Stand Up for Science

 

The Foundation Stand Up For Science organised the March For Science Netherlands on April 22 2017, at Museumplein Amsterdam. Together with  hundreds of other cities worldwide, we wanted to raise awareness that science is not just an opinion, but that it is crucial to societal development and democratic process. The March For Science was received with great enthusiasm by scientists, students, concerned citizens, boards of universities, and supporting institutions, and became a great success on April 22, hosting over 3000 participants at the Museumplein in Amsterdam. We created awareness amongst individuals and institutes that the time is now to stand up for science. However, even though our message was met with great enthusiasm, a one day march is not enough to fix the information chaos and distrust in science. Therefore we continue our movement, and will set the following goals for the near future:

 

Main goals:

 

Education:

The March For Science was the start of a prolonged movement in which we aim to inform, educate and enthuse people about the importance and purpose of science in general, and about pressing issues that are prone to science-scepticism, such as climate change, vaccinations, agrichemicals, etc.

By educating, we hope to prevent science scepticism, both by civilians and politicians, that could potentially have dangerous and harmful consequences in society. Our overall goal is to improve the role of science in society, policy, and politics.

Science is not just fun, it is also a very rigorous and self-critical  process with a very specific methodology and we aim to highlight this in the future events.

 

Grassroots:

One of the core strengths of the Stand Up For Science Foundation is its character as a grassroots movement. Several individuals from the field of science and arts have gathered in February 2017 to volunteer their own free time in organising a Netherlands version of the global initiative on April 22, the March For Science. While pursuing our future aims, want to expand as a grassroots movement by involving more individuals in our organisation. As a grassroots movement we hope to reach out more to the ones who indulge in scepticism and provide tools to the likeminded who also feel the need to demonstrate the importance of science. Creating awareness within the scientific community that the position of science in society is not to be taken for granted, and that spawning enthusiasm  about communicating science issues will aid us in reaching out further to the wider public.

 

Communication:

We are very proud that during the March For Science, an estimated 25% of people marching with us were people from outside of academia or any other kind of research. Nonetheless, we should try to ‘preach outside our choir’, by reaching exactly those people who might benefit most from our educational aims. Therefore we should guard for alienating people with our communication style. Lecturing sole statistics and empirical facts is unlikely to convince people with an anti-science agenda and skeptics in their world views, and might even aid in corroborating their beliefs. Contrarily, an open conversation with scientists, addressing the questions and fears might better bridge that gap.