« Author: Meyer, R. »

Science Debate 2008: an incoherent idea at best

A blogosphere movement/proposal for a “Science Debate” among presidential candidates has picked up considerable steam, gathering the support of institutions and individuals throughout the science community, and spilling onto the pages of Science (here) and Nature (here and here) this week. It’s worth looking at just what this group is calling for:

“Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.”

I won’t go into the various arguments for and against this idea, but I think it’s worth contrasting the title of this effort -- “Science Debate 2008” – with what is actually being proposed in the above quotation. The issues listed span a political and cultural landscape of which science occupies only a very small piece. On the other hand, there are far more issues in which science plays a part (e.g. space, transportation, agriculture, …) that somehow did not make the cut. Why these issues in this particular debate? What is the goal of holding this debate?

Despite the title of this movement, what is advocated here is not a “science debate,” and as Goldston pointed out in Nature, applying such a name to it potentially does a great disservice to whatever discourse might emerge. One need only look at Kennedy’s suggested questions in Science to see why this is true. Some of these questions are about politics and values, others are about budgetary aspects of science policy, and still others are about criteria of scientific merit. While a sitting president could take a position on any of these example questions, few of them are high profile enough to reach that status.

Others are misleadingly framed to begin with. For example, no single person or entity determines the balance between “major-program project research and investigator-initiated basic research grants” and it is doubtful that it would be possible (let alone desirable) to alter this reality. (And I’ll leave aside the question of whether anyone at all in the general public would find this question interesting.)

It seems that the agenda of this movement is to raise the profile of a very specific set of issues. Why these issues should represented as inherently “scientific” is mystery to me. What should be clarified is the reasoning behind selecting these issues, and the overall goals of the proposed debate. Maybe then the supporters could make some progress in dealing with the issues raised by Goldston and others, and perhaps even make headway toward a truly useful event.