New leadership
Risa at 11:08 am, November 10th, 2006
Want to elaborate on the great science at the Frontiers of Science symposium, but since Mark beat me to it, first just a few things on this week’s election results.
First of all, I am delighted to have cast an historic vote for the first woman Speaker of the House, this fabulous woman with San Francisco values (who is now second in line for the presidency!)
Second, among many other positive outcomes of the election results, I am really looking forward to the tenure of what I hope will be our new chair of the Committee on Government Reform, Henry Waxman. He is currently the ranking minority member of this committee, which has authority to investigate any federal program and anything with federal policy implications, and will likely take the reigns in January when the house leadership changes unless there’s some shakeup. In addition to lots of other great stuff he’s done, Waxman is responsible for leading investigations on the state of science under the Bush administration. You can see some of this work on the office’s Politics & Science webpage. He’s also been all over Halliburton and other corruption scandals, so that should make things interesting.
On a semi-related note, Andrew Baker suggested to me today that the new democratic leadership might take this opportunity to reinstate the congressional Office of Technology Assessment. For 23 years, this nonpartisan agency provided congress with “objective and authoritative analysis of the complex scientific and technical issues of the late 20th century” — until funding for the agency was abolished by Newt Gingrich’s 104th congress.
The Office of Technology Assessment occupied a unique role among the Congressional information agencies. Unlike the General Accounting Office, which is primarily concerned with evaluation of ongoing programs, and the Congressional Research Service, which provides rapid information on legislative topics, OTA provided a deeper, more comprehensive, and more technical level of analysis. Through eleven Congressional sessions, OTA became a key resource for Congressional members and staff confronting technological issues in crafting public policy.
As Andrew suggested, “this might be a good moment for scientists to push this: making sure that Congress operates with the highest standard of information dovetails nicely with the push to make sure Congress operates with the highest standard of ethics.” Since I’m sure a lot of CV readers would support congress thinking more deeply about issues in science and policy, and I’d be curious to know what the sentiment is on this.
In other science-related election news, Science has an update on what the election has done for intelligent design (in their words, it “received a drubbing”).
The only downside of the recent news about the Secretary of Defense resignation is that I fear jokes based on Rumsfeld-isms will become less funny (I, too, have used the known knowns and unknown unknowns in talks).
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Congratulations, here’s hoping for some level of sanity restored.
If the OTA returns, I hope it doesn’t bloat to its terminal size of 143 employees.
It seems to me that 10 employees would be more than adequate. Or better yet, dispense with the OTA and farm the work out to think tanks. This should work as long as the questions asked of them are very concrete.
I wanna know: are we still going to Mars? Or can that be canned now?
Zero Ethics = During Bush term
How does one stop this hiring of Bush cronies (unqualified to lead) in govt jobs that have final word in science? For examples: NASA muzzled the Climate report, the last straw for me was religion in science being pushed in courts, with some others hired are now at: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commmission and many more.
How many years have been lost to this madness?
Mars - At are what costs? How many programs that do real science have canceled to make room for Mars?
JoAnne - you want to can Mars?
what for release at the Cannes film festival?
I thought you were trying to can Higgs bosons?
Do baked beans have Higgs bosons?
How many gravitons in a can of baked beans?
So many unknowns - what would science be like if there were no more questions. and what would science be like if some of the ‘knowns’ are not proven to be false or wrong. At least Rumsfeld knew very well where the WMDs were (and still are) he just hard a hard time convincing the rest of us that they might be in Iraq. Are they still looking for them - or have they canned that search.
Has anyone worked out mathematically how far all the ordinance dropped on Iraq by the USAF on the first six days of Gulf war II (the sequel - bin Bush, son of the father Bush) and the energy released could have got us in Space. How far out in Space could we have reached by now (the outer-limits of our Solar System?)
And still had enough loose change to sort out any man made disasters: famine, water shortages & food shortages in the rest of Africa
We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for bad leaders who make bad decisions. See here why (you can replace “Religion” by any other “bad ideology”)
You guys crack me up!
Quasar9’s comment reminds me of a dump truck I saw on the MIT campus. Finger-written in the dirt on the tailgate was, “Test dirt. Do not clean.”
As I said in the previous post, I’m no scientist. In fact, I’m an economist (’nough said?). But I’ve always been fascinated by by physics, theoretical and astro, in particular.
In my view, from an economist’s viewpoint, it is absolutely stupid for the U.S. to pretend that science can/should not contribute to our national future.
You go guys! It’s important and even we economics-types know it.
Hahahaha! You pronounce it “istoric”! I’ve always been fascinated by people who do that, as well as people who pronounce whale as “hwale.”
I hope so, because LISA is going to be the coolest thing ever. I mean, could’ve been the coolest thing ever.
Like #7 I’m not a scientist, either. I’m a school librarian and I haven’t liked the state of science under the Bush administration. I’ve certainly seen firsthand how cynical kowtowing to evangelical voters has emboldened them to interefere in science ecucation. Enough of this. We live in a technologically advanced country. Our leadership and our educational system should reflect that.
I’m curious,
Astrology would presume to predict events based on astronomy.
Maths would presume to reveal the origins of the universe based on physics
Physics would presume to predict particles based on maths
However whilst maths & physics can attempt to predict the results of the use of nuclear tipped warheads on the road to Basra in Gulf War I and rather more accurately predict the devastation caused by USAF strikes on Iraq in the first six days of Gulf War II.
Could Maths have predicted the war in Iraq?
Can Maths predict human settlement of other planets?
Is Space not the final (if rather inhospitable) frontier?
What is more important in Science, to discover more dimensions when there is so much in our 3D+T Space to be explored. Or is it simply that we need the secrets hidden in other dimensions first, to be able to travel the great distances involved in 3D+T Space Travel.
“who is now second in line for the presidency”?
Not, alas, until January. If Junior and Cheney croaked, we’d still be stuck with Dennie Hastert at this point.
Risa said:
The known knowns and unknown unknowns doesn’t seem funny to me at all. Actually, the inability to distinguish unkowable unknowns from knowable unknowns is an impairment which afflicts most Doctors of Philosophy. I usually use this definition to define a Doctor of Philosophy: “A Doctor of Philosophy is someone who cannot tell the difference between a proportionality and a definition.” Having being inflicted with this professional impairment Doctors always claim to know things they do not know such as the density of the cosmos before the cosmos existed. I think the joke is on Doctors who cannot tell what can be be known from what cannot be known. Doctors define what they do not know and call it known.