Wednesday, February 01, 2006

 

If Only It Were This Simple

The NYTimes carried an interesting piece yesterday on the interaction of science and government.
To fight such misunderstanding, Mr. Boehlert and others sponsored the Jan. 23 briefing, organized by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard.

Capitol Hill has briefings by the dozen every year in which industry, academic and activist groups address diverse topics related to science.

Some criticize these briefings as little more than showboating. But Mr. Boehlert, like many others, thinks they are "absolutely" useful. And the briefing was unusual in that its subject was not avian flu, the budget for NASA or any other relatively narrow issue, but rather "how science works."
What's the problem? Well, even scientists don't agree on "how science works" - particularly when it comes to the issues that are most directly addressed in a governmental setting. In many such areas the problems lie not in the science but in the assumptions underlying the science. For example, embryonic stem cell research is a moral, ethical, and religious question, not a scientific one - the science is somewhat straightforward.

In the case of global warming, it's a question of risk/benefit ratio with a very healthy dose of uncertainty in the picture - again these are more policy than science issues.

What is an important question is how government decides what science to fund. The problem is they are far more likely to fund science with policy implications for what should be obvious reasons. This is, frankly, what has driven the increasing politicization of science in general.

I am skeptical - I think we would be far better served taking govenrment out of the science funding business than trying to educate them about it.

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