Museum of Natural History urged to cut ties with 'anti-science propagandist' Rebekah Mercer

More than 100 scientists have urged the museum to sever its ties with Mercer, one of Donald Trump’s top donors

The American Museum of Natural History is under pressure to sever its ties to Rebekah Mercer, one of Donald Trump’s top donors who has used her family’s fortune to fund groups that seek to undermine scientists’ work on climate change.

More than 200 scientists have put their names to a letter that urges the museum to “end ties to anti-science propagandists and funders of climate science misinformation” and axe Mercer from its board of trustees, a position she has held since 2013.

A separate missive also calling for Mercer’s dismissal has been circulated among the museum’s own curators amid growing concern that the New York institution risks having its mission subverted by Mercer.

The Mercer family is headed by billionaire rightwing benefactor Bob Mercer, a computer scientist and hedge fund CEO. In 2015, The Washington Post named Mercer one of the 10 most influential billionaires in politics, and by conservative estimates he has donated more than $35m to political campaigns over the last 14 years.

Mercer also invested at least $10min the 'alt-right' news website Breitbart.com in 2011, anointing his relationship with the then executive chairman, Steve Bannon, the self-described “nationalist” who was a pivotal figure in Donald Trump’s election campaign and briefly a strategist in the Trump White House.

Rebekah Mercer, Bob’s daughter, mostly serves as the public face of his political donor activities. Bob himself is notoriously reclusive and has few public statements to his name.

In the bestselling book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, author Michael Wolff describes the Mercers as “tak[ing] over” the Trump campaign in August 2016 and “installing” Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, now counsellor to the president, atop a floundering operation. “Trump wouldn’t be President if not for Bob,” a former Mercer employee told The New Yorker.

In the wake of controversy over Bannon and rightwing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, Bob distributed his ownership stake in Breitbart to his daughters, including Rebekah, citing “personal reasons”.

Jamiles Lartey

Freshly obtained donation records, shared with the Guardian, show that the Mercer Family Foundation, overseen by Rebekah and her billionaire hedge fund father, Robert, funneled more than $2m to organisations that actively deny or obfuscate mainstream climate science during the election year.

The donations include $800,000 to the Heartland Institute, a conservative group famous for its regular conferences for those who dismiss the scientific consensus that human activity is changing the climate, and half a million dollars to the Heritage Foundation, a free market group that promotes fossil fuel extraction and claims that spells of cold weather demonstrate that the planet is not warming.

In 2016, the Mercers funded two other groups for the first time – giving $125,000 to the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and $150,000 to the CO₂ Coalition. Both groups seek to sow doubt over the consequences of climate change. The CO₂ Coalition’s chairman is William Happer, a Princeton University physicist who has been touted as a potential science adviser to Trump.

The Mercers were a crucial backroom force behind the political rise of Trump. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, last year said: “The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution.” Brietbart News, the rightwing outlet previously run by Bannon, has also received large donations from the Mercer foundation.

“Since Trump’s election, the Mercer family has been flushed out of the shadows and revealed to be major supporters of the climate denial machine,” said Kert Davies, founder of a climate-focused transparency group who analysed the donations’ declarations. “Their support for climate deniers appears to be growing over time.”

The Mercer foundation’s 2016 donations also include $200,000 directed to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a group founded by Arthur Robinson, a biochemist who helped set up a widely discredited petition of purported experts denying that global warming is harmful.

The signatories had no vetting, however, prompting green groups to add singer Geri Halliwell and the entire cast of M*A*S*H to the list. More recently, Robinson has been storing thousands of samples of human urine in the belief that he will find a way to extend lifespans. Rebekah Mercer has reportedly suggested to Trump that Robinson be the president’s chief science adviser.

In their letter, concerned scientists and curators warned the American Museum of Natural History that while it is a “treasured and influential institution”, it could suffer a “loss of public trust” through its association with Mercer. As well as being a trustee, Mercer has donated more than $4m to the museum since 2012, records show.

“Rebekah Mercer is one of the greatest funders of the bad faith attacks on climate science and climate scientists,” said Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University climate scientist and one of the letter’s signatories.

“It is an abomination for her to be sitting on the board of trustees of any science-themed institution let alone one of the greatest natural history museums in the world.”

Katherine Hayhoe, another prominent climate scientist who signed the letter, said it is imperative that museums “convey … information accurately, without either explicit or implicit pressure to downplay or even alter the facts”.

Museums and galleries have come under increasing scrutiny as they attempt to balance the need for funding with concerns over climate change. In 2015, the Science Museum in London said it would not continue a controversial sponsorship deal with Shell, although BP continues to back several of the city’s major cultural institutions, such as the British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Opera House.

This month, the American Museum of Natural History was criticised for an exhibit in its dinosaur wing that said warmer periods, such as the current one, are caused by variations in the Earth’s orbit around the sun and that there is “no reason to believe another ice age won’t come”. The wing is funded by David Koch, a high-profile funder of climate change denying groups, although the museum said Koch had no influence over the content, which was merely outdated.

“This country is having a crisis of trust, museums are the last bastions of trust and we have to be very careful of preserving that,” said Jon Foley, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, which doesn’t accept money from fossil fuels.

“The American [Museum of Natural History] is one of the best museums in the world and it’s sad that we are talking about this rather than their great work.

“It’s troubling if donors are supporting museums on one hand and funding anti-science on the other. Public science institutions need to pick people aligned to their mission, not just for their wealth. We are in a hypercharged atmosphere at the moment, science is under attack. This is an issue museums will have to navigate.”

Foley, not a signatory to the scientists’ letter, said he gets calls “all the time” from donors about exhibits based on issues such as climate change or evolution. “The job is to listen and relay that the exhibits are based on the best available science,” he said. “You never let donors or trustees micromanage the content of exhibits. It’s more about the perception. But that perception is important.”

A spokesman for American Museum of Natural History said the museum “deeply respects” the work and views of scientists and affirmed that the institution accepts that human-driven climate change is “well supported by scientific evidence and one of the most serious issues currently facing our planet”.

“The museum itself, however, does not make appointment decisions concerning staff or trustees based on political views,” the spokesman said.

“It’s not the role of trustees or donors to make decisions about scientific and educational content. At the museum, those decisions are made by scientists and educators based on evidence, facts, and research.”

The Mercer Family Foundation was contacted for comment.