Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) was an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government, and supporting candidates who understand science and its applications. SEA was formed on September 27, 2006, and describes itself as non-partisan. SEA is organized as a 501(c)(3) organization, and represents a reorganization of Scientists and Engineers for Change, an organization founded in 2004 to support the election of

John Kerry John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician and diplomat who currently serves as the first United States special presidential envoy for climate. A member of the Forbes family and the Democratic Party, he ...

. Its current executive director is Tom Price. SEA operates a

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

site called the Science, Health And Related Policies (SHARP) Network, which allows members to track and contribute information on Congressional representatives, candidates, and science policy issues. SEA is associated with a

501(c)(4) A 501(c) organization is a nonprofit organization in the federal law of the United States according to Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)) and is one of over 29 types of nonprofit organizations exempt from some federal income taxes. ...

organization known as the SEA Action Fund, whose president is geneticist Michael Stebbins.

Political positions

Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers

A bill of rights which outlines the principles of the organization states:

Mission statement

The organization's mission statement states:

Programs

SHARP Network

The Science, Health and Related Policies Network is a

to track congressional representatives, senators, and candidates as well as presidential candidates.

Innovation & the Elections 2008

Scientists and Engineers for America organized a coalition of 19 science organizations to submit a set of 7 questions to all the candidates for

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

. The coalition includes groups such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences, and Science Debate 2008.

Campaign Education and Training

The Campaign Education and Training project is a workshop aimed at training science-oriented professionals to run for public office. Along with the workshop, SEA also hosts an online advice column called Campaign Lab for scientists to ask political experts on different aspects of running for political office.

SEA chapters

SEA chapters provide a way for students and members of the scientific community to influence the interface between science and politics. These chapters develop the means for both current and future scientists and engineers to influence the policy arena and expand the forum through which SEA involves scientists and engineers in the political and civic process.

Board of Advisers

Among others, the SEA Board of Advisers includes noted Nobel Laureates such as: *

Peter Agre Peter Agre (born January 30, 1949) is an American physician, Nobel Laureate, and molecular biologist, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and director o ...

Sidney Altman Sidney Altman (May 7, 1939 – April 5, 2022) was a Canadian-American molecular biologist, who was the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University. In 1989, he shared the Nobel Prize in ...

* Philip W. Anderson * Johann Deisenhofer * Alfred Gilman *

Douglas D. Osheroff Douglas Dean Osheroff (born August 1, 1945) is an American physicist known for his work in experimental condensed matter physics, in particular for his co-discovery of superfluidity in Helium-3. For his contributions he shared the 1996 Nobel Pr ...

Martin Perl Martin Lewis Perl (June 24, 1927 – September 30, 2014) was an American chemical engineer and physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton. Life and career Perl was born in New York City, New York. Hi ...

Burton Richter Burton Richter (March 22, 1931 – July 18, 2018) was an American physicist. He led the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) team which co-discovered the J/ψ meson in 1974, alongside the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) team led by Sa ...

Harold E. Varmus Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939) is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He was ...

Criticism

Soon after its foundation, the organization was accused of partisanship by several conservative media outlets. An editorial in

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

criticised the organization for seeming to stifle scientific dissent: In a rebuttal posted on the SEA website, founding executive director Michael Brown stated:

References

External links

''Science under ‘political assault,’ group says''
Kansas City Star, September 28, 2006
''Scientists Form Group to Support Science-Friendly Candidates''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, September 28, 2006
Science, Health, and Related Policies (SHARP) Network
(inactive)
Scientists and Engineers for America Action Fund
(inactive) {{authority control Organizations established in 2006 Non-profit organizations based in Washington, D.C. Political advocacy groups in the United States Politics and technology Scientific societies based in the United States Science advocacy organizations