Don’t believe us. This is Scientific American talking:
This year 27 candidates—incumbents as well as new challengers—were endorsed by the science advocacy group 314 Action. The group recruits people with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering or medicine to run for office, endorses candidates and has a political action committee that contributes to their campaigns. In the House of Representatives, just two endorsed challengers out of eight won, though one race remains too close to call because mailed ballots are still being counted. Among endorsed Senate challengers, former astronaut Mark Kelly won in Arizona, and former geologist John Hickenlooper succeeded in Colorado, where he was previously the state’s governor. Chris Coons, an endorsed Senate incumbent from Delaware, also won. The victories were countered by two Senate losses. One was in Kansas where Barbara Bollier, a former physician and state legislator, was beaten; another was in Alaska, where orthopedic surgeon Al Gross lost. In the House, endorsed incumbents with STEM backgrounds, several of whom were first elected in 2018, won 12 of 14 contests, reflecting the easier road that incumbents usually have to reelection. (One of those races remains too close to call as well.)
Party affiliation overlapped with science advocacy in many races, and that may have been a factor. The candidates who made science a bigger point in their campaigns—including concerns about climate change as well as COVID—were all Democrats. Republicans rarely run on their science experience or advocacy, and 314 Action has never endorsed one.
Jim Daley, “New Scientist-Candidates for U.S. Congress Fared Worse Than Expected in 2020” at Scientific American
Yuh. If you are a player, you can lose. That’s why we thought it would have been smarter for the Big Science types to stick to their traditional position as referees instead of jumping into the fray with all the others.
See also: Nature: Scientists “aghast” that Biden didn’t win a landslide in the US. It’s hard to understand why these people imagine that the Big Science response to COVID-19 would be viewed as a success. Many people around the world have experienced it as one panicfest after another, featuring contradictory opinions on all sorts of things shouted at us from “the science.”