As Marches Approach, Science Advocates Warn Universities to Prepare for Backlash

As a young professor 25 years ago, Lisa J. Graumlich awoke to a career success: Her work studying tree-ring patterns to reconstruct 1,000 years of global climate history had just become headline news.

The joy was fleeting. Before the day was out, her work was being ridiculed nationally by the conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

With less than a month until a planned series of nationwide demonstrations on behalf of science, advocates including Ms. Graumlich — now dean of the College of the Environment at the University of Washington at Seattle — fear that many others are about to encounter similar backlash.

The advocates are warning that the science marches, for all the hope they promise, also bring risks, including a costly public diminishing of science at a politically perilous moment and attacks on the work of individual participants. What’s more, those scientists say, many in universities and the research community are simply failing to appreciate the risks.

“What you’ve got to do,” Ms. Graumlich said, referring to her fellow university leaders, “is stop right now and assess where your weaknesses and vulnerabilities are in terms of being able to respond, and to fund the resources to be able to have experts working with you.”

A leader in raising the alarm is Brian N. Baird, a former Democratic member of Congress now working with the Association of American Universities. This past week, he and the AAU led a conference call with various research organizations trying to get them to appreciate the urgency of the moment.

Universities and field-specific professional groups, Mr. Baird said, should emphasize both offense and defense — stepping up their continuing work to spread positive stories of what university research accomplishes while getting “rapid-response” teams ready for when specific scientific projects are mocked by professional skeptics.

Generally, he said, that’s not happening. “I don’t think that’s been well-planned for by the academic institutions,” Mr. Baird said of the protest marches. “It’s not too late, but it’s getting late.”

‘There’s Enormous Danger’

The main March for Science is scheduled for April 22 in Washington, with more than 400 local versions expected worldwide. It grew out of concern raised by Donald J. Trump’s election as president, although organizers have portrayed it as a nonpartisan effort to emphasize the value of science to society.

The effort began slowly, as an idea circulated in social-media posts. But gradually dozens of major members of the scientific establishment have joined, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society, and a series of other academic, professional, and environmental societies.

Brendan Smialowski, Getty Images

With that political heft come real political stakes, Mr. Baird said. The risks of failure should already be clear from the federal budget plan outlined last month by the Trump administration, he said.

Mr. Trump’s proposed cuts to science, including a nearly $6-billion reduction in the budget of the National Institutes of Health, were described last week by the AAAS’s budget analyst as the most-aggressive attack on science funding in at least 40 years, surpassing even reductions sought by the Reagan administration.

The Trump administration took direct aim at university operations, telling Congress last week that it hoped to achieve much of that savings by eliminating overhead payments — the additional money tacked onto research grants to cover the costs of running lab facilities and related infrastructure.

Members of both parties have traditionally backed the NIH and federal spending on science, and many have expressed opposition to the Trump plans. But nobody should be complacent, Mr. Baird said. “There’s enormous danger” for universities in the current budget environment, he said.

And the threats extend beyond budgets, Mr. Baird said. Just last month, the chairman of the House science committee, Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, addressed an annual political conference dedicated to challenging the scientific understanding of climate change. There he endorsed a suggestion that the government find a way to punish scientific journals that don’t comply with his concept of academic peer review.

As a social scientist and a veteran of 12 years in Congress, Mr. Baird has seen politically motivated skeptics of science wage coordinated attacks across various media platforms. In addition to establishing rapid-response plans, he said, universities should be making or re-establishing contact with their local members of Congress to make sure they and their staff understand what research is being performed in their districts and why it matters to the local community and the nation.

Ms. Graumlich said she has made that a priority for her environmental college: She hired an eight-person communications team and put at least a third of her 200 faculty members through a rigorous communications-training program. Many schools at many universities might consider that a luxury, Ms. Graumlich said. “I saw this as absolutely critical,” she said.

When her work was attacked by Mr. Limbaugh in 1992, before the internet era, she was an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, and she had few options to respond. Now, as dean, she would respond to a similar public challenge by convening her experts and carefully assessing factors that include the audience, the proper response, and the appropriate person to deliver it.

In the case of Mr. Limbaugh, who has repeatedly mocked climate studies based on tree-ring analysis, Ms. Graumlich said she might conclude that any response to that particular audience could be counterproductive. In other instances, for example, she might see value in encouraging local shellfish growers to discuss how much they benefit from her school’s forecasts about the cycles of ocean acidification.

Communications Failures

Over all, the question of what is motivating supporters of Mr. Trump and how best to confront them remains a puzzle for researchers. That was a chief topic for both the AAAS and the Consortium of Social Science Associations at policy conferences they held this past week in Washington.

The social-science group’s membership heard from Arlie R. Hochschild, an emerita professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, whose 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land, describes her travels to Louisiana trying to understand why some Americans who may be most in need of government protections seem most hostile to them.

Ms. Hochschild assigns the contradiction to a variety of factors, including racial resentment and a deep longing for job security among poorly educated people who are vulnerable to powerful interests that exploit their communities. But she made clear she’s still grasping for more solid answers and appropriate responses, and she said she does not expect Mr. Trump’s supporters will fundamentally change their political attitudes.

At the AAAS gathering, the group’s chief executive officer — Rush D. Holt, another former Democratic congressman, also stressed communications failures. Following a series of presentations on the economic and social value that research gives Americans, Mr. Holt said too many scientists don’t seem able to explain themselves to their fellow citizens. “You have to try harder to be clear,” he said.

The goal for scientists should not be “simplification” for laypeople, which can come across as dismissive, Mr. Holt warned. Instead, he counseled scientists to tell stories about how they follow evidence. From that process, he said, scientists will learn how to keep the main elements in their stories while omitting the extraneous ones.

On his way out of the AAAS conference, the NIH’s director, Francis S. Collins — an Obama administration appointee held over by the Trump administration — somberly acknowledged seeing “ups and downs” over the years for NIH. Asked if he had considered resigning over the administration’s proposal for his beloved agency, Dr. Collins said Congress ultimately has always recognized the value of funding research. “I just believe that case is strong enough now that that will not change,” he said.

Paul Basken covers university research and its intersection with government policy. He can be found on Twitter @pbasken, or reached by email at paul.basken@chronicle.com.