Check out the candidates’ science and technology related policies here.

Of the three candidates, Senator Clinton has made the most visible attempt to publicize her proposals for science and technology policy. This was done in a speech last October, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch. Perhaps consistent with this appeal to history, her policies in S&T appear to be the most conventional of the three candidates. To be sure, this is not an area in which any of the candidates are being particularly innovative, and this is not an area that will swing a number of votes to a particular candidate. But if any of the candidates (or their campaigns) formed their S&T policies from the talking points of the various science and technology advocacy groups, Senator Clinton is the most likely choice.

If you look at the Senator’s Innovation Agenda you won’t see anything that hasn’t already been advanced by one advocacy group or another. In short, more research money, more people (through more fellowships and greater outreach to underrepresented groups), and more incentives for private sector investment (R&D tax credit changes, money for prizes, and various funds for alternative energy and green building). She wants to increase the budgets of both the NIH and (in a separate item/increase) the NSF, DOE Office of Science, and Department of Defense basic research budgets. Oddly enough, the amounts of increase for this group of agencies appears to be less than the doubling stipulated in the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI). To be fair, the ACI covers NSF, NIST and the DOE Office of Science, but it would appear that Senator Clinton will favor the biomedical sciences over the physical sciences, when there is some consensus that the physical sciences are in greater need of assistance.

There are some parts of the Innovation Agenda that are different.

Most notable is the last point – Restore Integrity to Science Policy. This is consistent with Senator Clinton’s invocation of the war on science, which she has used in a broader sense than Chris Mooney likely intended. Her plan to end this “war” is outlined in another policy statement. While I disagree with the idea that the stem cell research ban is part of the war on science, the rest of the points would be familiar to those who have followed the debates over the politicization of science – banning political appointees from editing scientific documents, allowing career scientists and civil servants to take the lead on agency rule-making, requiring annual reports on the efforts to prevent political pressure on editing scientific reports, and a broader national assessment for climate change (again, not sure that this qualifies as part of the war on science).

Also notable is the required set-aside of 8 percent of an agency’s research budget for high-risk research. The policy statement references DARPA and it’s high-risk/cutting-edge portfolio, but this also reflects language from draft provisions of the ACI. In an agenda that is relatively safe and conventional in its provisions, this is a welcome exception.

While I find nothing particularly objectionable in the policies advanced by Senator Clinton (there’s the tricky question of paying for those policies, but I don’t expect her to be alone on this point), there’s little here for me to be excited about. As I post about the other two candidates, I don’t expect that to change. This leads me to think that had ScienceDebate 2008 happened, the effort would have ended more with a whimper than a bang. It’s just not a focus at the Presidential level, so there’s little incentive to innovate in this area of policy – at least for Presidential candidates.