Is science just lacking a bumper sticker slogan? Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University, seems to think so. Aside from being in New Scientist, you can see a problem with the piece in his first sentence:
SCIENCE is under assault. In the US and throughout the world, rhetoric about evolution, stem cells, global warming and other controversial
This is academic codespeak for 'right wing' people while lumping all the left wing kookiness (science denial on the environment, food, vaccines - actually far more anti-science positions than the right wing) gets lumps into 'other'. No one else likely noticed because academic is a pretty acidic climate for Republicans - unless we believe 6% Republicans in all of academia is a choice but only 48% women in math classes is a hostile climate of bias.
His reasoning doesn't get much better from there.
A single, unified symbol would have many uses. It could be displayed to represent a position: opposition to the politicising of science in government, support for increased research spending, or concern about global warming and species loss.
He'd get killed if he wrote such vague mumbo jumbo here but at least he recognizes that the Obama administration has not only politicized science as much as Bush did, but more (and Democrats have gone one better, also engaging in the scientization of politics). How would a symbol increase research spending? Sure, a pink ribbon likely brings more money for breast cancer but that does not lead to more groups starting breast cancer awareness nonprofits; American academia can currently support only 16% of the PhDs produces each year and more funding leads to even more PhDs who can't get jobs.
The core problem remains that his idea evokes sympathetic magic; Voodoo. The symbol is the object to Wolpe. That is a little too much irony for a science audience.
An atomic orbital has long been acceptable as a science symbol - we use it here and no biologist has objected - but woo like "Perhaps it could even accommodate a cross or star of David or some other symbol to state: "I am a Christian (or Jew or Muslim) and support science as an enterprise" is just puzzling.
