It was a tweet that brought them together. “Hell hath no fury like a scientist silenced,” Caroline Weinberg, a public health educator and science writer in New York City, tweeted late last month. As a result of worries about the impact that President Donald Trump’s administration might have on scientists, Weinberg’s tweet also floated the idea of a “science march” to highlight the importance of research. Someone suggested she contact Jonathan Berman, a like-minded postdoctoral fellow studying hypertension at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, who had already set up a Twitter handle: @ScienceMarchDC.
A few retweets later, “things just blew up,” Weinberg says. Within days, the science march account had more than 300,000 followers and a “secret” Facebook group had more than 800,000 members. And last week, Weinberg, Berman, and a third co-organizer, anthropology doctoral student Valorie Aquino of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, officially announced that a March for Science would be held on 22 April in Washington, D.C.Science advocates in more than 100 cities around the world say they will hold allied demonstrations the same day.
The marches will be not just for scientists, but for “anyone who believes in empirical science,” the organizers emphasize on the March for Science web page. The demonstrations are meant to be a celebration of science, they say, as well as “a call to support and safeguard the scientific community.”
Interactive map: March for Science roundup
Click on the dots in the map to see more details about the marches and their Twitter accounts.