Could Trump inadvertently drive scientists into politics?

By Gillian Tett

This autumn, as America prepares for midterm elections, there will be plenty of startling statistics about Washington politics on display. But here is one oft-ignored number that merits more attention: if you count the members of Congress with a background in pure science, the grand total comes to, er, two.
Yes, you read that right. Today, almost half of the 535 members of Congress have a background in law, and several dozen have worked in business or real estate. Several dozen more have served in the military, and a handful were engineers.
There is just one physicist and one chemist: respectively, Bill Foster, a Democratic Congressman in Illinois, and John Moolenaar, a Republican Congressman in Michigan. That is lower than even the tally of former radio show hosts now in Congress, which is seven.
Why does this matter? Because if there was ever a time when America needed rational, informed and evidence-based decision making, it is now. Parts of the political discourse are sliding towards a world of cyber-ranting, where facts seem optional at best. And the US faces serious challenges where policy needs to be debated with some scientific knowledge. Think, for example, of the pressing issues around climate change, artificial intelligence and bioscience.
It’s not only Congress that lacks scientific expertise; nobody in President Trump’s administration has worn a laboratory coat either. Worse, Trump, like many other members of the Republican party, has appeared (at best) ambivalent about the merits of science. Last year’s draft budget tried to slash scientific research and the administration has seemed to dismiss the challenges of climate change by pulling out of the Paris climate change accord and undermining the Environmental Protection Agency.
But American politics is a place where every reaction sparks a counter-reaction. So what is intriguing right now is not just that there are almost no scientists sitting in Congress but that – inadvertently – Trump’s administration could help spark some change.
A couple of years ago, in the wake of the 2016 election, a political campaign called 314 Action (named, somewhat geekily, after the first three digits of Pi) was established to bring more scientists into politics. The leaders of the group, the first of its kind in America, are modelling it on the campaign known as Emily’s List, which supports women who want to enter politics.
The 314 team initially expected to field about 1,000 inquiries from volunteer scientists. But they were actually deluged with 7,500. “The response was astonishing – it’s unprecedented,” says Shaughnessy Naughton, a former chemist and entrepreneur, and founder of 314 Action. Indeed, she likens the surge to the dramatic flood of women who contacted Emily’s List in response to Trump’s victory. “Traditionally,” she says, “scientists thought science is above politics and so they shouldn’t be involved. But the Trump administration has been a catalyst – scientists have realised that there is a war on science and that they have to step up and get involved.”
Thus far the campaign has trained 1,400 scientists to run for office and endorsed 100 candidates for the upcoming state and local elections. It has also endorsed and funded 13 candidates for Congress, including Joe Cunningham in South Carolina (a former ocean engineer), Joseph Kopser in Texas (an aerospace engineer) and Elaine Luria in Virginia (a former nuclear engineer).
It is far from clear how much impact this will have in the short term. After all, even if all 13 candidates win, this is a tiny fraction of 535 – and the organisation is projecting a budget of just $5m, since it is entirely funded by small donors. Another potential “problem” that may limit its reach is that almost all of the scientists who have volunteered for 314 Action are Democrats or independents, and there tend to be more engineers than “pure” lab-coat scientists. The latter fact is probably because it remains very tough for academics to take a break in their career without suffering penalties.