January 10, 2003
Presidential Advice
The Edge (yeah, never heard of them before, either) asked a bunch of respected scientists and thinkers to pretend The President had asked their advice on the pressing scientific issues of the day, and what to do about them. I read through a bunch, but I found Dennis Dutton's advice to be the best of the bunch:
"I hope your new Science Advisor comes to the job armed with knowledge of the rich history of junk science and false predictions served up to government in the last forty years. The point is not to be cynical about fads and careerism, but wisely to choose where best to support both pure science and science that can give us beneficial technologies. "
OK, it's meta advice, but I think that's better than what a lot of the responses were: variations on "Plastics my boy, plastics." I mean, how can you do any better than:
"Today, it is much easier for scientists to receive grants if they indicate their research might uncover a serious threat or problem—economic, medical, ecological. Media fascination with bad news is partly to blame, along with the principled gloominess and nagging of organizations such as Greenpeace. But government itself has played its natural part. After all, as H.L. Mencken once remarked, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." "
Posted by Kevin Murphy at January 10, 2003 12:49 PM | Science
