Yesterday we pointed to a thoughtful report from DEMOS, a UK think tank, titled “See-through science” published in 2004. Last year DEMOS published a follow-up report that provided a somewhat more sober perspective on the staying power of the so-called “deficit model” of the public understanding of science. The follow-up report is tilted, “The Public Value of Science” and is just as thoughtful as the first. Here is what it says about the deficit model:

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According to a recently released UNESCO report, in 2002 the world spent $830 billion on research and development in the public and private sectors, which represents about 1.7% of global GDP or $134.40 per person. The United States spent 3.1% of its GDP or $1,005.90 per person; the EU spent 1.8% of its GDP or $431.80 per person, Japan 3.1% and $836.6/person, Israel 4.9% and $922.40/person, China 1.2% and $56.20/person, and India o.7% and $19.80/person. This data come from this table in PDF.

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So this study looks interesting:

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows. And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that’s contrary to their point of view. Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects’ brains were monitored while they pondered. The results were announced today. “We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning,” said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. “What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.” The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say. Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained. The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making. . . The brain imaging revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate. “The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data,” Westen said.”

If this study is correct then those “junk science” and “war on science” folks will each probably find a way to ignore or discount its conclusions! But on a deeper philosophical note, does this mean that those who allege that either Republicans or Democrats are worse abusers of science are in fact themselves abusing science?

For you local folks:

George Keyworth II, White House science adviser to former President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1986, will speak at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Tuesday, Jan. 31, at 7 p.m. in room 270 of the Hale Science Building.

The free, public event is part of a yearlong lecture series titled “Policy, Politics and Science in the White House: Conversations with Presidential Science Advisers,” sponsored by CU-Boulder’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research.

Keyworth, who played a key role in Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative known as “Star Wars,” will speak on science and the presidential decision-making process. Following his remarks, CSTPR Director Roger Pielke Jr. will interview Keyworth about topics like the role of scientific information in the Star Wars initiative. The event will conclude with a question-and-answer session with the audience.

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The excerpt below is from the excellent report from DEMOS, a UK think tank, titled “See-through science,” which discusses the evolution of engagement between the scientific community and the rest of society. It argues that we have moved beyond the simplistic and unsuccessful efforts by scientists to enhance the public understanding of science (PUS) as a way to motivate public action in particular directions, such as supporting science or accepting certain technologies. Perhaps this is the case in certain contexts having to do with the introduction of potentially disruptive technologies like nanotechnology, but my sense is that the PUS model is alive and well in the scientific community at large. Just consider the recent NRC report on US competitiveness I mentioned yesterday. Here is the excerpt from the DEMOS report:

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It looks like science policy issues might be increasing at the focus of policy makers attention in the near term. Chemical & Engineering News reported late last week,

“A bipartisan group of senators plans to introduce a package of legislation next week aimed at boosting U.S. competitiveness in science and technology by doubling federal funding for basic research and establishing a new science agency within the Department of Energy. The bills will be collectively titled the Protect America’s Competitive Edge Act. They would implement 20 recommendations contained in an October 2005 report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that outlined a series of steps the U.S. should take to maintain its global economic competitiveness. The legislation would establish an agency at DOE called the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) that would provide grants for “high-risk” research and development programs in the energy sector.”

The 20 recommendations referred to are from the NAS report “Rising Above The Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future”. The report was in response to a request from Congress that asked:

(1) What are the top 10 actions, in priority order, that federal policy-makers could take to enhance the science and technology enterprise so that the United States can successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st Century?

2) What strategy, with several concrete steps, could be used to implement each of those actions?

Like kids in a candy store, the NAS committee was unable to limit itself to just 10 and came up with a list of 20 recommendations. Here are the recommendations:

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This announcement has been out for a while, but I bring it to the attention of Prometheus readers because it highlights some of the same things we talked about after my post “Policy Sciences and the Field of S&T Policy.” That is, this is a conference that intends to be critical about the progress of research in the field of Science, Technology and Innovation. Here’s the important information:

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In 2000, Dan Sarewitz, Bobbie Klein and I published a paper titled “Turning the Big Knob: Energy Policy as a Means to Reduce Weather Impacts” (PDF) in which we calculate the relative sensitivity of future tropical cyclone damages to the independent effects of changes in storm behavior under climate change to changes in societal vulnerability. For the changes in both storm behavior and societal vulnerability we used the assumptions of the IPCC. Brian Schmidt, who works for an environmental organization in San Francisco, and who occasionally has visited our website with always-thoughtful comments, has taken the time to write up a critique of our paper and post it on his blog. We appreciate the engagement. Brian graciously asked us for a response, so here it is.

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Gavin Schmidt, NASA scientist and a RealClimate proprietor, and I have occasionally engaged in a bit of back-and-forth on issues of science and politics. I respect Gavin, and we have always enjoyed cordial relations, but as regular readers here will know, I have frequently criticized RealClimate for hiding an implicit political agenda behind the fig leaf of putative concern about scientific truth. A recent exchange between Gavin and I related to a recent post of mine provides a look behind the fig leaf, and more importantly illustrates how hiding behind science contributes to sustaining gridlock on climate policy.

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I’ve written a good bit on salmon issues in the Columbia and Snake River systems (see Prometheus posts 1 and 2, and nosenada posts). I last left the issue with news of Senator Larry Craig’s (R-ID) annoyance at a broker of information in the system.

Litigation has been running for years over the Federal government’s obligations to protect various ocean-bound species of salmon and their inevitable conflict with the 11 major dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. In this case, the federal government means the Army Corps (who run the dams), the Bonneville Power Administration (who oversee the power ops), and NOAA-Fisheries (who are supposed to be watching out for the salmon under the ESA). NOAA-Fisheries has negotiated compromise solutions with BPA and the Corps on protecting both salmon and power issues. Environmentalists have sued, claiming that under the ESA, NOAA-Fisheries is only supposed to be protecting the salmon without taking economic considerations in account.

The federal interests in this case are simply an extension of one side of the interest triangle on Columbia/Snake salmon. The three major stakeholders are power consumers, farmers and fish lovers. The first category is represented by BPA because BPA sells the power and hears about it when that power gets expensive. Power consumers are both residential users and their co-ops, as well as major industries, such as Alcoa. Farmers’ interests are obvious. Fish lovers include the various tribes of the region with treaty rights, sport fishermen and commercial catch operators. The basic issue is that fish lovers want BPA to spill water over the tops of the dams in the summer to help salmon smolts safely get out to sea. But that spilt water is water BPA cannot use for power generation and thus represents lost revenue and, by extension, higher rates for consumers.

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