Why More Scientists Are Running For Office in 2018
Getting scientists to become more politically involved has been an ongoing movement this year, with groups like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Chemical Society encouraging scientists to voice their opinions and even join protests, like the March for Science in April 2017.
Now, hundreds of scientists and STEM professionals are running for public office in 2018, for everything from Senate seats to a spot on the local school board.
“I’m not a politician, I’m a doctor,” reads the first line of Dr. Jason Westin‘s bio on his campaign website for Texas’s 7th congressional district seat. Westin, a cancer doctor based in Houston who is challenging Republican John Abney Culberson, decided to run for office after the results of the 2016 election. November 8 is his wife Shannon’s birthday, and that night she was wearing a pantsuit as the couple drank champagne, watching the results. When it became clear their candidate wasn’t going to win, the couple—both oncologists at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston—decided they needed to do more.
“We are at a crisis point, and we should have more scientists in office,” says Westin, who is running on a platform to defend science and facts, as well as to influence issues like health care access, science research, and women’s health.
“The scientific method is something that — if you’re trained in it — colors everything you look at,” he says. “It impacts your analysis of every situation. The issues that are important to me are things we thought deeply about. We analyzed the facts, which I do on a daily basis, but should be more widely done.”
Westin’s campaign video — where he declares “there’s a cancer eating away at America, that cancer, is ignorance” — has been widely shared, including by actor Mark Hamill who posted it to Twitter with the hashtag #MayTheFactsBeWithYouALL.