Saying the upcoming US presidential election could be the most important ever for the future of science, a group of 82 Nobel laureates in medicine, physics, chemistry and economics signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and warned against allowing former President Donald Trump to return to the Oval Office.
Letter, received from New York Times On Thursday, it credited advances in science and technology with “remarkable increases in living standards and life expectancy over the past two centuries” and expressed concern that Trump could threaten that progress.
“This is the most important presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States,” wrote the group of American laureates. “We, the undersigned, strongly support Harris.”
The signatories, which include four who won the award this month, first praise Harris for understanding the importance of science and technology and that “maintaining America’s leadership in these fields requires budgetary support from the federal government, independent universities and international cooperation.”
They also took issue with the two candidates’ approach to immigration.
“Harris also recognizes the key role that immigrants have always played in the advancement of science,” they write.
They then warned of what a second Trump presidency could bring.
“If Donald Trump wins the presidential election, he will undermine future US leadership on these and other fronts, as well as jeopardize any progress in our living standards, slow the progress of science and technology, and hinder our responses to climate change”. they wrote.
“I hope it’s a wake-up call for people.”
Project 2025, Trump’s roadmap for a second term, contains several anti-science agenda items, such as plans to get rid of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Trump also displayed a great hostility to science during his first term. He withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement and withdrew 125 climate and environmental regulations. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he offered bogus cures such as exposure to ultraviolet light and injection of disinfectants. And he proposed a budget that would have dramatically cut funding for health and science agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation.
It was partly these budget cuts, as well as Trump’s “anti-science” and “anti-university” outlook, that motivated Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, to draft Thursday’s letter, he said. Tmine.
While Stiglitz said scientists usually “like to stick to their knitting,” in this case “they’ve realized that this is a moment where you can’t be silent.”
“I hope it’s a wake-up call for people,” Stiglitz told him Times. “The consequence of this election is the really profound impact his agenda is having on science and technology.”
Stiglitz also drafted another letter, signed by 23 US Nobel laureates in economics, endorsing Harris’s economic vision over Trump’s.
“While each of us has different views on the specifics of various economic policies, we believe that, overall, Harris’ economic agenda will improve our nation’s health, investment, resilience, sustainability, job opportunities and fairness, and be extremely superior to the counterproductive. Donald Trump’s economic agenda”, writes the Nobel economists.