LIHUE — Braving the rain and cool weather, about two dozen people from all over Kauai joined forces Saturday in support of science.
“The March for Science is a celebration of science. It’s not only about scientists and politicians, it is about the very real role that science plays in each of our lives,” said one march organizer, Nancy Kanna, with the Hawaii Alliance for Science.
Science, Kanna said, helps humanity discover and illuminate truths upon which policy makers can act to better the lives of people they serve.
“Science is everywhere and affects everyone. We must take science out of the labs and journals and share it with the world,” Kanna said.
Kalaheo resident Dr. Bob Weiner said he attended the march in support of a friend who is a pharmaceutical researcher. He said the event was important because there’s some anti-science sentiment in the community.
Science, Weiner said, is valuable because it gives people the tools to look at the world and come to conclusions about things that can improve our lives.
“Everything that civilization has achieved over the centuries to improve people’s lives has basically been through the scientific approach,” he said.
Visiting from the East Coast, John Odell, who participated in the march last year in New York City, said he was there to support science, because science is a worthy cause.
“It’s a way of explaining things around us, but it’s also very important because it trains your mind to think critically, to evaluate things properly, to have a way to take facts and statements thrown at you and really evaluate them in a logical and reasonable way,” he said.
Lisa “Cali” Crampton, a conservation biologist from Kalaheo who runs Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project, said she was participating in the march because science is at the foundation of everything she does.
“I’m also concerned that in some parts of this country there are revisionist views about the role of evolution in shaping our world, but I don’t see that here in Hawaii. In Hawaii, I feel like we have a really good grounding in the theory of science and how we apply it to understanding how the world works,” Crampton said.
Poipu resident Anne Freeman, a retired public health professional, said she was participating to support her son, who is a scientist, and also because she wants to encourage science-based decision-making.
One of her concerns is the lack of funding for research.
“Scientists can’t do their work, they can’t find jobs, and we’re going to get behind other countries in our technology and our education of children in the fields of science,” she said.
Making the drive all the way from Waimea, entomologist Sarah Thompson said she wants to see more young people get into science.
“I’m really interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education and outreach to young people to get them interested, so she has a chance for career opportunities like I did,” she said.
Koloa resident, business consultant and industrial psychologist Patrick Powaser said he was participating in the event because science is important to everyday life.
“Rely on good research and solid science and it’ll answer a lot of questions,” he said.
Info: www.hawaiiallianceforscience.com/
Science, real science, is ultimately in the hands of…scientists.
The problem with Science since WWII, is the scientists themselves.
Scientists need to use their minds before they use their hands.
Meaning, scientists need to ascess if what they are doing is benéficial to the earth as a complex entity; and if the scientific endeavor they are to work on is respectful and responsible without dangerous and damaging side effects to the complex earth and its many environments, including the people and other living things.
Pseudo scientists in the misuse of science, and in the quest for corporate profits ignore being responsible, for example:
1,) Alterring the DNA, etc., of God given food and other natural things for corporate profits.
2.) Arrogantly patenting God given foods and other God given things, for corporate profitability.
3.) Developing patented foods that require not only the use of deadly and cancerous poisons, but making those poisons part of a new dependent vicious circle that leads to massive corporate profits at the expense of poisoning living things like: people, food, soil and its good bacteria, good fungi, and good virus.
4.) Allowing the pseudo scientific process to disrupt the normal human histiological (our cells), physiological, and biological processes such as breaking down the gut wall’s integrity allowing the “Leaky Gut” disease that allows agricultural poisons on and in food to enter our bodies and blood streams.
5.) Irresponsible science is allowing medical drugs on the market that harm and kill people; so well pointed out by TV drug ads, and if doctors are scientists why do they prescribe them.
6.) Irresponsible science is when scientists turn a blind eye to air, water, and land pollution…with corporate profit clouding their vision.
7.) Irresponsible science is blindly allowing damage to our planet that has become so ingrained in our society that it is a speeding train on a track headed in the wrong direction. How many ways can you spell or describe pollution?
Here on Kauai we cannot see the absolutely poisonous yellow pollution in the air over almost all world cities. Even the air is soiled and spoiled and discolered at 35,000 feet above sea level. We cannot see the Ag poisons on our island MIST-ified by spraying in the air and of which 99.9% does not even get into the plants being sprayed but goes into the soil, water table, and waterways effecting all of us…unseen. We don’t see the cancers nor does the Dept. Of Health or the Kauai Hospitals Tell us what our island neighbors are dying from…it is unseen, it is a secret from ourselves…shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot.
And Science is irreverently looked up to as responsible?
8.) and the GREAT PLASTIC GARBAGE PATCH now 3 times bigger than the nation of France is floating to the north east of Hawaii, amassing more mass every year. This is part of Science, you see science made all that plastic and made it scientifically from oil…petroleum, with scientific methods. Was that responsible Science…hardly…!
are the citizens equally irresponsible allowing the plastic to find its way to our sea, the Great Pacific Ocean we depend so heavily on, especially for our food and oxygen.
We could go on and on and you can point out by yourself many other Irresponsible science infractions.
But the main point is that Science with corporate backing for corporate profits is out of control and is deceivingly being used and performed as real Science when it is in fact following the unwritten rules of corporate greed; the same rules which brings us alcohol, tobacco, and opioids, and other drugs that, as well, polluted bodies and destroy lives.
Bottom line, it is not wise to lump all science together, it needs to be carefully separated out; is it Responsible or Irresponsible? What lasting impact will it make on our selves, our bodies, families, society, food, environment, and our planet?
As in, do we really need this stuff in society, on our planet?
Responsible Science needs to look at itself from an Omni-directional and Omni-impact point of view of what it is and what it does.
Science is not in itself a benevolent single entity. Ask the President of Syria if those chemicals are good for mankind?
Scientists are either Responsible or Irresponsible. They need to check themselves to see what they are; and you do too, don’t buy Irresponsible science.
Mahalo,
Charles