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Science Priorities

Entry 704, on 2008-02-22 at 21:49:28 (Rating 2, Politics)

Today I listened to a podcast which discussed the priorities which the US should be addressing regarding science. The upcoming presidential election has focussed many people's thoughts on what is important, but science seems to be somewhat neglected in the politics.

Some of the ideas discussed were allowing stem cell research to be done using government funding, converting the US to the metric system, ensuring that scientific advisors are allowed to present the facts without political bias, planning for colonising other planets, and encouraging a more open discussion and investigation of UFOs!

Obviously these different aspects of science represent varying levels of concern. I think that UFOs, for example, have been investigated fairly well and there is information from both sides of the debate which are readily available to everyone. I don't think conspiracy theories of a government cover up need to be taken too seriously!

What about colonising other planets? The caller's original reason was to ensure our survival after the Sun turns into a red giant, but there will be no significant change in the Sun's activity for billions of years, so this is not a problem which is really a high immediate priority. A far more likely related scenario is a large meteor, asteroid, or comet collision with the Earth. This will happen in a much shorter time frame. But that time frame is unknown, it could be a few years or millions of years (which is still nothing compared to the age of the Sun).

What about converting the US to the metric system? As a New Zealander, where we have used the metric system for many years, I find it amusing that America uses the imperial system which seems so reminiscent of the days of the British Empire which America rejected more than many other countries. Of course the whole world should use the metric system but whether it should be a high priority is far more debatable.

So now we come to stem cell research - somewhat inevitably, I guess. I have said in the past that I believe all scientific research should be able to proceed without government interference - even when the government is providing the funding. This certainly applies to stem cells but the issue isn't as critical as it could be because there are alternatives to embryonic stem cells available and research funded by non-government sources can proceed anyway.

Finally we have the issue of science advisors being able to do their job properly. I know that there has always been political interference in this process, and they are advisors to politicians so I guess we should expect that. The problem is the degree of interference. The consensus seems to be that the administration of our old friend George Bush is the worst ever in its attempts to stifle free distribution of information and to warp the scientific findings to fit its own ideas.

The religious and political conservatism of the current administration has meant that science has not been given a chance to reach its full potential and that is rather unfortunate. We are all optimistic that things will get better with the next president (and its hard to see how they could be worse) but because science has not been a major topic of political debate its impossible to tell for sure.

So its unfortunately science will always be held back by politics but we can only hope that this will be minimised in the future.

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