{"id":23552,"date":"2025-03-08T15:32:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T16:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23552"},"modified":"2025-03-08T17:24:28","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T17:24:28","slug":"stand-up-for-science-rally-sees-mix-of-science-politics-and-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23552","title":{"rendered":"Stand Up for Science Rally Sees Mix of Science, Politics and Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Shortly before noon on Friday, Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, stood on the steps below the Lincoln Memorial tuning his acoustic guitar \u2014 a \u201cvery sweet\u201d Huss & Dalton, he said, with a double-helix of DNA winding down the neck in pearl inlay. The nation\u2019s anxious scientists could use a song.<\/p>\n

Dr. Collins, a biomedical researcher renowned for leading the Human Genome Project in the 1990s, had steered the N.I.H. through three presidencies, into 2021, and continued working at the agency until his abrupt retirement a week ago<\/a>. Now he was a headline speaker for Stand Up for Science<\/a>, a rally to protest the Trump administration\u2019s drastic cuts to the federal work force and to federally funded science.<\/p>\n

The organizers weren\u2019t sure how many people would show up \u2014 they later estimated that the crowd had peaked at 5,000 \u2014 nor quite what to expect. In 2017, tens of thousands gathered on the Washington Mall for the March for Science<\/a>. The collective mood then was as much perplexity as defiance at Mr. Trump\u2019s suggestions that America could be made greater by greatly reducing the Environmental Protection Agency and perhaps never mentioning climate change ever again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This year\u2019s crowd was met by Lincoln, over-large and stone-faced in his chair. The organizers had chosen the site for its postcard view of Capitol Hill, perhaps less aware that the 16th president was a champion of science. He established the National Academy of Sciences in 1863 and, an avid astronomer, often visited the Naval Observatory. Early in his career, Lincoln often carried a volume of Euclid under his arm; he studied the mathematician\u2019s argumentative logic to hone his own as a lawyer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, invoked the Gettysburg Address \u2014 \u201cof the people, by the people, for the people\u201d \u2014 and noted that it applied to taxpayer-funded science, too. \u201cWe have to sing about this,\u201d he said.<\/span>Eric Lee\/The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A scientific S.O.S.<\/span>Jason Andrew for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Beaker, the Muppet lab assistant.<\/span>Jason Andrew for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Shortly before noon on Friday, Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, stood on the steps below the Lincoln Memorial tuning his acoustic guitar \u2014 a \u201cvery sweet\u201d Huss & Dalton, he said, with a double-helix of DNA winding down the neck in pearl inlay. The nation\u2019s anxious scientists could use a song.Dr. Collins, a biomedical researcher renowned for leading the Human Genome Project in the 1990s, had steered the N.I.H. through three presidencies, into 2021, and continued working at the agency until his abrupt retirement a week ago. Now he was a headline speaker for Stand Up for Science, a rally to protest the Trump administration\u2019s drastic cuts to the federal work force and to federally funded science.The organizers weren\u2019t sure how many people would show up \u2014 they later estimated that the crowd had peaked at 5,000 \u2014 nor quite what to expect. In 2017, tens of thousands gathered on the Washington Mall for the March for Science. The collective mood then was as much perplexity as defiance at Mr. Trump\u2019s suggestions that America could be made greater by greatly reducing the Environmental Protection Agency and perhaps never mentioning climate change ever again.This year\u2019s crowd was met by Lincoln, over-large and stone-faced in his chair. The organizers had chosen the site for its postcard view of Capitol Hill, perhaps less aware that the 16th president was a champion of science. He established the National Academy of Sciences in 1863 and, an avid astronomer, often visited the Naval Observatory. Early in his career, Lincoln often carried a volume of Euclid under his arm; he studied the mathematician\u2019s argumentative logic to hone his own as a lawyer.Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, invoked the Gettysburg Address \u2014 \u201cof the people, by the people, for the people\u201d \u2014 and noted that it applied to taxpayer-funded science, too. \u201cWe have to sing about this,\u201d he said.Eric Lee\/The New York TimesA scientific S.O.S.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesBeaker, the Muppet lab assistant.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23554,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23555,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23552\/revisions\/23555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}