Good piece in the NY Times magazine today called ‘Political Science’, which dovetails with with Chris Mooney’s the Republican War on Science (Chris is actually mentioned):
When Donald Kennedy, a biologist and editor of the eminent journal Science, was asked what had led so many American scientists to feel that George W. Bush’s administration is anti-science, he isolated a familiar pair of culprits: climate change and stem cells. These represent, he said, ”two solid issues in which there is a real difference between a strong consensus in the science community and the response of the administration to that consensus.” Both issues have in fact riled scientists since the early days of the administration, and both continue to have broad repercussions. In March 2001, the White House abruptly withdrew its support for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and the U.S. withdrawal was still a locus of debate at this summer’s G8 summit in Scotland. And the administration’s decision to limit federal funds for embryonic-stem-cell research four years ago — a move that many scientists worry has severely hampered one of the most fruitful avenues of biomedical inquiry to come along in decades — resulted in a shift in the dynamics of financing, from the federal government to the states and private institutions. In November 2004, Californians voted to allocate $3 billion for stem-cell research in what was widely characterized as a ”scientific secession.”
Yet what remains most divisive, according to Kennedy, is not the Bush administration’s specific policies, but a more general sense that ”scientific conclusions, reached either within agencies or by people outside of government, are being changed for political reasons by people who have not done the scientific work.” It is this sense that science is being ”misused” that has given rise to two Congressional bills.
The piece spends a great deal of time discussing the President’s science advisor and his relationship with the President and the administration.
Walker
As a mathematician/scientist, what I find interesting is that all this talk on the “Science Wars” ignores the one thing that is killing us right now: across the board cuts in grants in funding of foundational research (research that has no immediate or near term applications). Now, I know things are tight, but it is an established fact that industry will not fund foundational research at the level needed to make it pay off long term.
One of the reasons other countries are catching up with us is that they realized it our government’s support of foundational, long-term research is what what helped keep us ahead for so long. They are starting to emulate that model. However, this administration has decimated the budget of the NSF, the organization responsible for supporting this type of research.
Furthermore, the administration has changed the mission of the NSF so that all projects must have visible near term benefits. But this is the type of research we can get businesses and the military (through DARPA) to support. Why do we want a government agency specifically designed for long term scientific support doing this?
jobiuspublius
Globalization of Science, I guess that the expectation will be that “we” will build on all the foundational research being done elsewhere. So, we will fund research for the likes of Haliburton. Not sure how well that will work. Probably one more reason for the imperialistic bent of our recent government.
jobiuspublius
We’re the central client state for Multi-national corporations.
Walker
Which is what other countries have been doing from us since WW II. Yes, they could often implement or manufacture it better than us. But we still remained in the lead and reaped tremendous economic benefits.
What you are expressing is the “world is flat” outcome. Few people believe this is a good thing. Especially as other countries embrace educational and research principles that we are abandoning.
jobiuspublius
So, we’re just going to give them the other half of the recipe, and piss them off. Great. I hear the Chinese want to take the next step from factory hosting and operating to management.