Q: What is your name and position at Duke?
A: I’m Misha Angrist. I’m an associate professor of practice at the Social Science Research Institute and a Senior Fellow in Science and Society. I teach courses related to science and what happens when it makes its way out into the world.
Q: Can you introduce your most recent essay?
A: I wrote an essay for a wonderful website called Flaming Hydra, it was called “It’s Science!”, and it was about mainly my trip to Washington in March to attend the Stand Up for Science event and to compare and contrast it with a similar protest event in 2017 called March for Science.
In the piece, I sort of reflect on what does it mean for scientists who are used to dealing in data and facts and questioning themselves to take to the streets and say ‘we don’t like what’s going on with respect to science and policy.
Q: What were your key takeaways from the Stand up for Science event in D.C?
A: Part of what I saw when I was among the 3,000 nerds at the Lincoln Memorial was that the best speakers really understood the power of rhetoric and storytelling and there were people there who had first person stories about, say for example, how a particular innovation and immunotherapy saved their lives because they had leukemia.
Q: How can we encourage more public dialogue around scientific advancement without undermining trust in it?
A: So one, is what can we do as scholars and academics and researchers and scientists and investigators to step out of the ivory tower and visit schools and community gatherings and have open non-judgmental conversations about things like vaccines for example. We have to live those values as opposed to thinking the data will speak for themselves because what we’re seeing now is that they will not.
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Read Misha’s full write-up, “It’s Science” on the Duke Science & Society website. This piece originally appeared in the 14 March 2025 issue of Flaming Hydra.
