science policy
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Category archives for science policy
We Need to Bring Back the OTA
Posted by Nick Anthis on April 1, 2009 In discussions lamenting modern day political interference in science and the less-than-prominent role science plays in formulating policy, bringing back the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) is commonly offered as a key facet of any comprehensive solution. And, this is for good reason, as Gerald L. Epstein explains in a new article at Science…
President Obama Begins to Reverse Bush Era Political Interference in Science
Posted by Nick Anthis on March 9, 2009 Today was a great day for science in the Executive Branch. Firstly, President Barack Obama (finally!) lifted George W. Bush’s August 2001 restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research in an executive order entitled “Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells“: The purpose of this order is to remove…
An Unsettling Meeting with the UK’s Science Minister
Posted by Nick Anthis on January 26, 2009 Last Friday the British Minister of Science, Paul Drayson, visited the science area of Oxford University to give a short speech and take questions. The audience was a fairly random assortment of a couple of hundred academics and students, mostly from the sciences. I was invited to fill one of ten graduate student slots granted…
Slowing the Pace of Change: Bush Appointees Fast-Tracked into Career Government Jobs
Posted by Nick Anthis on November 25, 2008 Clearly, I owe my readers some true post-election analysis–something that has been slowed down by the insanely busy schedule I’ve been keeping in the lab and the totally overwhelming implications of the fantastic and historic recent election of Barack Obama. In the meantime, though, I’d like to point out a particularly insidious aspect of the…
Obama Endorsed by 61 Nobel Laureates
Posted by Nick Anthis on September 26, 2008 Yesterday, the Obama campaign released a letter of endorsement signed by 61 Nobel Laureates (click here for a nicer looking pdf). Michael Stebbins of Scientists and Engineers for America points out that “this is the largest number of Nobel Laureates to ever endorse a candidate for office.” And, why should we be surprised? Obama’s answers…
NIH Director Elias Zerhouni Announces Resignation
Posted by Nick Anthis on September 24, 2008 Earlier today, Elias Zerhouni–who has been the director of the NIH since 2002–announced that he will resign at the end of this October. According to the NIH press release, he is stepping down “to pursue writing projects and explore other professional opportunities.” The Hill has more from Zerhouni about his resignation: “I felt it would…
Obama on Science and Technology
Posted by Nick Anthis on September 1, 2008 On Saturday, ScienceDebate 2008 and Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) announced that Barack Obama answered a fourteen-part questionnaire that they put together along with several other scientifically oriented organizations. Major props to ScienceDebate, SEA, and these other organizations for making this happen and to Barack Obama for thoroughly answering these fourteen questions. I’d encourage…
UK Government Seeking Feedback on Science Policy
Posted by Nick Anthis on July 23, 2008 The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), which is responsible for higher education in the UK, is seeking feedback to help it develop its new science strategy. The DIUS has put together a website for this purpose: interactive.dius.gov.uk/scienceandsociety/. There, you can read its latest report, comment on various sections of the report, or provide…
More on the Levine Stem Cell Article
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 5, 2008 Yesterday, I blogged about a recent article correlating a nation’s research output related to human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) with its policies on hESC research. There was one particular source of uncertainty, though: As Levine points out, he didn’t actually count papers that published results on hESCs, but papers that cited the original hESC paper.…
Performance in Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Correlates With National Policies
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 4, 2008 The conclusion stated in the title of this post may seem painfully obvious, but a new study published in Cell Stem Cell by Aaron Levine (assistant professor at Georgia Tech and author of Cloning: A Beginner’s Guide) backs it up with some hard data. To come to this conclusion, Levine compared a country’s output of…