Over 80 US Nobel laurates have issued an open letter endorsing Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden in the US election scheduled for 3 November. Biden – the vice-president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017 – will go up against president Donald Trump, who is seeking a second four-year term. The signatories of the open letter include 26 physics laureates, 31 medicine and physiology awardees and 24 chemistry Nobel winners.
The letter – signed by 81 laureates who received their Nobel prizes between 1975 and 2019 – focuses on Biden’s attitude to science. “At no time in our nation’s history has there been a greater need for our leaders to appreciate the value of science in formulating public policy,” the letter states. “During his long record of public service, Joe Biden has consistently demonstrated his willingness to listen to experts, his understanding of the value of international collaboration in research, and his respect for the contribution that immigrants make to the intellectual life of our country.”
They recognize the harm being done by ignoring science in public policy
Bill Foster
One of those to sign the letter is Barry Barish, who shared the 2017 physics prize for his contributions to the LIGO detector. “I support Joe Biden because of his long record of making policy, informed by science, to deal with large, complicated issues like cancer, climate change and nuclear proliferation,” Barish, who is at the California Institute of Technology, told CNN, adding that “we absolutely must elect Joe with his science-based approach to successfully lead us out of the COVID-19 pandemic”.
Facts and science
Nobel laureates’ support of Democratic presidential candidates isn’t new. Hillary Clinton received 70 such endorsements in 2016, while former president Barack Obama received the support of 76 in 2008. Carol Greider, who shared the 2009 prize in physiology or medicine for discovering the enzyme telomerase, asserted that elected leaders “should be making decisions based on facts and science,” adding that she “strongly endorses” Biden, in particular because of his “commitment to putting public health professionals, not politicians, back in charge”.
Democratic Representative Bill Foster of Illinois, the only physicist in Congress, organized the open letter saying it would be an “important” development for the Biden campaign. He says that “a core group” of laureates decided on which issues to raise in the letter. Foster, who received the endorsement of 31 laureates when he ran for Congress in 2007, says that when he started calling the laureates to back the intiative, “it was like pushing at an open door”. He adds that “there was a lot of enthusiasm because of the difference [the laureates] perceive in the scientific understanding” between the two candidates.
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Foster believes that the letter reflects the view of much of the US scientific community. “They recognize the harm being done by ignoring science in public policy,” he says. “And it’s not only science; it’s logic and integrity. The scientific community wants to get to a situation in which they trust people’s word.” Foster sees the COVID-19 pandemic as a factor in refocusing voters on the importance of science. “The only reason we’re in a position to develop vaccines rapidly is decades of scientific research,” he says. “This may be an opportunity for the scientific community to remind everyone about long-term investment in science.”
