2 Jewish Nobel Physicists Slam Politicization Of Science
Image by NobelPrize.org
Two Jewish scientists awarded the Nobel prize on Tuesday for opening up a new era of astronomy by detecting gravitational waves said they hoped the attention would make Americans less inclined to dismiss scientific consensus in favor of politics.
That reflects skepticism among the broader American public, where a growing number of people reject scientific findings on issues from whether climate change is man-made to the safety of vaccines.
“We live in an epoch where rational reasoning associated with evidence isn’t universally accepted and is in fact in jeopardy. That worries me a lot, said Rainer Weiss, an emeritus professor of physics at MIT, and part of the team honored on Tuesday.
“If this gives people who are not me but others the credential to be able to stand out and say, ‘Listen to this,’ that is valuable,” Weiss, who won half the $1.1 million prize, said in a phone interview.
Barry Barish of Caltech, also an emeritus professor of physics, sounded similar concerns.
“Anything that makes us take more seriously scientists, or economists, or chemists, or physicists or biologists, I think is helpful in times when things get distorted because of people not paying attention to all the facts,” Barish said by phone.
“It’s crazy that we happen to have a country where it depends on what political party you are in whether you believe in climate change or not,” Barish said. “We have an administration right now that so far seems to be very anti-science.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
