Scientist-Politicians Seeking To Build Numbers, Influence

Influence Few and far between, scientists serving in and running for Congress say they offer benefits of reasoning, judgment. EYES ON THE PRIZE: Former pharmaceutical executive Charles Sanders hopes to be the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina this fall. Charles Sanders hopes to give Bill Frist some company. Sanders, a cardiologist and former professor of medicine and pharmaceutical executive, is seeking North Carolina's Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. If he wins the May 7 primary, Sanders will face the incumbent, Republican stalwart Jesse Helms, this fall. Sanders says he's running because "I'm just disgusted with what's going on in Washington." He adds: "I've spent a lifetime trying to solve problems and bring people together, and I have unique real-world experience which would serve well in Washington." If Sanders manages to score a primary win and go on to defeat Helms, he will find few fellow scientists on Capitol Hill. Frist (R-Tenn.), a heart and lung transplant surgeon, is the Senate's only scientist, and the number in the House is small, as well. POLICY-MAKING: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett is calling for "a scientific approach". The best guess on the number of "pure" scientists in Congress is probably three: Rep. John W. Olver (D-Mass.), a Ph.D. who taught chemistry at the University of Massachusetts; Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-Mich.), a nuclear physicist; and Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.), a former professor and physiologist. All are seeking re-election in November. In addition to Frist, Congress includes nine House members with medical backgrounds as well as some engineers. "I'm not sure how many scientists want to run," Olver notes. "There are only a few of us willing to take the grief." Olver's observation aside, the scientists who do run want to see more of their peers joining them. "There is a crying need for scientists and engineers to get involved in politics," says John S. Morgan, a 1995 American Physical Society (APS) Congressional Fellow who is the Republican nominee to run in Maryland's 5th Congressional District. After noting that there are just a handful of scientists serving in Congress, Morgan adds: "I've seen a number as high as 229 lawyers in the House of Representatives. We need to even that out a bit. Even Al Gore pointed out the need to have a better balance in the legislature at a time when technology is becoming extremely important to the economy." But Bruce L.R. Smith, a senior staff member at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank, cautions that it is not good for the country to have scientists overemphasizing their backgrounds once elected. "Maybe there are too many lawyers-maybe-but to be effective as any kind of adviser or policy-making official, you can't approach it from a narrow, disciplinary perspective," he argues. "You are a broad-gauged decision-maker who's supposed to be able to assimilate things," notes Smith, the author of Advisers: Scientists in the Policy Process (Brookings Institution, 1992) and American Science Policy Since World War II (Brookings Institution, 1990). Scientists currently serving in Congress and those running for office assert that their involvement stems from a desire to move the country in what they see as the right direction. Bartlett, for example, states: "The reason I ran had more to do with my concern with where our country was going than my being a scientist." Beyond the rather standard statements about "direction" and "change," they point to a need to bring reasoning, logic, and scientific analysis to a body they claim sorely needs such traits. VALUABLE VIEW: Candidate Rush Holt cites science's "perspective". "The scientific ethic really does have elements that you would like to have more widely distributed among your representatives," comments Rush D. Holt, who advised then-Rep. Bob Edgar (D-Pa.) on science and education issues as an APS Congressional Fellow in the early 1980s. Holt, now on leave from his job as assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory while he seeks the Democratic nomination in New Jersey's 12th District, calls science "empirical more than ideological. It seeks generalization. . . . It has a large-scale perspective, both in time and space. There's a global perspective and a temporal perspective that's really valuable." He cites his work in Edgar's office and as head of an arms-control office at the State Department in the late 1980s as examples of his personal mix of science and politics and says his current campaign is "a natural extension." "In the same way I committed my life to science and public service, treating patients one-on-one, I wanted to expand that public service to a much broader arena," Frist offers. "That is, bringing the scientific, inquisitive mind to the solution of challenging problems; it's what science is all about, and what the challenge of being a United States senator is all about." "From my experience in Annapolis, there's not an awful lot of rigorous thinking in legislatures," says Morgan, a Maryland state legislator. "Statistics are incredibly abused in the political process. Deductive reasoning is almost absent. The training that scientists have is extremely good for a state legislature or the Congress." Experienced science policy observer Robert L. Park, whose op-ed pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune, agrees that government can benefit from scientific reasoning. 'ONLY A FEW': Rep. John Olver believes scientists need to increase their impact. "Good scientists are problem-solvers, and I think that sort of thinking has an appropriate place in public life," notes Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland and APS's director of public information. "In fact, there are few decisions that are made these days by government that do not involve some sort of a technical component. So scientific judgment is a real advantage." While bringing more reasoning and logic to Capitol Hill may be an honorable goal, scientists say their presence is important for an equally practical reason, as federal belt-tightening threatens to decrease science funding. As members of the Senate and House, they contend, they can help protect what they see as worthy programs. "I'm an unabashed, fully committed, ardent supporter of government funding for basic research in all fields," Sanders notes. "I think that that is the source of knowledge which allows new products to be developed through time. The investment in basic research is the reason the United States is the acknowledged leader in virtually every field of scientific endeavor." But Smith objects: "It isn't your role to be an interest group for science in the legislature. . . . Narrow, special pleading is not the way to move policy-makers." UNIQUE: Sen. Bill Frist played up background during race. Nonetheless, Frist states that scientists are in the best position to realize the "short- and long-term investment payouts" of science and technology. "If we lose the appreciation of biomedical research as it relates to health-care delivery, of technology as it relates to global commerce, of defense technology as it relates to international political security, it will affect the economic and political stability of this country, as well as reduce the standard of living for all Americans," he warns. "That voice can best be expressed by someone who has intimate experience with science." In addition, several say that a background in science helps to determine the worthiness of projects eligible for potential funding. "There are so many issues today that have a technological component to them, and decisions today are being made by people with no knowledge of science or technology," Ehlers maintains. "Scientists . . . can really help improve the greater good of the nation just by our presence [in Congress] and being able to understand the issues being discussed." Bartlett agrees: "We have had few or no scientists in the government for a long while. Because the federal government has been the major source of funding for basic research, nonscientist politicians have been involved in setting national scientific policy, and one would think that was not the best way to set it." Asked for a specific example, Bartlett cites his input in killing the concept of "directed basic research," something he says congressional colleagues were discussing but that he calls a "contradiction." And Ehlers maintains he has been "putting in a word with my colleagues on science issues, particularly funding issues, helping them sort out the projects that are up for funding, telling them what's good and what isn't." Such expertise is not as beneficial as scientists say, maintains analyst Smith. "There's this fantasy that if we but had more scientists there, then we'd have a more sympathetic view of what science can contribute. That's just very foolish and misguided," he states before adding with a laugh: "Most of the problems in life that I've ever encountered were not the result of people not understanding me but people understanding me too well." "Find good people that have good ideas, and give them an adequate amount of money, and I can guarantee that there will be societal payoff," Bartlett insists. Can scientists use their backgrounds as an advantage in their campaigns for office? Most point to their own experiences and say yes. According to Frist, his consultants warned him not to "mention that you're an academic physician" for fear that he would be tagged as out of touch. Not so, Frist contends: "As I traveled Tennessee county by county, talking to people, shaking hands, listening to people, one after another said, 'It's fascinating that you are a physician-scientist running for the United States Senate. That's what America should be about.' So many people told me that that I radically changed my campaign, to stress the point that I was a physician-scientist, that I was not your typical politician, that I had unique experiences which would be a benefit for all Americans." Congressional hopeful Holt worried that he "would have to downplay or even apologize to the general electorate for being a scientist, that I would be susceptible to the 'egghead charge.' . . . In fact, people love it. They're upset with-and I hate to use the clich}-politics as usual. In most people's minds, you can't get further from a politician than a scientist. It seems to work very much to my favor." However, as the handful of scientists and doctors running first-time campaigns for the House likely will discover, a scientific background is not an automatic ticket to election, of course. Two years ago, for example, physician and former National Institutes of Health director Bernadine Healy ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in Ohio's senatorial primary. Healy was unavailable to comment for this article. Members of Congress Holding Science and Medical Degrees THE SCIENTISTS: Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.): B.S. in chemistry, M.S. in physiology and biochemistry Rep. George Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.): B.S. in industrial physics Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.): B.S. in chemistry Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-Mich.): Ph.D. in physics Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.): B.S. in chemistry Rep. John W. Olver (D-Mass.): Ph.D. in physics THE DOCTORS: Rep. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.): Veterinarian Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.): Obstetrician Rep. John Ensign (R-Nev.): Veterinarian Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.): Cardiac transplant surgeon Rep. Greg Ganske (R-Iowa): Plastic surgeon Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.): Dentist Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.): Psychiatrist Rep. Charles Norwood (R-Ga.): Dentist Rep. Ron Packard (R-Calif.): Dentist Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.): Physician But Sanders, like his newcomer counterparts, expresses confidence in his chances. However, he concedes: "My biggest problem is getting name recognition here in North Carolina. But that can be overcome with a lot of hard work." Many scientist-politicians speculate that a primary reason their numbers are small is that the difference between science and politics is too great for many scientists to overcome. "You have to make compromises [in politics]. Well, to a scientist, the word compromise has negative connotations," Holt notes. He adds: "Congress is where the tradeoffs are made, and that's hard for scientists to bring themselves to. But the alternative is to let them make those tradeoffs in ignorance." Bartlett compares policy proposals to hypotheses, pointing out that when a proposal doesn't fly, it is seen as a "failed experiment" and, more often than not, shelved permanently. "If we had more of the scientific approach to politics, it would be a whole lot easier for people to back away from suggestions that are hypotheses that aren't playing well. . . . A good researcher never loses credibility when he finds reasons not to support a hypothesis. It just means he needs to take a new tack in his research." America's "political scientists" agree that researchers need to work harder to make their influence felt in the political process. "I don't think they've done a good job at all, and they've got to increase their impact quickly, quickly," Olver argues. "The scientific community has got to understand that nothing is going to come for granted." "You've got . . . to be able to articulate your views in a way the public understands, and that's where most scientists have their problem," Park muses. "We get so used to using a sort of jargon, we don't know we're using it. Even our spouses learn to adapt to it eventually, but that's not going to go very far with the voters." What will help tremendously, scientist-politicians say, is to emphasize that science is an asset, a benefit, something that helps the entire country. Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.), an engineer and physics major and former chairman of the House Science Committee, believes that scientists must show that what they do improves people's quality of life. "The underlying problem here is that scientists and technical people in general have got to get away from being observed as a special-interest group among the population in general," Brown observes. "They have got to establish a link between what they're doing as scientists and the general welfare of the community." "If we are going to continue to have the scientific community that we need to have, we have got to involve ourselves in advocating the cause of science," Sanders says, acknowledging a historical lack of such activity. "That is not something we have found ourselves comfortable in doing. Walking the halls of Congress is not an efficient use of time, but you only need to hit a few home runs in the halls of government to get your point across." Politicans and scientists have different "ways of thinking," Morgan notes. "In science you put the data out there and you put your conclusion out in the community, and you let the community study it. In politics you have to convince people more." Can science adapt to a new political reality? With Washington talking seriously about balancing the budget, will scientists realize the need to make their voices heard in government? "We're seeing a little bit of that trend right now," Park contends. "We're starting from an awful small pace, but there are more scientists who are getting involved in politics, if only out of self-defense." Frist, too, feels that researchers are now realizing that they must advertise science's accomplishments and learn to cooperate if they are to survive. "The scientific community understands the importance of this communication, this networking, this partnership. Historically, in times when money was more plentiful, there was less incen- tive for that sort of partnership and dialogue. My impression is that people recognize that that must change, is changing-and will be the direction of this next century."

Scientist-Politicians Seeking To Build Numbers, Influence

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