Science Soapbox always loves showcasing early career scientists who are making waves in the world of science advocacy. This week’s soapbox belongs to Ploy Achakulwisut and Geoffrey Supran, who have made their mark as scientist-activists helping to lead divestment campaigns at MIT and Harvard University and the #StandUpForScience movement. Ploy is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Atmospheric Science in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Geoffrey is a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT and in the Department of History of Science at Harvard University. In this episode, we chat about their career development and the need for more scientists to enter into the territory of activism.
Here are some of the links and references mentioned during the show:
- Ploy and Geoffrey shared Why these two millennial scientists will march for climate action in the Trump era with Mashable
- After marching for science, they also shared some concrete pointers on what we can do to continue the fight for climate science and climate action
- Geoffrey has written a couple of op-eds around the disinformation campaigns spread by fossil fuel interests, including this one in The Guardian and this one for Good
- Ploy wrote this op-ed for Scientific American about the need for more scientists to become activists
- Ploy and Geoffrey have worked on a number of campaigns including Fossil Free MIT, AGU-Exxon, an open letter to Trump from 800 geoscientists, and the Climate Selfie Project
- If you’re looking for some summer reading, they recommend: Merchants of Doubt, Burning Question, and This Is an Uprising
- We met Ploy and Geoffrey at the AAAS Annual Meeting, and think Naomi Oreskes’ keynote speech “The scientist as sentinel” is a much watch and in keeping with this episode’s theme
This episode was recorded on June 27, 2017 at Harvard University’s Science Center. Special thanks to Visager for music. Photo from Amanda Kowalski at ClimateTruth.org