Discussion

However, I think something deeper is happening. In her valedictory address to the 163rd Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Science last week, outgoing Academies president Marcia McNutt gave up the pretense. She bluntly said that, on her watch, the Academies moved away from addressing issues like vaccines and climate change, which she called partisan. The Academies have been no stranger to “partisan” issues (e.g., their reports on stem cell research), until now. For such an august body to capitulate like this reflects the moral decline of our scientific institutions, where, as Oren Gross has said about the German legal academy all those years ago, “professional myopia, personal opportunism, moral weakness,” and in this case, scientific claims have “been inexorably intermingled.” The Academies are not alone, of course; universities around the country have held similar events with administration officials and made their own compromises with the White House. (abridged)