This five point manifesto explains the purpose, goals, and plans of PUNKS IN SCIENCE. The ordering of our five points is not a ranking of importance — we think that every single one of them is important. However, the ordering does reflect necessary precedence. That is, punks in science have to network before we can dialogue, and dialogue before we can practice science in the political arena, and practice science in the political arena before we can take over the world or whatever we end up doing after Point 5.

The Five Points of the PUNKS IN SCIENCE manifesto

1. PUNKS IN SCIENCE provides a social and professional network for punks who are scientists.
2. PUNKS IN SCIENCE promotes inter-disciplinary dialogue among scientists who are punks.
3. PUNKS IN SCIENCE publicizes the inherently punk nature of scientific inquiry.
4. PUNKS IN SCIENCE practices the methods of scientific inquiry in social and political arenas.
5. PUNKS IN SCIENCE politicizes scientists, punks, and people at large.

1. It’s not easy being a punk in science. Punks reject almost every aspect of popular culture on both aesthetic and political grounds, embracing a subculture that is extreme and sometimes offensive to those outside it. But science is practiced mainly within mainstream institutions such as universities, laboratories, and research institutes.

So when a punk chooses to become a scientist, they surround themselves with peers and colleagues who know nothing about punk culture, with whom they share few values and interests. This may seem like a trivial complaint. However, punks in mainstream institutions not only lack a community, but face real pressure to suppress their identity. As a result, punks in science often feel isolated and alienated. We are afraid that this causes some punks to drop out of scientific careers. And worse, we suspect that this may be part of the reason why so few punks choose to become scientists at all.

We take this to be an undesirable state of affairs, since we sincerely believe that punks are both uniquely qualified to do science (see point 3), and uniquely predisposed to take on the moral and political responsibility that is bestowed upon scientists and other intellectuals (see points 4 and 5).

PUNKS IN SCIENCE aims to fill this void by facilitating the creation of a social and professional community for punks in science. The PUNKS IN SCIENCE website contains a number of ways for punks in science to communicate and interact. These include a members directory searchable by fields; member created bulletin boards; links to sites of punk and scientific interest; and articles, commentary, artwork, and anything else submitted by members.

In the future, PUNKS IN SCIENCE may organize conferences, concerts, and other events both social and professional. We hope that having a community of peers will help reduce the isolation and alienation that punks in science feel, and thereby encourage more punks to become (and remain) involved in science. We also hope that this new community will contribute to the other goals of PUNKS IN SCIENCE, as outlined in points 2-5.

2. Progress in scientific understanding brings with it an ironic downside. As scientists learn more and more about the workings of a complex world, the various disciplines and sub-disciplines of scientific inquiry become increasingly dense and specialized.

An outsider cannot approach the primary literature without years of training, and insiders find it extremely difficult for these scientists to communicate their findings outside of their own field. The result is a serious lack of communication between scientists in different disciplines. We take this to be an undesirable state of affairs, for at least two reasons. First, we think that as public representatives of science at large, individual scientists ought not to perpetuate myths, misunderstandings and misleading information about the subjects of other disciplines.

Unfortunately, this occurs far too often. For example, we are frequently dismayed by the statements of preeminent scientists, whose publicly expressed views on language ignore the most basic findings of modern linguistic science during the last 50 years (and, in fact, during the last 200 years).

Second, we feel that progress in all scientific fields would benefit from increased interdisciplinary communication and understanding. Mathematics and formal theories were a direct influence on the “revolution” in linguistics in the 1950’s, for example, and recent work in linguistics has been influenced by theories of physics and biology. This latest direction in linguistic research would clearly improve with greater input from scientists in those fields. And vice versa: disciplines such as biology, cognitive science, anthropology, sociology and others would have much to gain from better communication with linguistics.

PUNKS IN SCIENCE hopes to stimulate this kind of interdisciplinary communication within a community of punks who are scientists (as outlined in point 1). Most scientists do not form communities beyond their disciplines, and thus have few opportunities to communicate with scientists from other fields. PUNKS IN SCIENCE brings together punk scientists from many fields, whose common interests outside of science give them the incentive to form a community not defined by their scientific discipline. The PUNKS IN SCIENCE website provides a forum for communication. Members can talk to each other on bulletin boards, provide links to other websites, and contribute articles and other information about their fields. In the future, PUNKS IN SCIENCE may publish a journal of some kind, as well as organizing conferences, meetings, reading groups, and other events designed to encourage interdisciplinary scientific exchange.

3. Science has a bad image both among punks and in the popular culture at large. […] But scientific inquiry is inherently iconoclastic, radical, and even revolutionary.

4. We want to practice scientific inquiry in the social and political world.

5. We want to politicize scientists, punks, and people at large.