Good post by Jerry Coyne, Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago.
What I thought was a fairly innocuous post about why I wasn’t participating in the Science March—but also didn’t discourage others from participating (mine was a personal decision that I didn’t want to foist on others)—turned out to inspire a lot of good discussion about what such a march should be, but also a fair amount of acrimony and arguments that I should be participating. Some people accused me, for instance, hypocrisy, as when my claim that Bill Nye wasn’t the best honorary chair for a science march was characterized as my own deployment of identity politics. Of course there’s a difference: while you may think that Nye would be a good chair as a science popularizer, I don’t demonize people who favor Nye. It’s a suggestion, not a purity test!
So be it; with a public presence on this site, I draw criticism, and I can take it when it doesn’t verge…
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