A postdoc by day and a scientific activist by night, Nick Anthis isn't letting his research in protein structure and function get in the way of defending scientific and social progress.
I'll admit that I haven't paid a terribly large amount of attention to the upcoming European Parliament elections (taking place in the UK Thursday--i.e. tomorrow) since I can't actually vote in them. However, maybe I should have been paying attention, based on a write-up by Frank Swain (SciencePunk) and Martin Robbins (The Lay Scientist) that appeared earlier this week in The Guardian's Science Blog.
Swain and Robbins' article--about the disconnect between the importance science will play in the issues the European Parliament will face versus the lack of attention science has received in the elections--is a follow-up on a survey they sent to the press offices of five major and minor UK parties on their scientific positions. I'd encourage you to take a look at the survey results yourself, but for me, at least, they solidified my opinion that if I were voting in the UK, I would probably be voting for the Liberal Democrats. Much of my thinking there, though, is influenced by our local situation in Oxford (which isn't related to the European Parliament elections), where we are represented by an excellent Lib Dem MP, Evan Harris, who has been an outspoken pro-science advocate on a variety of issues.
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Luckily my local Lib Dem MEP Andrew Duff (East of England) is one of the better MEPs and has a strong record on science so I'd already decided to vote for him:-)
Posted by: Paul Browne | June 3, 2009 8:23 AM