61 Nobel Laureates urge Americans to vote for Barack Obama

Washington, September 27 : As many as 61 Nobel Laureates are urging Americans to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

A small sub-group of scientists among them believes that Obama will make science education and research funding a priority, if he is elected U.S. President.

When the trio of Nobel Laureates reached out to the media together with the Obama campaign Thursday to explain their support, they seemed to be unhappy over the past eight years of the Bush Administration's unflagging record of fudging scientific evidence to suit political aims, and its powerfully symbolic exile of its science advisers from the White House.

"We join this effort because we strongly believe that US science policy has been disastrous during the past several years, and that we need a new and visionary leadership to ensure America's dominant position in the sciences, and to maintain our nation's competitiveness in the world," Wired News quoted Bob Horvitz, an MIT biologist who won a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2002, as saying.

The three scientists said that they couldn't trust McCain's positions regarding science policy due to political pressure from religious conservatives.

"While I think that Senator (John) McCain has in the past ... had some reasonably progressive views, he's now in the difficult position of reconciling his views with that of the Republican platform," said Peter Agre, who won a Nobel Prize for his work in chemistry in 2003.

Harold Varmus, who won a Nobel prize in 1989 for his work in medicine, pointed out that there was general confusion in the scientific community over McCain's position.

ANI