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Science in the presidential campaign

During the 2008 primary campaigns, the science community seemed intent on reversing trends established during the outgoing Bush administration. The ScienceDebate2008 initiative invited all presidential candidates to publicly debate federal involvement in key science and technology issues. “The National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Institute of Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Council on Competitiveness, dozens of Nobel laureates and presidents of major universities, former presidential science advisors, and thousands of distinguished scientists, engineers, and concerned citizens joined in the effort [to promote such a debate].” Sheril R. Kirshenbaum, et. al., “Science and Government: Science and the Candidates,” Science (April 11, 2008), 182-85. The community undoubtedly was driven to act in part by the spectacle during one Republican primary debate of seeing nearly all the participants raise their hands when asked if they believed in creationism or intelligent design.

Although neither presidential candidate addressed science and technology directly in any public appearance, both did speak extensively about science- and technology-related issues, including alternative, renewable energy resources, the effects of anthropogenic global climate change, and embryonic stem cell research. Neither candidate publicly addressed the level of federal support for R&D until the September 2008 financial crisis obliged them to declare that budgets during their first year in office would be tight, At the February 2008 annual meeting of the AAAS, a panel discussed the views of the would-be candidates on science and technology-related issues. Senator Hillary Clinton stated during one of the debates among the Democratic candidates that she would, if elected, upgrade the presidential science advisory system. but that federal R&D budgets would not be cut significantly.

Obama sought a great deal of advice on science, most notably from Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, president of the memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and former director of the National Institutes of Health. Varmus reputedly drafted Obama’s answers to an October 2007 Research!America questionnaire in which Obama wrote that he “supports increasing funding at the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and ‘expanding and accelerating research using stem cell lines.’” Bob Grant, “The Future of U.S. Science Policy,” The Scientist 22 (issue 9), 30-33.

On December 20—earlier than any of his predecessors—Obama announced the selection of his science advisor, to be designated Assistant to the President for Science and Technology: John Holdren, director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the Woods Hole Institute.

Future Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren at a January 2008 Energy Roundtable on Capitol Hill. Left to right: Michael Tamor, Phil Schewe, Holdren, Congressman Steve Israel (D-NY), Rosina Bierbaum, and Fred Dylla. Courtesy AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives.

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Source:  OpenStax, A history of federal science policy from the new deal to the present. OpenStax CNX. Jun 26, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11210/1.2
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