My latest Science Progress column is up: It presents some ideas for improving the relationship between science and Congress other than the most obvious one--restoring the Office of Technology Assessment. The piece starts out like this:
First the good news: The number of physicists in Congress just increased dramatically. And now the bad: That increase was from 2 to 3. Still, if you plot the data, you can see the trend: As physicist Rush Holt (D-NJ) recently joked to The New York Times, "By mid-century, I think, we'll have a functioning majority."
In all seriousness, though, to hear Holt and his fellow congressional equation solvers --Vern Ehlers (R-MI) and the recently elected Bill Foster (D-IL)--tell it, they are strangers in a truly strange land. Ehlers, for instance, relates having to occasionally rush to the floor to prevent fellow members from killing science programs they don't even understand--assuming, for instance, that "game theory" research involves sports, and that A.T.M. studies have something to do with banks (actually, this is a communications technology).
Many people would probably agree that this gap between science and most of our elected representatives needs closing--but how to make that happen remains a complicated matter....
You can read the entire column here.
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Chris,
I support your calling attention to this effort, but I'd add one huge caveat. Many, in fact I'd dare to say most, scientists face steep hurdles in running political office. Federal scientists, for instance, have to resign their positions and therefore loose their income in order to run in partisan elections. The Hatch Act currently forbids any other option. Given the steep cost of most such races ($10M-$100M for a Senate seat), I suspect few will take the leap unless there is strong financial support. So I hope the idea of a science PAC takes off, otherwise politically savvy and interested scientists will continue to work the ropes from the back of the crowd, instead of the front.
Its not just the 'gap between science and most of our elected representatives' that needs closing - its the gap between the all the knowledge accumulated through science and what the average person knows. If that gap were made much smaller, then both our elected officials and voters would be much better off. But like you said, the questions of how to do that.
Actually Trisha, if you spend some time reading the articles Chris has posted in the syllabus of his Cal Tech Boot Camp, you will see that increasing the underlying knowledge base of the average person isn't really the quickest, or best way to deal with this issue. "Average people" don't believe they need more knowledge, so shoving it down their throats will continue to backfire. Rather, Scientists need to communicate more precisely, and concisely, why the science matters.
Take the current mid-west floods. Lots of reports are throwing around "100 year flood" and "500 year flood" without explaining what those terms mean. To the "average person" a 500 year flood is a flood so big it only occurs every 500 years. to a hydrologist, a 500 year flood is a flood that has a 1 in 500 chance (0.2%) of occurring in any given year. The difference in interpretation is not a lack of knowledge issue - its a language use issue.
"When talking to Congress, pretty much the worst thing you can do is lose everyone in charts, graphs, and uncertainties;"
But isn't that what lawyers in Congress (and everywhere else, for that matter) have always done?
Seems like a scientist who did that in Congress would fit right in.
I think the real issue is that for a long time now, members of Congress have gotten away with gross incompetence -- not just in the science arena but in ALL arenas. We need to hold these people accountable not only for their votes but for doing the background reseaerch that goes into the votes.
Their job is not merely to "show up" on the day of the vote (some don't even do that) and cast their vote -- and then go on an(other) extended vacation.
They need to actually READ and UNDERSTAND the bills they are voting on. A member of Congress does NOT need to be a scientist for that. All they need is to hire someone with the proper background and inclination to research this stuff -- and to take the advice of that person ehn it comes time to vote.
These people are getting paid big bucks ($170K per year) to do a JOB. They might want to actually start DOING it. If they were working in the private sector, most of these people would have been fired long ago for incompetence.
It's not just "Congressional science" that is broken, it's the entire system.