Thousands rally in Grant Park at March for Science

In Germany, scientists were expected to rally in more than a dozen cities including Berlin, Bonn, Dresden and Hamburg.

The San Diego March for Science was one of hundreds in the United States and worldwide marking Earth Day to raise awareness of the contributions of science to society, and the importance of supportive public policy, organizers said.

High-school science teacher Byrne La Ginestra said science had been getting a “bum rap”, adding that “we need to. teach people that science isn’t a political agenda, it’s just facts”.

This video shows the crowd marching and holding signs.

“Most people don’t know how much funding for the sciences supports them in their lives every day”.

Organizers of the march encouraged scientists in their ranks to wear their lab coats, goggles, stethoscopes, field gear and other work clothes to make their presence known among a group that frequently shies away from public political displays. Several contrasted rationality and scientific thought to “alternative facts”, a phrase that’s attracted popular derision since a White House aide uttered it.

Instead, they were granted a permit to rally on the federal courthouse grounds – outside the heaviest G-Day traffic – from 11 a.m. until noon, with a limit of 400 people.

While tens of thousands were estimated to have attended the main March for Science in the nation’s capital, more than 500 satellite events were scheduled around the world, including locally in Doylestown, Philadelphia and Trenton.

In Washington, along with the demonstrations, those participating can go to “teach-ins”.

The march, whose beginnings reflect the viral birth of the Women’s March on Washington, was billed by its organizers as political but nonpartisan. “It is about the very real role that science plays in each of our lives”.

April 22, 2017. Thousands of people are expected to attend March for Science events around the world to promote the understanding of science and defend it from various attacks, including US government budget cuts.

In Washington, speakers included Bill Nye, an educator and television personality known as “the Science Guy”, and Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician and public health advocate who first called attention to the high levels of lead in the drinking water of Flint, Michigan.

But she marched anyway because she anxious about her baby’s future in a world that seems to consider science disposable. “The current (political) situation took us from kind of ignoring science to blatantly attacking it”. Trump has called climate change a hoax.

“We’re scientists, so we’re orderly”, she said with a laugh.

Although there is controversy in the scientific community about whether they should be politicizing science, the leaders of the march were very clear.

Bartram sums up a widespread response: on hot button issues like climate change, opponents have already done it.

“I think we’ve broken the law, folks!” an exuberant Mark Farmer, a cellular biologist at the University of Georgia, told the crowd jamming the courthouse lawn from the steps into the street.

But if the goal is to get policymakers to listen, “A march isn’t going to change anything”, said Rob Young, head of coastal research at Western Carolina University.

“It might have been ignited by Trump, but it’s not about Trump”, Villa-Komaroff said.

But he said the underlying message was more sombre.

The scientific community’s direct involvement in a national policy debate has stirred some criticism about whether scientists should get involved in politics.