On Saturday, March 7, I spoke at a rally to Stand Up for Science on Boston Common.
Rough Text of my Remarks
I am Will Brownsberger, President Pro Tem of the Massachusetts State Senate and I bring you the greetings of the Senate.
In the 20th century, science earned profound general respect through spectacular achievements.
Fundamental advances in physics allowed scientists to predict natural phenomena at the smallest scale and at the largest scale to 10 decimal places. And on that powerful foundation, scientists were able to produce weapons of awesome power that ended the great war of the century and secured our freedom.
Closer to home, advances in medical science essentially eradicated horrible diseases that routinely claimed the lives of millions of children and adults: polio, smallpox, measles, pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus.
And combining physics and medical science, imaging allows us now to detect and cure diseases that remained mysterious in the past. Similarly, combining computation and medical science allows us to develop new understanding and powerful new treatments.
Most of us lucky enough to live in the Boston area appreciate what modern medicine can do for us, although many of us forget how cheap life was only 100 years ago.
Many of those great advances were produced by a partnership between the federal government and the great institutions of this Commonwealth—the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Federal investments of billions of dollars annually in fundamental research have fueled sustained progress on many fronts.
The research establishment in the Boston area is built on those investments and on the hard work, diligence, and passion of thousands of scientists who have given their lives to pushing the frontiers of knowledge.
That great collaborative enterprise that took so long to build is now under assault. Donald Trump’s administration is choking the flow of funds into fundamental research in this area and, more than that, is attacking our great institutions—our great educational and research institutions—as if they were the problem, not the solution.
And the attack goes beyond funding and litigation to actual disregard for the basic principles of scientific enterprise. At top levels of our government, people are crediting hunches and quack theories over the conclusions of deliberative, evidence-based analysis and consensus development.
At a time when we should be celebrating the spectacular achievement of rapid COVID vaccine development, we are instead trying to turn backward to the tragic days when unvaccinated children routinely died from diseases that their helpless parents did not understand.
It’s all part of a bigger picture. Science and the rule of law are both under assault at the federal level, but in this Commonwealth you can be sure that we are committed to the rule of law, and we are committed to the support of science. We are committed to the support of evidence-based deliberation and the pursuit of the scientific enterprise.
Sadly, we as a Commonwealth do not have the funding power to fill the funding gaps created by the loss of federal leadership. Our research establishments are suffering today. And of equal concern, our whole healthcare system is under stress, and it’s going to come under more stress as federal cuts reach basic health care support through the Medicaid program.
You can be sure that we will be doing everything we possibly can to support our great research institutions, our great healthcare system, and the rule of law and the rights of our citizens and every person in this Commonwealth over the coming months and years of this administration.
It will not be easy, but we will get through this together. I know that I speak for all of my colleagues in the legislature and for the Governor of the Commonwealth when I say that this Commonwealth will remain a place where the rule of law and the protection of our citizens’ rights and every person’s rights are fundamentally observed, and where science is honored and supported, and where our people continue to enjoy the benefits of scientific advancement.
On the Parkman Bandstand with economics Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin (right)and the founder of the Ignobel awards, Marc Abrahams (left)
If the internet were around in the 1930s politicians and influencers would be profiting off of hustling for lobotomies. Thank God we don’t have Lobotomibiles prowling our streets today and the way people are waking up to a current politically potent and financially lucrative social contagion we likely won’t be seeing Mastectomobiles and Fallectomobiles prowling the streets offering cold steel and sterilizing drugs.
Btw, If you believe in homeopathy, you don’t believe in science either.
Democrats and other leftist have to wake up to the fact they are today’s “geocentrists” and not on the side of Galileo as it were. Not only that, but leftist have an intolerance problem that at best is creating censorious platforms like Bluesky and cancel culture and at worst is driving people to assassinate those they disagree with.
There is a reason the Administration is carving out the politically driven ideologues. It’s not to cut funding for science per se, it’s to cut out the hustlers.
Fred, there is definitely an intolerance (and censorship) problem on the left and among the “tolerance” groupies, as you point out.
Fred & others:
The Great Barrington Declaration – as but one of many examples – by doctors and scientists was widely censored, underreported, and scoffed at during the Covid pandemic:
https://gbdeclaration.org/
Politics by the Dems/left prevailed over science, Will.
Yes, Senator Brownsberger has become such a disappointment over the past year or so.
It’s like what we see at the national level, where politicians, academics, and the media parrot the same script.
Fred, Dee, others,
One tactic of those who wish to discredit another is to avoid addressing the points that person made. None of you, anywhere, addressed any of the points Brownsberger made. Do you disagree that science and the rule of law are valuable, that science funding is being cut and the rule of law is being violated, again both to our detriment? You have not responded to that.
Not only that, your arguments lack coherence. Fred, you have invoked “hustlers” without describing what they are and without giving any examples. Similarly, your analogy to “geocentrists” is not even clear, much less substantiated. I too could refer to “politically driven ideologues”, but would have defined what I meant and given examples. You have done neither.
Dee, neither “right” nor “left” (again, terms requiring description) have a monopoly on censorship and intolerance. It would take me far too long to support an argument that both are far more prevalent on the right (e.g. primarying their own if they dissent, deleting the contents and availability of taxpayer-funded databases, having DOGE defund research projects if a keyword search simply found the term “diversity”, regardless of its context).
As for the Great Barrington declaration, it advocated allowing many to die in order to build immunity, when vaccines achieved the same thing, far faster, more successfully, and with less death. That is truly intolerable, and violates every physician’s Hippocratic Oath.
I -do- agree that the reaction against Dr. Jay Battacharya, which included an investigation, -is- a good example of the kind of intolerance you cite. More important, the NIH and other institutions got the science wrong and thus kept schools closed longer than they needed, to the detriment of many students. They have admitted it. That’s the process in science. You make mistakes, acknowledge them, and learn from them to avoid repeating them.
The US lost roughly 1 million people to Covid. Without the reaction that we had (mass Covid vaccinations, masking, school closings), it easily could’ve (and would’ve) been many millions more. Next time (and there will be one), we’ll build on what we’ve learned.
Battacharya’s reputation has been (partially) restored, as his revenge campaign of cutting research funding for his perceived “establishment” continues. The students are (partially and slowly) making up for the school time lost. Both of those are recoverable. The deaths of the many more who did not die would not have been.
Next time you have something to say, support it with facts, definitions and examples, not generalities and invective.
“Standing up for science” is not about facts it’s about coercion.
Hi Aram,
“Stand up for science!”
This is about trust in people, or lack of trust in people, not in the trust, or lack of trust in science, or more specifically the scientific method.
The deceptive, and manipulative title of the rally and of Will’s post is “stand up for science,” not, “Stand up for public funding of scientific research,” not, “Stand up for taxpayer funded scientific research.”
Also, you left out how US pols, apparatchiks and private firms were complicit in actively covering up the role of the WHO kowtowing to the Communist Party in what amounted to, effectively, optimizing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 out of Wuhan.
This is not about a lack in trust in vaccines, but in waking up to the shocking power of the government, emergency, or otherwise, to mandate vaccines, and, more to the point, how that thirst for power won’t be slaked, and the genie won’t return to the bottle without vigorous pushback by summoning the animal spirits of our Founders.
Aram, to say it another way, I am not disputing the points, I’m disputing the coercive and misleading messaging.
Will writes “we are committed to the rule of law” yet the Second Amendment is almost wholesale infringed, the First Amendment is watered down with forbidden language carving out divisive special classes to be coddled and patronized.
And, World War 2 did not “secure our freedoms.” I hope to God Will doesn’t truly believe that.
I have been a Democrat for thirty plus years and I have far more tolerance for my fellow Republicans pushing the envelope on the rule of law, because at the end of the day their motivated self interest aligns with the values of our founders, with an America that will be strong for another 250 years and more, whereas the Democrats, whoever and whatever they are cannot see beyond the tips of their noses. The progressivism they pander to was already dated, and bankrupt prior to the Declaration of Independence.
I [had] been…
True, it’s heresy to even discuss the merits of it. You don’t hear anything about Sweden from the left.
The cabal and forces that censored talk of the Great Barrington Declaration weren’t concerned about the science, they were afraid of losing control of how to respond to a pandemic. Their authority must not be questioned.
Nor do you hear much, or see much online about the Cass Report. You do see criticism of the methodology, but I recon that’s less with the report and more to do with the circularity of the reference material used by hospitals and ideologues to create and justify a whole new market segment their institutions offer.
I think Sen. Brownsberger is trolling us. Impossible to be that much in a bubble.
RFK Jr has got to go for pushing lifestyle change and clean food over profit! Stand up for Corporate $cience! https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.19.435959v1.full.pdf
Thank you Will. It was great to see you and hear your wonderful support for scientific research.
As a physician and a constituent, I was thrilled to see you deliver a speech in support of science and evidence-based medicine at the rally on Saturday. I hope that, despite the undermining of research, health equity, and the healthcare safety net, Massachusetts will seek creative and thoughtful ways to continue to lead in these areas.
Stand Up for Corporate Science and the chemical companies! We love being forced to take private companies’ vaccines with zero liability! Let’s give millions of tax dollars to bio-engineered fake meat ($2.1M for lab-grown ‘meat’ from things like fermented e-coli). Yum, Science!
True, it’s heresy to even discuss the merits of it. You don’t hear anything about Sweden from the left.
Yes, politics trumps science. I would love to know if any state, or allied public health professionals knew the MA Soldier’s Home was run by a nepo hire who had no business running such a facility and if they tried to check their contingency plan, or offer basic “dos and don’ts.”
Also, what do we know about Baker’s pandemic round table that kept Massachusetts’ functioning and the economy from stalling by choosing to expose kitchen workers and their families to Covid.
Free speech, the Constitution and democracy is a problem, an obstacle for the left.
Science is ever evolving and always needs to be questioned. It’s important that we don’t turn it into a “religion”, and follow it blindly, regardless of problems that may arise.
I was very disappointed when the Trump administration rolled out the “warp speed” injections a few years ago, and you stood behind mandating those injections, even though I shared with you evidence provided by the medical profession that the technology used to create those injections had a long history of failure, and the ingredients specific in the vaccine was as novel as the virus.
A lot of people have been hurt by those vaccines, and you refuse to acknowledge that every time I’ve brought you documentation about it.
While I appreciate science is something that is noble, and that we should all stand up for, it is an imperfect art.
As far as the climate goes, we do not know for certain whether or not the climate would be changing, irregardless of the fuels currently being used world wide.
Furthermore, we need clean, and reliable, technology. Wind turbines installed very recently in Massachusetts, have already broken, and polluted the beach and water in Nantucket. Another wind turbine blew off and landed in a cranberry bog on Cape Cod. It’s also well known that wind turbines kill birds.
Solar panels are not a perfect solution either, because they can’t provide the power and energy that we currently need.
So, in closing, I’d like to say that while I appreciate that scientists are currently working on newer technologies, such as small cell nuclear, that will allow us to have more energy, that is much cleaner than fossil fuels, you should not put the “cart before the horse”, so to speak. A lot of families in Massachusetts are suffering economically right now, for various reasons, not the least of which is that their current energy bills have exploded in large part due to the so-called clean energy legislation and mandates you continue to support. That drives up the cost of energy to consumers in Massachusetts. Subsequently, that behavior (in my opinion) demonstrates a scorn and disdain for many middle class people who are struggling in so many areas economically.
We are losing more middle class residents in Massachusetts than we are able to replace.
You should write a blog about that. And the reasons behind it. And what kind of legislation could be created to help prevent that. And then, you should open up your ideas about that for comment, and conversation among your constituents.
And you should allow those comments to be posted on your blog.
All of the comments. Not just the ones that agree with your thoughts and opinions.
Science does not have monopoly on always being good and deserving of public funding. There is a lot of bad, useless science out there. Many man-made chemicals that were invented by scientists, medical procedures and treatments, and industrial processes have proved themselves to be harmful. Also, scientific inventions can be used for good and for bad purposes. And since science is conducted by humans, and humans are imperfect, science can be imperfect too – it can be “half-baked”, misguided, rushed, even fraudulent.
Most concerning to me, the respect that people generally have for science allows certain interests to browbeat people into accepting inventions and solutions with known or unknown negative effects and risks that many people are not willing to accept — and should not be forced to accept. The slogan Stand Up for Science ignores all of that.
Thank you for bringing this to light Will. I keep thinking of the inspiration that I learned from my ancestors that survived the Great Depression and WW11, There is nothing to fear but fear itself.