun.

I also asked a man about the symbol on his pin, and he told me he was present at the first Earth Day march and that's when he got it.

Funniest part; we were a very quiet group, and chants never really got off the ground. I suspect because many science-lovers/scientists are quiet and introverted types and none of us felt comfortable yelling.
posted by emjaybee at 9:54 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


My photos from the Livermore march. I counted around 8 other brain hats besides mine, and spotted a T-Rex at one point.

I pretty much dragged my mom (Republican but not Trump supporter, loves science-y things) to this because my birthday is coming up and I said this is what I wanted to do. She actually really enjoyed it and was glad she was there. I am really pleased about that. Maybe one of these days she'll wake up yet.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:37 PM on April 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


We're visiting Chicago and the march was quite odd to me. It was blindingly white, not just in the participants but in issues raised (for example, the Muslim ban is a massive problem for the scientific and medical community, but I saw literally only one sign about immigration or xenophobia). Also the march was extremely extremely quiet, and relegated to a narrow strip in the park. For a seasoned protestor from Oakland, this was all quite odd.

There was a lot of discussion in the scientific community about how political to get, and many of the major scientific organizations only signed on after the emergence of a we'll-be-as-apolitical-and-apartisan-as-possible-under-the-circumstances consensus. There were absolutely people in my lab, and other labs near ours, who still thought that marching was a radical, too-political/too-partisan thing to do. That's despite the fact that they don't support cuts to science funding, or crazy immigration bans that hurt their labmates (half my lab wasn't born in the US!). It's hard to emphasize too much that marching at all is culturally out of character for science/scientists, and is a huge step in its own right. So even people with strong opinions regarding diversity in science (incl. immigration!), women in science (incl. reproductive rights!), and the current political situation in general - a category that included several labmates who marched with me - seemed to have toed the line and stuck with on-message signs, resulting in an assembly that might have been a little more milquetoast than the personal sentiments of many of the marchers.

I also talked to random people while marching, and my sense was that there was a large contingent of people (in particular scientists) who had never been at a march before, or maybe had only been at the Women's March (me!). Even at the latter, it was mostly groups of people who were clearly familiar with protests who started and sustained chants; with even fewer of them here (and with a large group of pretty quiet, introverted scientists!), chants sorta withered. (Also I spent a bunch of the march near a brass band - maybe members of Environmental Encroachment? - which was fun but probably didn't promote chanting.)

I do wish the march route had gone through the city, rather than down to the Field Museum, but I suspect the latter was chosen in part due to the avoid-more-politicization imperative, and the Field Museum happens to be located down the lakeshore and not downtown. The space around the museum also allowed a bunch of science- and environment-related orgs to set up tables for outreach at the end of the march, which actually seemed like a pretty good idea to me, though the location behind the museum led to some disorganization in getting there. I'm also not sure that the organizers thought they'd have the numbers to justify getting city permits for shutting down streets in the Loop - it looks like Chicago had 40k marchers, or a little under a fifth of what the Women's March reputedly had, and honestly I had been quite worried we wouldn't get that many! (And apparently the crowds were larger than anticipated, to the point where the CPD told people to stop coming.)
posted by ubersturm at 2:50 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]


I chose to march in the March For Science in New Orleans with the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (I marched behind a brass band - second line for science! - and had a lot of fun). That was political. Science is political. The best session I went to this conference recognized and celebrated the ways that anthropologists with diverse perspectives and life experiences enhance science. We need to be explicit about supporting and uplifting URM scientists.

"The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences." - Ruth Benedict
Without diverse scientists, we have a flat, exclusive, blindered scientific process and produce flat, exclusive, blindered science. We need inclusive, intersectional, open science.

Zuleyka Zavallos, who I am good online friends with, and Danielle Lee, Jacquelyn Gill, and Caleph Wilson, and a number of other scientists, have been making serious cogent arguments about and critiques of the March and its organizers' truly abysmal handling of inclusion/diversity, elevating and supporting URM scientists, and just a poor understanding of what science can and cannot do (#marginsci is a really good hashtag to follow, if you're interested). The facebook group was truly toxic, and the number of comfortable white men who argued with a straight face that Science Isn't Political (and harassed URM and white women scientists who pushed back on the facebook group and science twitter) was incredibly disappointing. I wasn't planning on marching because I was so disgusted with the organization, but I was at the American Association of American Anthropologists meetings in New Orleans, and we joined the local march as an association.

Kim Tallbear said at the diversity session, "it should not take Trump to make scientists activists. The US was a crime long before Trump." It's embarrassing and shameful that it took this to get White scientists to start to realize we need to have these conversations and engage in activism, but it'll be even worse if all the acrimony and all the gross stuff that got dredged up in the way overrepresented scientists see underrepresented science, and our general lack of knowledge of science history, and painfully local perspective get left the way they are. I just don't want scientists to pat ourselves on the back, say we made clever signs, continue to marginalize scientists contributing so much to our field, and feel comfortable in our "speaking out."
posted by ChuraChura at 5:17 AM on April 23, 2017 [16 favorites]


It might be good if you defined what a URM scientist is.
posted by hippybear at 5:23 AM on April 23, 2017


Oh, sorry. Underrepresented minority.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:33 AM on April 23, 2017


I wish I'd thought to have a bunch of people in full zombie get-up lurching after the marchers, slavering and moaning for brains. Next year.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 5:37 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


One of my favorites from the Boston March, in curly Victorian script:

Trump & Bannon's
Miracle Elixir
Removes unsightly
FACTS & REASON
posted by pangolin party at 5:39 AM on April 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


Can someone help me understand what this sign "Citation needed (Altman 2007)" means?
posted by brainwane at 5:41 AM on April 23, 2017


A Proposed Standard for the Scholarly Citation of Quantitative Data, Altman and King, 2007:
An essential aspect of science is a community of scholars cooperating and competing in the pursuit of common goals. A critical component of this community is the common language of and the universal standards for scholarly citation, credit attribution, and the location and retrieval of articles and books. We propose a similar universal standard for citing quantitative data that retains the advantages of print citations, adds other components made possible by, and needed due to, the digital form and systematic nature of quantitative data sets, and is consistent with most existing subfield-specific approaches. Although the digital library field includes numerous creative ideas, we limit ourselves to only those elements that appear ready for easy practical use by scientists, journal editors, publishers, librarians, and archivists.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:44 AM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


I should have web searched that! Thanks ChuraChura. My mind went to "what relevant movie did Robert Altman make in 2007?" which would be quite a trick given that he died in 2006. Also as a Wikipedian I'm used to people using the Wikipedia styling in that sort of protest sign so I'm glad to know of the Altman citation!

Thank you everyone who's linking to pictures of signs -- I've been appreciating seeing them as encapsulations of public communication about the intersection of science, science fiction, and public policy. Like, this "periodic table of unstable elements" from the San Francisco march practically feels like a research poster presented at a conference, and this San Francisco marcher is rocking a Star Trek miniskirt uniform cosplay while their sign contrasts the Star Trek: The Next Generation future with the Mad Max: Fury Road future, asking, "Which future do you want our children to live in?"

I am appreciating this sign from the Vancouver march where the centre says "Science is about the evidence, not your ideology left or right" and the left side of the sign lists results that make liberals unhappy and the right side of the sign lists results that make conservatives unhappy. On the right, for instance: "More gun ownership correlates to more gun violence" and "sexual orientation is not a choice" plus several more. The left side includes "GMO crops are safe and beneficial", "cannabis doesn't cure cancer", "nuclear energy is safe and clean", "renewables are good, but not good enough", and "organic agriculture is not sustainable" and a few more. Merely saying "science isn't about left-right ideology" comes across as disingenuous in the current climate; by listing specific "you probably don't want to hear this, but....." hot buttons for each side, we demonstrate more concretely that we're against wishful thinking in public policy, even if it's our wishes we're thinking.
posted by brainwane at 6:07 AM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


Cannabis may not cure cancer but at least you won't even think about hav-- ooh! shiny!
posted by hippybear at 6:26 AM on April 23, 2017


We're visiting Chicago and the march was quite odd to me.
The Chicago event felt a lot more like training for a protest than an actual protest, but at least they managed to turn out a crowd, including a lot of people who don't normally attend protests. I sure wish it wasn't politically defanged and confined to a protest zone in the middle of a park, but it may actually be the best they could have pulled off at the moment given the participants. And there was a smattering of more diverse and progressive voices scattered throughout. (I wound up near both a Chicano student group and a bunch of people with Arabic language signs; to be clear, this was a small part of the whole, but it was good to see.) Figuring out how to agitate for a stronger political stance without scaring off the "never been to a protest before" crowd is, I think, a genuinely hard problem. It may be that there are really two different science-support movements that need to happen simultaneously.

After the march, I realize that we're fighting a battle on two fronts. On one side, we face a racist, misogynist, superstitious political machine that promotes and anti-science world view and celebrates everything cruel, unethical, and stupid in humankind. On the other side, we face people who think "sine" puns are funny. We'll never be safe until we've defeated both of these existential threats to our way of life.
posted by eotvos at 6:40 AM on April 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


But sine puns ARE funny.
posted by hippybear at 6:52 AM on April 23, 2017 [9 favorites]


This thread is going off on too much of a tangent.
posted by Cookiebastard at 6:57 AM on April 23, 2017 [14 favorites]


more like training for a protest than an actual protest

Lol yes, exactly. Ours was literally a march around the block (a very large block with a large, important academic building at the center, but still). The faculty and grad student union organizers were there and I didn't get the impression that the event itself was trying to be apolitical, but it was kind of like protest training wheels. Short march, not much in the way of chants or slogans, everyone just a little bit awkward about calling attention to themselves, but there nonetheless.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:01 AM on April 23, 2017


Oh cool: I was trying to figure out: what is the molecular diagram being described here? So I found a molecule search thing that let me make a diagram replicating the one on the sign and then search for structures matching that, and figured out: it's serotonin! So the sign is: "Make serotonin, not war".

Another sign that caused me to go learn something: "Trump doesn't respect the one-glove rule". You carry samples in a gloved hand and you keep the other hand ungloved, and you only touch stuff like doorknobs with the ungloved hand, to avoid contamination. (There's sort of a literal truth here and a few figurative truths, about norms and contamination and what Trump has done with his hands. And it reminds me of the night of the election, waiting for results to come in, and me suddenly realizing and saying aloud, "I bet he doesn't even like Hamilton!")

My favorites, from the lists above, hastily transcribed so people who can't see the pictures can enjoy them: posted by brainwane at 7:26 AM on April 23, 2017 [7 favorites]


Happy to report that the Victoria BC march did get some politics in... With two provincial election candidates speaking, and the BC government called out for their attack on a group of health researchers, which was recently chronicled in a scathing report by the provincial ombuds person. For terrible reasons science is an election issue here...
Also the two grad student speakers focused on women in science and standing against anti-immigration policies and racism.
That said there were quite a few " i cant believe we have to" and " I've never done this" comments.

I think it's interesting that so many logical people struggle to parse the difference between results of experiments being apolitical and policy affecting your research being political.
posted by chapps at 7:59 AM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'd been following the #marginsci hashtag on Twitter for a while (I recommend it) and also had some qualms about marching in light of the consistent mismanagement of the D.C. organization. But when the underrepresented minority scientist in your lab asks you to come march, "I'm not sure how I feel about this protest's handling of diversity and inclusion," seems like a pretty piss-poor answer, so I spent yesterday at the Denver march and was glad I did. Tweet storm with the best of my pictures.

As for the 'training protest' commentary, my take is that it's only a training wheels protest march if the point of the march is to get better at doing protest marches. The chants were few and far between and weak, sure. ("Show me what a scientist looks like" was the best I heard, but nothing sustained for long.) But normalizing political engagement is an important thing, and I strongly suspect this kind of event helps with that.

One of the signs I took a picture of says "I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS" - and not to focus too much on the academic science tenure track community, but for pre-tenure academic scientists, time is a scant resource, and the ability to spend real effort towards sustained direct group action is limited. (UNC's director of outreach: "I can't overstate how big of a deal this #sciencemarch is. Have you ever tried to get five scientists in a room for a committee meeting?") So normalizing is important; progressive scientists do a lot of things that count for exactly zero when it comes to tenure review because they're the right thing to do, but we still have to budget our time thoughtfully if we want to continue in our chosen career path. For people out for their first protest march, March For Science added another item to the overfull list - political engagement - and then generated a quorum of people reinforcing the shared value that yes, this too is a thing worth doing.

Anyway, I hope at least some U.S. people will follow up their marching with contacting their representative when Congress fails to pass a budget next week and federal research funding careens onward, perhaps under yet another continuing resolution where NIH grants are funded at only 90% of the committed level. If going to My First Protest March (Now With 50% More Science Puns) makes them more likely to do that, I call that a net good.

But seriously, that D.C. march leadership? Ugh. Ugggh. I'm so glad I didn't make plans to go to D.C. for that because uggggggh.
posted by deludingmyself at 9:09 AM on April 23, 2017 [8 favorites]


We're visiting Chicago and the march was quite odd to me. It was blindingly white, not just in the participants but in issues raised (for example, the Muslim ban is a massive problem for the scientific and medical community, but I saw literally only one sign about immigration or xenophobia). Also the march was extremely extremely quiet, and relegated to a narrow strip in the park. For a seasoned protestor from Oakland, this was all quite odd.

Did you go to the rally? They had something like 5 speakers and by far the best speaker was a black man named Gary Cooper who directly addressed race in his talk. Out of 5 speakers at least 2 were POC (I couldn't see (or hear) the essay winner).

The march was mostly white and quite a bit older than most other protests I have seen but what are you going to do? That's who showed up. It might reflect that POC in Chicago have other far more pressing protest concerns that they conserve their time and passion for.
posted by srboisvert at 12:22 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


An illustration of a beaker being heated by a flame labelled "fear" and then causing a liquid to drip into a test tube labelled "hate". High school chemistry was long enough for me that I can't remember the jargon I should be using here.

It's a distillation.
posted by solotoro at 1:59 PM on April 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


I marched in Morgantown, WV. It's a college town so we had good turnout, especially families with kids, and college students. It's a pretty white town but I saw several Indian, Chinese, and Korean students in the crowd. Only a few people had signs but the event coincided with something the University was doing that celebrates Einstein in the Arts so someone was handing out cool Einstein tshirts. My sign had a picture of the Green Bank Radio Telescope and said "Save Our Scope."

I talked to a young woman who is an epidemiologist who said that it was her first march and she was surprised to see scientists organizing like this. She remarked that most scientists she knew were lazy and disorganized. A woman standing next to her rebuked her and said that scientists weren't lazy. She was a climate scientist whose work was frequently attacked online and she was very touchy about the negative portrayals of scientists. The public health lady's biggest concern was people thinking essential oils were sufficient to prevent tick-borne diseases.

We marched through downtown, right into a $5 chocolate tasting event, so everyone had a good time and got their picture in the paper. We should do it again next weekend if the weather's good.
posted by irisclara at 2:21 PM on April 23, 2017


Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.
posted by hippybear at 2:22 PM on April 23, 2017




We marched through downtown, right into a $5 chocolate tasting event

I'm going to own right now that I have seriously underrated West Virginia's college town game.
posted by deludingmyself at 3:25 PM on April 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


One of my favorites from the Boston March, in curly Victorian script:

Trump & Bannon's
Miracle Elixir
Removes unsightly
FACTS & REASON


I take that sign as a wonderful example of the compatibility between science and the arts, because I believe it contains a reference to Sweeney Todd. In the musical, Todd gains notice as a barber by challenging a "streetcorner mountebank" hawking a "miracle elixir" he claims to regrow hair.

Todd swiftly identifies the "miracle elixir" as "Piss. Piss with ink."

Well played, Boston sign person, well played.
posted by Gelatin at 5:35 AM on April 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


(I was at the Indianapolis march Saturday, but didn't get any pictures. Here's a gallery of signs and coverage courtesy the local paper.)
posted by Gelatin at 5:38 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's Monday, and here's the first real response from the administration to the march.

It's about as blatant a "fuck off and die, dweebs" as can be:

The Environmental Protection Agency's Open Data Web service – which stores information on climate change, life cycle assessment, health impact analysis and environmental justice – is to have its funding removed and will no longer be in operation, according to people working on the plan.

As is typical when the Trump administration floats a trial balloon with a turd in the basket, the details are noncommittal, and the first journalist to notice is a British one, who doesn't quite have the details right.

I think the "Open Data Web service" (wrong capitalization as that is not what the EPA calls it) is this:

https://www.epa.gov/enviro/envirofacts-data-service-api

But we need confirmation from somewhere better about getting the details right.
posted by ocschwar at 6:18 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


This will be worse than a crime: a blunder.
Everyone out there who tries to develop mobile apps for iPhones or Androids needs to practice with geographic information files (since most apps try to do things based on where a phone is located).
Which in turn means downloading geotagged data, of whatever kind there is.
Which means EPA data too. (Why not? It's there. It's in the right formats. It's interesting.)
Trump just said "fuck you, nerds," to every mobile app developer on the planet.
posted by ocschwar at 6:28 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]




"I don't believe in science; I practice the scientific method. Objective observation > hearsay. Testable hypothesis > miracles. Experimentation > beliefs. Verification > anecdotes." I can't make out the last line but it could be "repeatability > truth".

I saw a photo of a similar sign online recently; on that one the final line was "repeatability > faith" so that may be it.
posted by Chuck Carroll at 9:11 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Something about this event has been bugging me, and it has to do with some of these signs. And the fact that much of this thread has focused on enthusiastic discussion of cute/nerdy/clever signage.

What are we trying to (literally) signify here? What message are we sending, and what do we hope to accomplish? In many of these signs, I see shibboleths and inside jokes that won't mean anything to people who DON'T study this shit for a living. I'm afraid that many Americans will see this not as a group of people who have devoted their lives to science and care immensely about better education, medical advances, responsible environmental stewardship, etc... but instead as a bunch of smug nerds who are just dying to say I Told You So.

And I know, it's a really good feeling to get out there and see that there are a bunch of people who share your ideals. It's encouraging, and encouragement is useful. And seeing that science (and scientists) can be fun is also great. But I think a demonstration stops being useful if it becomes self-congratulatory, and I'm afraid that a lot of this risks coming across as self-congratulatory.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 9:57 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think it was an extremely useful exercise in at least one way. It woke up a whole lot of people who are generally fairly apolitical or at least too busy for political activism. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of people who turned out for the march science were first time protesters (or second time since many were probably at the woman's march as well). Triggering political activism in older and middle class people is not a small thing.
posted by srboisvert at 10:26 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


What are we trying to (literally) signify here? What message are we sending, and what do we hope to accomplish?
What "we" is supposed to answer those questions? Why would you even presume there's a single answer? It really doesn't work that way.

To the extent that there are any unified messages, these are largely (but not universally) true of march participants:
  • they are paying some level of attention to what's going on and are not happy with the current direction
  • they care about science and want to see it supported
  • they're energized enough by these two factors to want to give up a day of their time and march about it to raise public awareness, with the implication being that they may well be energized enough to vote accordingly
That's about it -- beyond that it fragments into many different messages. And that's alright. You've got to start someplace.
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:36 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


I went to the Seattle march. I desperately wanted to make a nerd-pedant sign (DATA IS ARE LIFE) but talked myself out of it. I showed up a bit before the actual marching was scheduled to begin, delivered a sign to a friend (SCIENCE NEEDS EVERYBODY), and enjoyed the crowd until we stepped off. I didn't take many photos but have one of a group in Star Wars costumes and me and my sign. Notable on-message marchers included the local chapter of the Satanic Temple (HAIL REASON), a jaunty brass marching band, alternative cats, and 20,000ish other individuals. A small pack of fire-and-brimstone preachers with ginormous signs and a sound system jumped in for a solid mile of the route, which was...unpleasant.

instagram appears to be down right now but the photo links worked 10 minutes ago so hopefully they work again sometime soon.
posted by esoterrica at 10:45 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I didn't have a sign - the wife and I marched in Tyvek clean-room coveralls. (The one time the non-breathability and over-warmth of those things was an advantage...)

After the march i thought of the perfect sign.

EPPUR
SI
MUOVE
posted by notsnot at 1:49 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I marched in DC, and until then I had not fully appreciated the placement of the Newseum: it has the first amendment on its front facade, right where you'll see it as you approach the Capitol building during a march.

My favorite sign was 'keep your tiny hands off my curves' (with a sine wave, of course).
posted by Dashy at 6:13 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thanks, Chuck Carroll. This goes to show I'm such a Wikipedian that my mind went to "Verifiability, not truth". "Faith" is far more consistent with the rest of the sign!
posted by brainwane at 4:47 AM on April 25, 2017


It's been a few days so here come the inevitable contrary takes on the March for Science. This one was pretty rage inducing for me this morning.

The March for Science was Eerily Religious
posted by TwoWordReview at 10:35 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


On the #slatepitch thing: I think that lots of people have difficulty (possibly because we need a March for Humanities) with the idea that different rhetorics serve different purposes.

There certainly is an irritating internet #SCIENCE thing going around, yes, and people certainly have trouble understanding actual studies, also yes. And up to a point, it's important to say, whenever we praise research, that research is flawed, historically contingent, etc etc.

However:

1. #Slatepitch doesn't demonstrate any link at all between the people who mistakenly think that antibiotics cure the common cold or that GMOs are obviously dangerous and the people who attended the Marches for Science. "Some people have wrong ideas about what science does, therefore the people at these marches do too" doesn't hold up.

I was at the march with a friend who is a junior high science teacher and their friends who were researchers and nonprofit scientific workers; I knew a bunch of actual researchers who attended the march and interacted with large numbers who were also connected in various ways to the research enterprise. It was certainly a very large march, so perhaps everyone else belongs to the "hops are good for your liver !11!!1" crowd, but that was not my impression.

2. If you don't understand why you'd show up at a March for Science with a largely positive message about research, well, a rhetoric course might help. The overarching purpose of the march was to demonstrate that there is significant positive support for research funding - not just so that the Trump budget doesn't go through, but so that a Trump Budget Lite doesn't go through.

If you don't understand why substantial cuts to federally funded research are really, really bad, you don't understand the US research infrastructure. Research is a vexed thing, peer review is a vexed thing, etc, but funding cuts are not going to fix that. Since they'll result in - are already resulting in - lab closures and destroyed careers, particularly in basic sciences, research will only get less diverse and more rich/white/male/pathologically competitive.

Again, up to a point, you can muster popular support by saying "support this but be critical of it". But that's a risky strategy for a big public event and not something I've seen carried out very well, like, ever.

3. One of the problems with the now is that we are forced into simpler and dumber political situations. It was indeed absolutely surreal to be "marching for science", but I'm not sure what the good alternative is - let our research infrastructure be destroyed and hope to rebuild after the revolution? Hope that the United States collapses into a toxic wasteland roamed only by mutants (and not the Magneto kind, either) so that the rest of the world has a chance to build something else free of American interference?

4. If you didn't, like #Slatepitch didn't, physically attend any marches, your sense of their mood and variety is simply not going to be adequate. Video feeds are cool and everything, but it's not the same as being there. In fact, of all the hot takes and catastrophizing I've read from people who didn't attend a march, none of them seem to reflect the actual nature of the marches.
posted by Frowner at 11:12 AM on April 25, 2017 [7 favorites]


My favorite part of the march in DC was that so many people had obviously not considered the implications of the weather forecast, so there were hundreds if not thousands of signs just sorta dripping ominously like Heath Ledger's Joker face. Most of them were still legible, so it mostly just made them more badass looking.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:21 AM on April 26, 2017


The March for Science was Eerily Religious

Jeremy Samuel Faust is as good a reason as any to ignore every single Slate hot take on any thing ever again.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:24 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was a one woman march at the Grand Canyon, basically, I hiked about with this sign on my pack. Park staff loved my shirt and people actually asked me about biomedical HIV prevention, so, job done!
posted by Sophie1 at 10:21 AM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


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