Our first guests are part of a panel discussion Monday afternoon at the University of South Florida called “Science Under Attack,” which looks at the role of science under the administration of President Donald Trump.
Listen to the full show here:
Parmvir Bahia is a research associate at USF Health and director of Scientists, Inc., a science outreach nonprofit, and Erin Sauer is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Integrative biology at USF.
Gerard Solis, USF’s general counsel, will be part of the panel, as will a vice president for research and an associate dean for research.
We discussed how policies of the Trump administration is affecting scientists and their grants and how USF’s administration is reacting. Initially, the USF administration did not respond to a letter written by some of its scientists concerned about what would happen under President Trump. There now has been a response, but our guests say it leaves many important questions about the school’s support for its scientists unanswered.
The scientists also feel that the president’s travel bans have hurt scientists by keeping good scientists out of the country.
The “Science Under Attack: Panel Discussion” is Monday, March 20 at 4:00 p.m. at MSC 3705 (Manatee Room) at the USF Tampa campus.
Watch this segment here:
We also heard from the FBI Director confirming that there is an investigation into possible Russian meddling in the U.S. election. James Comey also confirmed Monday that neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has any proof of wire-tapping claims by Trump.
Our final topic is something our guest is calling “WikiEquality.” Paul Flagg, with Student Organizations of Library & Information Science at USF. SOLIS is co-hosting an event Tuesday, WikiEquality: Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon. Its Facebook event page says the goal is “Celebrating Women’s History Month and promoting social justice, human rights, equality and the arts.”
We examined questions like whether participants need to have experience editing Wikipedia pages, how they keep false information from being added, and if there are examples of people deceptively editing Wikipedia pages for nefarious reasons?
We also looked at if some people could see what SOLIS is doing as being politically motivated and therefore propaganda.
WikiEquality: Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon is Tuesday, March 21 from 4:00 p.m.- 8:00 p.m. in Tampa at the Hillsborough Community College Dale Mabry Campus Library, DLRC 317.
