March 26, 2022, was the first National Science Appreciation Day. It was on this day in 1953 that Jonas Salk announced the first successful trials of his polio vaccine. 

Thirteen states (both red and blue states, I’m gratified to report) plus the District of Columbia issued declarations proclaiming March 26 National Science Appreciation Day, a project under the banner of ScienceSaves.

We started National Science Appreciation Day because science needs a champion. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when life-saving mRNA vaccines were developed with remarkable speed and soon demonstrated their safety and efficacy, many of us were blindsided by the fierce backlash against scientific expertise. The science of vaccinations took on a partisan veneer that defied all logic and rationality. 

Vaccines were mostly attacked by people on the political right, with some notable exceptions—yes, I mean you, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The extent of the anti-vax hysteria ranged from angry calls for “freedom” from vaccine mandates to completely insane claims about Bill Gates embedding microchips into people through vaccinations. There has always been a strong anti-science bent in the United States, especially in evangelical and fundamentalist circles (nearly 100 years after the Scopes Trial, we’re still debating evolution!). But the level of distrust directed toward scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, has broken a fundamental precept of the Enlightenment, which is that hard-earned expertise has objective value.

Meanwhile, the political left is not off scot-free. It has had its own anti-science freakouts, including the cancellation of great scientists for being men of their time, for studying areas of science that connect genes to behaviors, or for having the audacity to be respectful colleagues of someone else who holds offensive views. Examples include the removal last year of Thomas Henry Huxley’s name from Western Washington University’s College of the Environment (Western Washington University 2021) and the ongoing hyperventilations against the late biologist E.O. Wilson (Coyne 2021)—both of whom were accused of being racists without convincing evidence.

National Science Appreciation Day and the entire ScienceSaves program was designed to come to the defense of science and remind people of how their lives are better, healthier, and longer due to the advances that the scientific method has wrought. This was the brainchild of Todd Stiefel, who is also generously funding the initiative through the Stiefel Freethought Foundation. It is an effort to reduce the partisan temperature around science and provide some perspective as to how this method of understanding reality has so well served all of us regardless of political stripe.

Here is an edited sampling of the many responses to the following tweet about National Science Appreciation Day by Richard Dawkins¹:

Science has quite literally altered the trajectory of my life. It has created purpose for me in addition to saving my life as a child. 

I urge you on National #ScienceAppreciationDay to share how science has helped you or another. 

Jesselyn Mason:

I.V. antibiotics saved me from a severe case of pneumonia as a teenager. It also fixed my heart condition with an ablation. Pursuing a degree in science and deciding to achieve something in my life gave me the courage to escape an abusive situation. 

Mads Rasmussen:

My daughter has T1 diabetes. Thank you, science, for saving her life and making it possible for her to live an almost normal life!

Peter ‘org0x7c00’ Carruthers:

The scientific method (and the scientific process and attitude) gives me a much longer life expectancy, water that won’t make me ill, a computer to say this with, electric light, a perfect fix for my broken leg, and a surgeon who knew to wash his hands 1st!

Jacob Lawrence:

My 17-year-old daughter had brain surgery last night to repair a shunt that saved her life when she was 7 months old. Last night the neurosurgeons showed my wife and me a photo of the 17-year-old shunt valve they just replaced. Thank you, science!

In the 17 years since she got her shunt, science has progressed to make a remotely programmable, MRI-compatible shunt valve. We are thankful to live at a time that has allowed our daughter to live a good life. Our doctors expect her to recover and be off to college in the fall!

Ulla:

Not only did science literally save me from dogma, but it prompted me to stop spouting the same BS as a parent and I instead made a deliberate effort to reward/encourage their curiosity & critical thinking. They are now studying to become a biologist.

Sr. Koello:

The year was 2008. I was visiting the MIT bookstore, and as I entered, I saw this book right in front of me: The God Delusion. My life has never been the same. I watched your TED videos and some older recordings. I had no idea what scientific thinking was. Thank you, Mr. Dawkins.

We will be building on this campaign by offering college scholarships for the best thirty-second video on how science has saved the applicant or someone the applicant knows. And Bertha Vazquez, CFI’s education director, has developed along with a team of educators eighteen different teaching modules for students of all grade levels highlighting the contributions of science and scientists to revolutions in medicine, agriculture, sanitation, and technology. 

Yes, there are ways that science has gone wrong—climate change being the most salient example at the moment. The advanced scientific technologies that provide so much comfort and convenience also emit a damaging amount of greenhouse gases. But everyone knows that the answer to this crisis lies in science as well. 

When people think of science, they should think of the polio vaccine or the James Webb Space Telescope and be awed, inspired, and grateful. The scientific method is our shared, bountiful inheritance. Without it, we would all be without a candle in the dark.

Note

1. Richard Dawkins’s birthday is also on March 26. That was purely a happy coincidence and not part of the thinking when choosing that date to commemorate.

References

Coyne, Jerry A. 2021. Scientific American does an asinine hit job on E. O. Wilson, calling him a racist. Why Evolution Is True (December 30). Online at https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/30/scientific-american-does-an-asinine-hit-job-on-e-o-wilson-calling-him-a-racist/.

Western Washington University. 2021. WWU drops ‘Huxley’ name from College of the Environment (December 13). Online at https://westerntoday.wwu.edu/inthemedia/wwu-drops-huxley-name-from-college-of-the-environment.