The National “Stand Up for Science” day of action returns to Pittsburgh tomorrow for the second year in a row to protest government actions and policies affecting scientific institutions, research and researchers. Unlike last year, this year’s rally will be at Allegheny Landing Park on the North Shore.
Organizers say they hope the event brings attention to the impacts of the politicization of science in institutions such as the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as impacts of crackdowns on international student research.
Stand Up For Science (SUFS) is a national political activism organization founded last February in response to sweeping changes to “the nation’s premier science institutions and escalating threats to the livelihoods of Americans,” according to the organization’s web site.
Carrie McDonough, an associate professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the local rally organizers, said she started Pittsburgh’s SUFS chapter last year because, “for [Pittsburgh] not to have a rally would’ve been crazy.”
Speakers at this year’s rally include former U.S. Health Secretary Rachel Levine, Rep. Arvind Venkat and Jeremy Berg, a former director at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).
McDonough said many fears discussed during last year’s rally, such as cuts to research grant funding and the politicization of science and public health, have been realized.
“We’re kind of coming back together a year later to say, ‘OK, let’s raise awareness of what is happening, what the repercussions are,’” McDonough explained. “It’s important to make people aware that these issues that are harming scientific research and universities are not independent of all the other things going on. It’s all interconnected.”
Along with grant funding cuts still being a concern, McDonough said the effects of increased immigration enforcement and new difficulty acquiring student visas has already quashed participation in scientific conferences and university enrollments from international students and scholars.
“We have a lot of international students, international scholars,” McDonough said. “That’s why we are so excellent scientifically. You can’t really separate these different issues of terrorizing immigrants and, you know, ruining our immigration system and the effects on science.”
Berg, who moved to Pittsburgh after leaving NIGMS, now sits on the advisory board for SUFS. He was invited to speak at last year’s rally in Pittsburgh, which led to the founder of SUFS, Colette Delawalla, asking him to help elsewhere within the organization.
Most of the work he’s done for SUFS centers around researching shifts in grant funding compared to previous years. Berg said the change is catastrophic.
“NIH was very slow in getting grants out the door last year to the point where, by the end of June, they were literally $5 billion behind where they normally were,” Berg said. “I thought we’d go back onto a normal path this year and exactly the same thing has happened.”
While data collected by North Carolina-based Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research indicates Pittsburgh research institutions like the University of Pittsburgh have continued to see grant funding (Pitt received some $670 million in NIH grants last year — similar to previous years), researchers are raising alarms about delays in awards, and the potential impact of those delays.
McDonough said Saturday’s rally in Allegheny Landing park will start at 1 p.m., rain or shine.