Advice and Dissent

Advice and Dissent As a relatively young member of the scientific community (I am 22 years old and in my first year of graduate studies, working towards my PhD), the Office of Technology Assessment was an entirely novel topic to me.1 For someone so young, it would be presumptuous of me to make an objective judgment call on whether or not the OTA was a good or bad thing. I can, however, speak from my own experience when I say that at least a small cross-section of the American public is gros

Written byNicole Placek
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As a relatively young member of the scientific community (I am 22 years old and in my first year of graduate studies, working towards my PhD), the Office of Technology Assessment was an entirely novel topic to me.1 For someone so young, it would be presumptuous of me to make an objective judgment call on whether or not the OTA was a good or bad thing. I can, however, speak from my own experience when I say that at least a small cross-section of the American public is grossly unaware of the complexities of modern technology. When you realize that many members of Congress, as Mr. Greenberg pointed out, are not scientists, it would probably be safe to say that they, too, have the same sort of questions as the small cross-section of the general public with which I have interacted. Wouldn't it make sense for them to have a ...

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