Journal of Advocacy, Research and Education (Mar 2018)
Challenges to Michael Eisen’s bid for US Senate seat in 2018
Abstract
Dr. Michael Eisen, a prominent molecular biologist at UC Berkeley, announced on January 25, 2017 that he would run for the US Senate in California in November, 2018. That announcement was made via Twitter. That marks a possible new and refreshing trend of scientists turning to politics. Eisen, a co-founder of the open access portal, Public Library of Science, is openly critical of the copyright establishment, which still dominates biomedical and humanities publishing. Another Tweet by Eisen basically encouraged the direct use of Sci-Hub, a pirate site that captures millions of copyrighted texts of multiple publishers, and makes those texts freely available to the public, i.e., black or pirate open access. This paper examines the intersection between science, information, copyright, social media and morals, and questions whether the public encouragement of copyright infringement, compounded by prolific profanity, serves as the best model role as a public servant for prospective politicians. This paper also examines if bad language and slang – as are frequently used by Eisen – represent the best moral example for voters, and if they increase or decrease trust in political candidates. The intersection between science and politics needs greater debate.
