Sir

We read with interest your News story “Nobel laureates spearhead effort to put Kerry in the White House” (Nature 430, 595; 2004) about scientists campaigning in the United States.

Nobel laureates have more productive ways to benefit society than entangling themselves in the chaotic web of political campaigns. The expertise of the American Nobel laureates is in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine — otherwise they would have received their Nobel Prizes for peace efforts. Why should their expertise in their chosen subjects make them masters in the sphere of politics?

We witnessed an example of this activity in Taiwan's 2000 presidential elections, and we find reasons for concern. Taiwan's only Nobel laureate, the chemist Lee Yuan-tseh, supported the Democratic Progressive Party nominee, Chen Shui-bian, before Chen's election to office in 2000. After that election, Lee continued to speak out on political matters, with sometimes mixed results. Lee has been involved in educational reforms in Taiwan for more than a decade, but last year university lecturers launched a signature campaign, asking him to take responsibility for what they considered to be failures in educational reform.

Yet Lee's scientific achievements have been rightly acclaimed. He has also been honoured as a Chinese scholar by the People's Republic of China. Perhaps his greatest skill is in inspiring a younger generation to become teachers themselves. Lee's reported words at a recent award ceremony for teachers in Taipei are worth recalling: “It is teachers, not politicians, who control the lifeline of society.”

We recently heard that the 82-year-old Chinese scientist Yang Cheng-ning, who received the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics and has lived for many years in the United States, now teaches physics at Tsinghua University in Beijing as well as continuing his research. This is what laureates should be doing, not taking part in politics.