Making Science a Presidential Priority

Science Debate 2008 wants to put scientific issues front and center in the Presidential race by hosting a debate among candidates

by John Carey

When most of the Republican candidates for President proclaimed that they did not believe in evolution during a debate last year, astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss was one of many who were aghast. The Case Western University professor and best-selling author was even more upset when former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee shrugged off concerns, saying that he was running for President, not writing a middle-school curriculum. "How could being scientifically illiterate be perfectly acceptable?" Krauss asks. "No one would accept a candidate who, say, denied the Holocaust."

Instead of just fuming, Krauss seized on an idea then being proposed by screenwriter/director Matthew Chapman to stage a Presidential campaign debate focused on science. He linked up with Chapman and two other proponents, journalist Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, and screenwriter Shawn Lawrence Otto. In December, the group launched an effort to elevate the visibility of science in the Presidential race, starting an organization called Science Debate 2008.

Today, it's still hard to imagine science as a hot-button issue on the order of, say, religious faith or the war in Iraq. It's not even clear that a debate will happen: On Feb. 7, Science Debate 2008 sent invitations to the campaigns to participate in an event tentatively scheduled for April. There's been no response yet to the invitation, or to BusinessWeek's queries.

Frustrations with the Current Administration

However, the fact that more than 12,000 scientists have signed onto the effort, along with prestigious organizations such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine and the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), shows how serious some researchers are about elevating the profile of science in this election. "It's hard to get 12,000 scientists to agree on anything," says Alan Leschner, chief of AAAS and former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "But science is the biggest issue facing modern society, and we are concerned that only one candidate—Hillary Clinton—has so far devoted any energy to science."

There's also a palatable hunger in the scientific community for a government that bases its policies on science, after years of decisions from the Bush Administration that they believe ignored scientific reality. "We have all become painfully aware in recent years that it is not only irresponsible but dangerous and expensive to distort and repackage scientific conclusions for political purposes," Otto explained in a recent editorial on the Salon Web site.

A couple of examples: The Bush Administration's conviction that Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons might not have survived had the White House heeded scientists who pointed out that the aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq (cited as evidence of weapons building) were actually the wrong size for uranium enrichment, says Krauss. Or perhaps the Administration wouldn't have started its $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative if it had asked the National Academy of Sciences for advice first, instead of after. (The NAS was tepid on the idea, feeling its contribution to solving the nation's dependence on oil wasn't as great as the Administration claimed.)

There's no guarantee, of course, that any Presidential Administration will follow the science when the politics point in a different direction. Rice University professor and former White House science adviser Neal Lane recalls how President Bill Clinton backed away from expanding needle-exchange programs, even though the approach had clearly been shown to reduce transmission of AIDS and other diseases from dirty needles.