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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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In the wake of the near panic over the launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed James Killian, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to become the first special assistant to the president for science and technology. Ever since, the relationship between the nation’s chief executive and the White House’s resident authority on nuclear fission, the workings of DNA and the greenhouse effect, among an array of topics, has had its highs and lows.
To be sure, advice has flowed freely at times. Eisenhower consulted frequently with Killian and other scientists, and in the Kennedy years Jerome Wiesner, another M.I.T. president, helped to coordinate the government’s response to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a book that spurred a national grassroots environmental movement by pointing out the dangers of pesticides.
Just as often the adviser’s position has tilted toward irrelevance. Richard M. Nixon went so far as to abolish the job altogether, along with the President’s Science Advisory Committee, which had recommended against going ahead with a supersonic transport program, advice that the ill-fated 37th president did not want to hear. (The U.S. Congress restored the position in 1976.)
The tenure of George W. Bush marks a new nadir. On the few science-related issues the administration has cared about—stem cells and climate change were on the short list—it had largely set its course before the arrival of its new science adviser John H. Marburger III some nine months after Bush first took office. The administration, moreover, stripped the job of the title “special assistant to the president,” a reminder that the adviser would never be part of the inner circle.
Nevertheless, hopes rose with the appointment of the well-regarded physicist and former head of Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory. “As both scientist and administrator, John H. Marburger III tries to bring needed perspective into a White House not thought to be particularly interested in science,” read a headline for a profile published in Scientific American in June 2002.
In the ensuing years, Marburger has disappointed. Much of his public persona has been as an apologist for the Bush team, trying to rebut charges from scientists, Congress and the media that the administration has engaged in a “war on science” by systematically distorting or suppressing science-related reports and politicizing federal advisory committees.
Bush’s first appointed EPA administrator, former New Jersey Republican governor Christine Todd Whitman, resigned in 2003, amid this politically charged atmosphere. Mystifyingly, the ever dutiful Marburger, a registered Democrat, has spent more time as science adviser than any of the dozen or so men who have served before him.
Marburger continues to plow ahead with elaborate rationales that acknowledge in one breath the reality of global warming and in the next explain why “adaptation” to rising temperatures (think pineapple farming in North Dakota) needs to receive more attention. He has also assumed the role of the disembodied, neutral voice that quietly corrects the boss’s gaffes. Yes, evolution is the “cornerstone of modern biology.” No, intelligent design is not a scientific concept (comments he made the day after Bush twice said that both should be taught in schools).
We can only hope that the next president, whether Democrat or Republican, will not relegate the science adviser—and the entire scientific endeavor—to the status of afterthought. Once elected, the new chief executive should hire a leading scientist, perhaps one with Marburger’s credentials though not with his compliant, technocratic demeanor. In collaboration with the rest of the community, the official should be allowed to assume a prominent, unimpeded role in helping to influence the crafting of policies that address climate change, missile defense and stem cells. The war on cancer—and a host of other research initiatives—should once again take precedence over the war on science.
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11 Comments
Add CommentUm, duh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat, a science advisor? What's next, an economics advisor?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI heard science was bad for the economy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK, the editors have laid out why they did not like previous science advisers. They should have spent time outlining their vision of a "powerful" science adviser. This sounds like a bland call to give science more money, more status, and less oversight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstead of a leading scientist, they could recommend someone who can connect science to policy issues Americans care about.,, maybe even someone independent from the scientific establishment who can fairly set priorities between competing disciplines?
Instead of griping about personalities, perhaps the editors should just admit that they don't happen to like the current policies. If the editors think that a "powerful science adviser" would just happen to agree with all their policies because he or she was a scientist, then they haven't talked to many scientists.
We had very good science advisers during the John F. Kennedy administration. Else wise we would be really behind the U.S.S.R./Russia by now. Our current President, President George W. Bush jr. and his administration is not intrested in science or space exploration because there is no cold war going on right now. The only thing the current administration wants from science is a weapon that can wipe out the terrorist I think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think The President is concerned about a couple of degrees increase in global temperture over the next decade, or the riseing cost of oil and food and the loss of jobs right now. He's old, so he'll not be around in a few decades probably to see global warming make any impact on the world, and he's rich, so he don't need to worry about how he'll pay for food or gas, and he'll be retired after this term, so whats HE need a job for.
Science has never been considered an important subject to address in politics because the administrations in office has always believed one can run a nation fine with out it. The science community is only called apon in the event where the nation is faced with something that only scientists can possibly answer. Like, what if a N.E.O. was on a collision course with Earth right now and we only had a limited time to react to the threat? Or, what if a terrorist launched a bio-weapon at us?
The one I'm waiting to see happen, and it will, ....is the one where Japan or China or India or Iran makes it to the moon before we can with our new/old pencil rockets again. Especially if one of them puts a base (tuna can) on the moon before the U.S.does. Then you'll see the Military and the hole Government start geting antsy and start jumping up and down about science procuring a means for the U.S. to catch up. Real fast like too.
Suddenly, The Science adviser will become important once again in the oval office.
I first read this article in your magazine. The word "enlightenment" comes to mind. I'm older than this President, but I don't think my brain has turned to oatmeal yet! The "Present Occupant's" ideology gets in the way of any reasoning processes, thats why the office of Science Adviser is such a farce now. In an increasingly more technologically sophisticated world we need the scientific knowledge to make the right decisions regarding funding for projects that will keep us competitive; not only in new weapons, but most of all to keep the country commercially aggressive as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe do need a very strong Science Advisor to mitigate the damage done by the Bush administration. Maybe we need an economics advisor as well, since there are so many views from the economists. Somebody needs to make recomendations. Here's hoping.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI attended Marburger's train wreck of an apologetic for the administration at last fall's AGU meeting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMissing was any culpability or introspection on the part of the administration while blaming everyone else for our countrys failure on global warming. He blamed the media for dissemination of myth; he blamed scientists for over-simplifying; he blamed the public for not understanding the complexity of the science and social context. Yet no mention of this administration and its role in actively endorsing divisive claims. When pressed, he blamed congress for not passing a carbon cap, despite it being well known that such legislation waited a veto.
According to his talk, we could not join Kyoto, because of the 'polarizing' environment - and astounding claim given this administration's contributions to that polarization.
When Marburger was appointed, I thought there might actually be a voice for science in the Bush administration. Unfortunately, he has been worse than invisible.
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Edited by James Conder at 05/07/2008 10:41 AM
The "Enlightenment" proceeded the French Revolution. Many "deep thinkers" amongst our Founding Fathers were profoundly influenced by it's principals. The movement was a reaction to the "Age of Absolution". Then there were then no shortage of "deciders", the "Sun King" of France and the "Little Father" of Russia as notable examples. The French Revolution was driven in large part by the famine resulting from the grain failure and the stubborn refusal of the population to accept potatoes as a food staple. King Louis XVI of France could have used a Science Adviser. Instead of the admonishment; "let them eat cake", had he instead got them to eat potatoes like the rest of Northern Europe, the course of history might have taken an entirely different direction. So as we can see, this also ties into economics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--
Edited by Hugh Jones at 05/07/2008 11:07 AM
May 9, 2008
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are three approaching catastrophes headed our way:
(a) the developing world energy shortage, caused mostly by a diminishing supply of affordable liquid transportation fuels.
(b) the present economic shrinkage that is a being caused by that growing energy shortage with it's consequent rise in energy costs.
(c) a large acceleration in the dumping of CO2 as tar sands, oil shale, coal and gas use increase in an effort to fill in for the diminishing supplies of economically developable oil with the resultant increase in the rate of global warming and the problems it will cause.
The energy shortage and the resultant economic crisis are just now getting up a full head of steam, as we experience $4.00 a gallon gasoline and the slowing economy it is causing. They should both arrive at the station with full pressure in their boilers just about the same time the new administration enters office.
The problems caused by an acceleration in Global Warming will probably not come home to roost until after the next administration, eight years hence, but the time to act is now.
Facing what are arguably the most difficult problems any President has ever had to handle, the next President will need the very best scientific advice this nation can produce.
The question is, do the scientists in the United States have the moral fiber and courage to actually tell the President the truth about these problems and to persevere in their efforts to persuade the President to do the right (difficult) things that need to be done to avert these approaching catastrophes?
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Edited by James Flaherty at 05/10/2008 6:13 PM
Education and more education is what is needed, both in the US and the world. This much is clear from some of the responses above. And global warming and its effects will prove to have been vastly underestimated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut man will aspire to knowing all the knowable, we will be able to do all the doable, we are 87% of the way there. So what do we aspire to? Godliness! Just a little more evolution despite all the ignorance.