Want to Influence Policy? Get Elected!

Wisdom is truncated by the chemistry of the adviser and advisee. The president has available an awesome armament of potential sources of science advice if he feels the need for advice. Let’s see: there's the science adviser and his apparatus in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. There is President’s Science Advisor Council or the White House Science Council equivalent (roughly). There is the National Science Foundation Director and the entire NSF with its manifold infinity of panels and boards. Occasionally, other departments contain science (e.g., Energy Research in the Department of Energy, the Director of the Division of Research and Engineering of the Department of Defense, and the (Defense Science Board). There is, for a small fee, the National Academy of Sciences and, through it, practically any scientist in the nation who has published two and a half refereed articles. The president can call on the patriots in our universities; he can, with a wink, assemble industrial scientists, scientists who can meet a payroll, and academic scientists who would dump anything to even visit the White House Office Building. Any thesis that the president’s advisory system is weak cannot be supported, unless someone would propose something really bold; for example, that a group be empowered to teach the president quantum mechanics while he is under the influence of sodium pentathol. Although the Congress is clearly a much more difficult entity to advise, a plethora of entities is also in place. We start with the Office of Technology Assessment, proceed to the General Accounting Office, the Library of Congress, and then note that the National Academy of Sciences is available here, too, as are an infinite number of expert witnesses testifying before a like number of committees. An excellent example is the monumental study of science policy issues by the House Committee on Science and Technology, chaired by Don Fuqua, in the 1985-87 period. A more dramatic example was the late and much-lamented Joint Committee on Atomic Energy—the green-covered, fine-printed reports of this committee constitute a library of science, science history, sociology and politics. A wise person in search of science education can read here the elegant testimony of Nobel laureate after Nobel laureate, straining to be clear to the lawyers of this powerful committee. Here again, the only dramatic innovation would be a Constitutional amendment that would require each member of Congress to pass a science literacy test. Passing over the Supreme Court, where can we go for advice on how to improve the advice to government? I have only one positive and not-too-impractical suggestion. It came from my mentor, the late I.I. Rabi, and was given to his younger colleagues some time after the Oppenheimer affair and after only 20 years of his own experience. Rabi’s admonition went something like this: Advisers come and go. Power in this country belongs not to advisers, but to elected officials. If you scientists want your advice to be heeded, get elected! Run for office! Suppose the 400,000 or so scientists in this country established a fund of $10 million, to be available for any Ph.D. with a good publication list who wanted to try for Congress? Most of these candidates would have no political liabilities, and would know a lot about education and the importance of science and education in modern society. Even more, they’d know the limitations of science, and their arguments in corridor and committee would be persuasive. Rabi’s utopian idea was to have a government, not excluding the Supreme Court, sprinkled with people well trained in science. That’s my proposal too. Lederman is director of Fermilab, P0. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510. Adapted from Science and Technology Advice to the President, Congress, and Judiciary (Pergamon Books, 1988). Copyright © 1988 Pergamon Books.

Want to Influence Policy? Get Elected!

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of