For a professional community under seige, this year’s participants in the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science were oddly muted. But a careful observer could easily see that it was war!
Snipers hurled more and more evidence for global climate change from many of the symposium rooms. There were reports of rebellion from stem cell researchers. But from the giant recruitment kiosks luring scientists overseas to the standing-room-only breakfast hosted by European research centers, it was evident that retreat was an increasingly popular option.
For those who don’t know the players without a scorecard, AAAS is an umbrella organization uniting researchers whose primary professional group would probably represent far more narrow interests. At each year’s AAAS meeting, biologists explain their work to physicists, geologists to social scientists, and everyone speaks to the armies of reporters who are welcomed in as translators for the general public.
In past years AAAS sessions openly challenged the efforts of this administration to stifle science. Angry researchers used to vocally complain about efforts to skew peer review or edit their text. By contrast, this year’s sessions seemed oddly muted–almost as though years of supression had worn people down.
Embryonic stem cell research represents just one of the fronts in this war. It’s been six years since George Bush issued an executive order “…limiting the ability of American scientists to participate in this promising area of research…” Many of the 22 formerly approved embryonic stem cell lines are now corrupted, and other lines no longer differentiate. From a session on funding stem cell by Zach W. Hall, participants found that efforts to grow the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Proposition 71) have been stymied by litigation.
Yet there were already successes, if one looked hard. From the Medical University of South Carolina, Richard Schmiedt described early successes restoring hearing in presbyacusis victims with stem cell implants, while Mary MacDougall from University of Alabama described the regeneration of tooth and gum tissue using stem cells.
Climate change science and policy was a major theme of the convention. It was impossible to walk a hall without finding signs of defeat, as the International Polar Year began.
Recent research in Antarctica continues to reveal substantial and alarming alterations in atmosphere, oceans, and terrestrial ecosystems due to climate change. Although seemingly remote, Antarctica has long signaled changes that are now widely recognized as impoacting people, ecosystems, and economies around the world.
Diana Wall, Colorado State University.
The forests of High Asia support …many tree species…having life spans in excess of 1,000 years. This natural resource is steadily dwindling now due to continuing deforestation…The tree-ring records…provide a glimpse of how climate has changed…during the latter part of the 20th Century period of global warming compared to the past.
Edward Cook, Columbia University
Many of the world’s mountain regions are especially vulnerable to changes in climate and to ensuing changes in snowpack, streamflow, ecosystem functioning and a host of other impacts on natural systems…greenhouse warming will cause temperatures to rise faster at higher than at lower altitudes.
Henry Diaz, Boulder, Colorado.
But at this conference, the most heavily attended sessions were those that discussed the nation’s political climate. From Anthony Leiserowitz, Eugene, OR:
“…global warming remains a low priority relative to other national and environmental issues, and lacks a sense of urgency…Americans generally perceive climate change as a moderate risk that will predominantly impact geographically and temporally distant people and places.
What’s evident when scientists gather is that there is very little sense that they can change the social fabric in which they work. Regulations that stifle and contort their work are often viewed as just so much “bad karma.” Attempts to get more politically aggressive action (like a session urging scientists to run for local school boards) were generally poorly attended.
Given the rush to the free food and glitzy displays by the foreign recruiters at this year’s meeting, one has to ask: When the administration changes, and there is a truce in the war on science, will there be anyone left to rebuild?
