In what way, if any, would you change the current federal framework of implementing science-related policy?
One issue here is this: would it be best to ask broad questions, detailed questions, or a mix of the two?
Or would it be better to conceptualize a spectrum, ranging from general to specific, and try to formulate questions that fall in the middle of the spectrum?
This is a matter of great interest to me. As it happens, a large part of what I do for a living is to ask people questions. If I don't ask the right questions, I can't do my job properly.
I think that the questions should be formulated to help us learn three things about the candidates: how thoughtful are they regarding science policy? How well do they understand science policy? What policies are they likely to institute?
One good indication of how thoughtful a person is, is to ask a broad question and see how much detail they include in the answer.
A good way to see how well someone understands a subject is to see how readily they are able to address a subject at different levels of abstraction. Can they see both the big picture and the critical details? Can they assess a question and figure out how to formulate an answer at the level of abstraction that will provide the most informative answer?
Perhaps the most difficult questions to phrase well, are those pertaining to science policy. What is most desirable with these questions is to formulate them in such a way that you do not end up with predicable, vacuous answers. If all the Democratic candidates answer one way, all more or less identical; and all the Republicans answer a different way, but all the same as each other, then the question has not accomplished anything.
I suspect that the only way to handle that would be to select just a couple of specific policy questions, with follow-up questions designed to elicit distinctions between the candidates.
Politics
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