March for Science

The NYT claimed that more than 500 cities worldwide will participate in today's March for Science. If this is so, Freiburg is among 22 cities in Germany, and Red Baron participated in the march despite his painful legs.

When Red Baron arrived early at the meeting place, Platz der Weißen Rose, on the university campus, he met a few participants, read their slogans, and got hold of a commemorative button.

The sexist biologists

A friendly family in protest against homeopathy.
Globuli are compared to gummi bears.

Knowledge (science) provides the future.
Not all that has been discovered has turned out to be beneficial.

Kulturbürgermeister Ulrich von Kirchbach and friend

Red Baron wearing sandals from April 1 to October 15.

We are ready for the march.

I regarded the Freiburg March as a supporting move to the Mother of all Marches for Science in Washington. The NYT wrote: You start seeing headlines that say environmentalists are the new Marxists, said Aaron M. McCright, a sociologist at Michigan State University who has studied the politicization of science. And he continued that the March for Science will most likely further the partisan divide over scientific issues, especially if there are no prominent conservative speakers, mainly because the media echo chambers that individuals follow will frame the event for them.

Soon some well-known Americans arrived at the Platz der Weißen Rose. I told them that in Germany, creationist movements and organizations denying man-made climatic change either do not exist or are looked upon with a "certain smile." 

Later, Red Baron learned and had to admit that right at Germany's front door, "fakeless" science is having a hard time in Hungary and Poland.

Here is a photo gallery of our march from the university campus to Augustinerplatz:

Marching through Bertoldstraße with the streetcars on hold.
I told the man with the sign in English that he was at the wrong rally.
It turned out that he was a German.

Blowing the above photo up:
There is a familiar face wearing a cap in the center.

Still on Bertoldstraße aproaching Bertoldsbrunnen ...

... and passing through St. Martin's Gate ...

... we finally arrived at Augustinerplatz.

There were an estimated 2500 participants.
Still behind me was the guy with his panel.

The following speeches were introduced by guitar players.

There is a renaissance of dogmatic worldviews, University Rector Professor Hans-Jochen Schiewer warned, with contemporaries bending the world into their shape. Freiburg's university has joined the international program Scholars at Risk to help endangered scientists. Last week the university granted a scholarship to a doctoral student from Burundi.

Instead of calling lies what they are, fact-delivering scientists are rather discredited. Mayor Ulrich von Kirchbach criticized and stressed Freiburg's solidarity with scientists worldwide.

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