How Hillary Frames Science: Social Progress, Economic Development, and Public Accountability

Without necessarily intending to, in her speech last week Hillary Clinton demonstrated just how irrelevant some criticisms of the "framing science" thesis have been.

Consider: Hillary is a politician, and she wants to deliver a message about science--a vastly complex subject with many diverse aspects. So what does she do? Well, duh, she frames. She pares down complexity, and emphasizes only those aspects of science that are tailored to resonate with her core audience. For a politician speaking about science, it could scarcely be otherwise.

Not only is there nothing wrong with Hillary's use of framing--I would argue that the Senator frames science in a quite innovative and successful manner. Using Nisbet's typology of science-specific frames, I detect three frames in Hillary's speech: Social Progress, Economic Development, and Public Accountability. So let's look at the definitions of these frames, before proceeding to examine how Hillary employs them:

Social progress... improving quality of life, or solution to problems. Alternative interpretation as harmony with nature instead of mastery, "sustainability."

Economic development/competitiveness... economic investment, market benefits or risks; local, national, or global competitiveness.

Public accountability/governance... public versus private good; ownership and control, responsible use or abuse of power; "politicization," majority versus minority opinion.

Nisbet maintains that "social progress" and "economic development/competitiveness" are distinct frames, though it seems to me that one scarcely comes without the other. But in any event, these are the two frames that Hillary leads with. She opens her speech by discussing the Sputnik anniversary and legacy, and explaining how science in the postwar era became a chief driver of social advancement and personal betterment for many Americans. I think the following paragraph best captures Hillary's framing of science as a matter of social progress and economic development:

In 1961, President Kennedy created the Apollo project, and declared that our nation would land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the decade. By 1969 we had done it. By 1972, we had done it 12 times over. It was a national, bipartisan effort. It was a public, private partnership. We bolstered investment in research -- and encouraged children to learn math and science. We asked young people to become scientists and engineers -- and helped them pay for their degrees with new National Science Foundation fellowships. We believed that we could, by rolling up our sleeves and getting to work, do what we all knew we had to. Begin to demonstrate that America still was the leader in science and innovation. We set big goals. We didn't give in to our fears, we confronted them. We didn't deny tough facts, we responded to them. We didn't ignore big challenges, we met them. Once again, we proved, as President Eisenhower had predicted, that when the chips are down it is always a mistake to bet against America.

So far so good...but already Hillary is beginning to innovate. "We didn't deny tough facts, we responded to them," she says--thus conjoining the social progress/economic development framing with a different "public accountability" interpretation that focuses on abuses of power in relation to science. The later is a frame I ought to know very well--after all, it's the central frame employed in The Republican War on Science.

Sure enough, before long the Senator has fully transitioned into using "war on science" language to upbraid the administration:

To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, this administration doesn't make decisions on facts. It makes facts based on decisions. And to further paraphrase - my predecessor, the extraordinary late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan, everyone is entitled to his own opinion but no one is entitled to his own facts. For six and half years under President Bush, it has been open season on open inquiry. They've tried to turn Washington into an evidence-free zone. And by ignoring or manipulating science, the Bush administration is putting our future at risk and letting our economic competitors get an edge in the global economy. Well, when I am President, I will end this assault on science.

And thus does Hillary frame: we need science for social progress, we need science for economic development, so what a !!*&% scandal it is that the Bush administration has been attacking science for seven years. It seems to me that these are, indeed, the best frames to use if you want not only to advance science but to demonstrate how you plan to be a very different scientific leader than Bush.

Note, however, that there are several risks associated with Hillary's framing. The first is that in marrying so closely together "scientific integrity" issues and "scientific innovation" issues, she seems sometimes to imply that they're one and the same. They're certainly not. In a future post, I will further discuss this conjunction and how it's problematic.

Finally, there's another risk as well. Note this paragraph in particular from the Senator's speech:

We'll invest more in multidisciplinary research, where the United States has a built-in advantage. No one commands the breadth and depth of excellence across different fields that we do. For instance, we should increase investments in non-health applications of bio-technology. One example: bacteria that could dramatically reduce the costs of cleaning up Superfund sites. I recently saw Craig Venter, who many of you know of or know, and his latest project is trying to create bacteria that will lead to a substitute for petroleum. Well, we don't know where this research will lead. That's the whole point and the excitement is letting loose our best minds.

Hillary is "framing" Craig Venter's work in social progress terms, but even here at the Intersection we have seen how Venter, with his new synthetic minimal genome organism project, can alternatively be painted as a Frankenstein figure--in short, how his science can be reframed as a "Pandora's Box." You can bet that opponents are already attacking Venter using this interpretation, which Nisbet defines thusly:

Pandora's box / Frankenstein's monster / runaway science... call for precaution in face of possible impacts or catastrophe. Out-of-control, a Frankenstein's monster, or as fatalism, i.e. action is futile, path is chosen, no turning back.

What the Venter example shows is that when you're engaged in framing science, it also pays to be aware of how opponents will aim to reframe your message.

All in all, though, I think Hillary has very much used the right framing to get her point across. Indeed, her framing is very similar to that used in my Seed cover story, "Dr. President," which is now online. Good timing, eh?

In any event, much more about Hillary soon...there are many more aspects of her speech and policy proposals that Sheril and I hope to parse. Tune back in for discussion of stem cell and climate policy, Hillary's plans to appoint a science adviser, her call for restoring the Office of Technology Assessment...and much more.