Marching for Science in Boston

, Gender Schema Lab from Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, April 22, 2017.

By Deborah Belle

The Trump presidency has put many things at risk, not least the project of utilizing science for the public good. Scientific research budgets are slashed, and current scientific knowledge is actively suppressed when it conflicts with profits for wealthy individuals and corporations.

On Saturday, April 22, defenders of science spoke out in marches and rallies around the country. In Boston many marchers met  at local universities and hospitals, rallied there, and then marched to the Boston Common to join others who had gone to the Common directly.

I joined the Boston March in front of the Metcalf Science Center at Boston University where the focus was on young speakers, many of them undergraduates, who spoke of the value of science, and of getting involved in the political process so that knowledge we have gained through scientific study can be used to save the planet.

One excellent speaker also noted that science is not always utilized for the public good, that scientific theories have been used to disempower already marginalized people. Scientific knowledge is a tool that can be used in many ways, and it is up to us to make sure that it is used to benefit all of us, not simply the wealthy few. Other speakers remarked on the necessity of making our scientific workforce increasingly diverse, so that the insights and life experiences of all can help  create a science that truly works for all.

We set off down Commonwealth Avenue toward the Boston Common to the accompaniment of a great HONK-style band. Spirits were high, as people recognized friends in the crowd, and enjoyed the creative signs of fellow marchers. In the light drizzle, the colors on my SCIENCE NOT SILENCE poster, drawn in erasable marker, began to run, forming what many described as a Monet-like impressionist painting. No matter, there were plenty of legible signs left, and the music was great.

At one wonderful moment the Cambridge contingent from Harvard and MIT joined with us, the currents of marchers combining beautifully. We crossed the Public Garden and strode on to the Common. The crowd that met us there was large and continued to grow as we listened to speakers and cheered at every pause. A few in the crowd wore pink pussy hats, a reminder of the great Women’s March in January. Some also wore hats ingeniously knitted to suggest brains.

One focus of the day was children, who seemed to be everywhere, sometimes serving as delightful props as well as participants. One expressive infant was with a poster proclaiming, “Born to Discover.” Another was wrapped in the words, “Save the earth for me.” Others were dressed as astronauts with their own rocket-ship decorated strollers. Children spoke from the speakers’ platform, reading their award-winning essays on the importance of science and its relevance to them. A clear message was the need in all our political decision-making to think of future generations.

 

Home to a safer land?

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

We have now passed the 2,000th U.S. fatality in Afghanistan, but that war is winding down and we are bringing the troops home to a safer environment.

Or so we are supposed to think.

Rifle range
Photo by Camp Minsi-BSA, used under CC Attribution-Share Alike Unported 3.0 license.

The U.S. today is seeing a huge spike in gun sales stoked by fear of mass shooters and the possibility of more restrictive gun laws. The NRA has never been more active.

I was an NRA member when I was young. Boy Scout camp offered target shooting and I was proud of the skills that earned me “Expert Rifleman” qualification, so I stayed with the NRA after scouting.

But the era that responded to urbanization and loss of outdoor skills by spawning the NRA–and, for that matter, the Boy Scouts–has long passed.

Now the NRA is more about our rights to carry concealed handguns and to stockpile military-style weapons than it is about target shooting and hunting. It’s all about power politics and gun laws.

One of the so-called “third rail” issues that politicians dare not address head-on is gun control. A federal law restricting assault rifles has lapsed, and background checks on would-be owners vary widely. This year neither presidential candidate will go near the issue except to reaffirm that they will do nothing.

In a recent interview a mother maintained that she was teaching her teenage son and daughter how to use pistols and was planning to buy them each one “so they wouldn’t have to go into a theater unarmed.”

Can you imagine the chaos in that Colorado theater if members of the audience had had pistols? And then a gunman, dressed like a police SWAT team member, had started shooting? And the larger-than-life screen and blaring soundtrack had been filled with shootings and the sounds of shooting? Who would fire at whom?

Yes, we are bringing troops home from two of our longest wars. But are they coming home to a safer land?

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

Mass shooter in action

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

“Run, Hide, Fight” is a new reality police video promulgated by the Boston University Police for the BU community.

The film, featured on some local news programs, is a powerfully realistic depiction of what could happen if a mass shooter went into action on the campus.

The instructions are clear and disturbing. Learn escape routes from your office. If you sense that an incident like the Aurora theater shooting is occurring. run away, even if others  are too scared to do so. If running isn’t possible, hide or barricade yourself into a secure and presumably bulletproof  area. Finally, be prepared to fight as best you can if trapped.

Is this the stuff of some latter-day paranoid McCarthyite fantasy? Alas, as recent events have all too graphically shown, mass shootings can and do occur anywhere.

Unfortunately, we as a citizenry can’t do much in advance about gunmen intent on violently settling grievances, then adding random killings to their spree.

But we can do something about the amount of killing taking place. So can the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The Second Amendment protects the right to “keep and bear arms” but like others in the Bill of Rights, this right is not absolute. You can’t own a machine gun or many other military grade weapons. Problem is the NRA tries to keep the prohibited list as small as possible and even shrink it.

It is the military grade weaponry (e.g., 100-round magazines for semi-automatic assault-type rifles easily  converted to full automatic firing) that make the mass killings possible. Without abrogating the Second Amendment, we can do something about that.

The NRA is fond of using the “slippery slope” metaphor to argue that any restriction on gun ownership is a step to confiscation.

That argument works the other way, too. The continued loosening of gun laws can also lead–and has certainly already led–to mass killings that have become far too abundant.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

Until the last soldiers come home (Cost of war, Part 3)

[A continuing series by guest author Neta Crawford about why it so difficult to accurately assess the true costs of war.]

The third reason the official numbers are low is the tendency to focus on what has already been spent, forgetting future war-related obligations. But of course, paying for the wars will not end when the last soldiers come home.

Disabled veterans poster
Image in public domain

The two most expensive future costs for the federal budget are future interest on war spending, and the costs of veterans care (medical and disability payments). Economist Ryan Edwards estimates that interest payments on appropriations through this year for both wars will be about $1 trillion to 2020. It would be nice if the war related debt was paid by then.

But more expensive and difficult to predict are the costs of caring for the more than 2.2 million veterans of these wars over the next 40 years. Linda Bilmes estimates that the VA will spend between $600 billion but likely closer to $900 billion for the more than 1 million discharged through last year.  When all are home, the estimates and the costs will rise.

Why will the costs of veterans’ care be so high?  First, these veterans will need to draw more medical and disability care than veterans of previous wars because they face more and in many cases more complex injuries than the past. This is in part due to advances in trauma medicine.

In World War II, the ratio of injured to dead was 3 to 1; in Iraq the ratio is about 8 to 1. More than 600,000 veterans have already been treated at the VA and more than 600,000 have claimed disability.

As these veterans — dealing with an average of more than 5 medical conditions — age, their injures will often become more complex and expensive to treat.

If we add the past spending and estimates for future federal expenditures, the total for Iraq alone is between $2.7-3.3 trillion.  If we add the costs of Afghanistan, the total rises far higher.

Neta C. Crawford is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War study www.costsofwar.org