Scientists protest war

In the past few weeks, a handful of researchers around the globe have publicly renounced their connections to US scientific societies in protest of the US-led war in Iraq. The most widely circulated protest was a terse e-mail written by the prominent neural networking theorist Daniel Amit to the journal Physical Review E, which is published by the American Physical Society. The journal's editors had asked Amit, who is trained in statistical mechanics, to review a manuscript. "I will not at this point correspond with any American institution," was Amit's blunt response, written on March 21. "Some of us have lived through 1939."Pressed by the journal's editor to reconsider, Amit was resolute. "What we are watching today, I believe, is a culmination of 10–15 years of mounting barbarism of the American culture the world over, crowned by the achievements of science and technology as a major weapon of mass destruction," he wrote.Amrit's messages, which he forwarded to a handful of colleagues, ricocheted across the globe. Amit said his e-mail inbox was quickly stuffed with 150 or more responses — almost all supportive.Physical Review E editor-in-chief Martin Blume said he, too, had been showered with supportive emails. "We regard science as an international enterprise, and we do our best to put aside political disagreements in the interest of furthering the pursuit of scientific matters," he wrote to Amit as part of the circulated correspondence.Although the intellectual community of science is traditionally viewed as transcending borders, Amit, who divides his time between appointments at the University of Jerusalem, Israel, and the University of Rome, La Sapienza, told The Scientist that he considers science to be partly responsible for the ferocity of the war in Iraq.Science is fed by and in turn feeds into military technology, he said. "We're developing technologies that are on the one hand good enough to disarm a people and on the other hand good enough to massacre it."Amit, an Israeli, said he had taken a similar stance with respect to Israeli research and supports the call to freeze EU funding of Israeli research.Other scientists have made similar gestures: Last week, Indian mathematician Shobha Madan, citing Amit's protest, announced his withdrawal from the American Mathematical Society. Last month, ecologist Carlos Herrera of the University of Seville, Spain, cancelled his trip to the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he had been scheduled to give a seminar at a graduate student symposium. "I cannot live my life as though nothing is happening," he wrote to a symposium organizer.Amit admitted that his protest was unlikely to change many minds. "I'm not pretending it's the best course of action," he said. "But science cannot pretend it's decoupled from the evils of modern times."Editor's note: Dr. Herrera contacted The Scientist to clarify that his actions in response to the war in Iraq were not a protest directed exclusively at the United States, but also involved institutions in Spain, a US-coalition partner. "Yes, it is right that I did cancel my visit to the University of Florida because of the war, because I felt that all of us should do something, no matter how small, to keep others thinking that something unusual and terrible was happening that precluded 'normal life,'" Dr. Herrera wrote in an e-mail. "But the important point here is that I not only cancelled my visit to Florida, but also visits to Spanish universities I had also scheduled for that period, so it was not a specific stand intended in connection with the USA by any means, but rather a personal expression of sorrow and concern, and not a stand of protest against any particular country." The Scientist regrets our original incomplete characterization of Dr. Herrera's actions.

Scientists protest war

Severing ties with US science in condemnation of US policy.

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