“There are over five million working scientists and engineers in the U.S., under three million farm workers. The U.S. government spends about $70-billion per year on R&D, only about $17-billion in government payment to farms. So, by objective measures the R&D community is bigger and the federal government has a bigger stake in it than in agriculture. But by any measure, the farm community is orders of magnitude more influential politically.”
It was nearly 20 years ago that one of the wise men of research policy and politics, Roland Schmitt, then president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, made that astute observation. Update the numbers — more money, more scientists and engineers, but even fewer farmers — and it remains true. As ever, ag is a formidable force on Capitol Hill, and science isn’t. With hard lobbying and campaign cash, agriculture overrides economic and scientific sense in promoting expanded ethanol production and other wayward practices. Under the guise of helping mom-and-pop farming, corporate agriculture reaps the benefits. On the primary campaign trail, pandering to the farm vote is de rigueur.
But what about science, largely dependent on federal support in its academic settings, and also heavily involved in government regulatory activities that span the national economy? Here we have a sad saga with a leitmotif of disappointment, timid protest, and political naivete.
The Bush administration has earned a reputation for bashing some of the most sensitive areas of science. With very few exceptions, financial stagnation has settled upon the government research enterprise. Thousands of scientists, including batches of Nobel laureates, have petitioned against the Bush administration’s attempts to suppress politically inconvenient scientific findings in regulatory agencies. Professional scientific judgment, once a valued contributor to policy making, has often been overridden or ignored by Bush’s political appointees. (After seven years of freewheeling denigration of expertise, the practice may be catching on. Challenged that no economists support her call for temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax, Hillary Clinton responded, “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”)
The leadership of the scientific community feels neglected and abused by the Bush administration, and the same feeling has spread to the rank and file of science. So, fair question: Besides petitions, which rarely ever stir Washington, what’s being done by our scientists to alleviate their unhappy lot? Answer: Scarcely anything.
Several major institutions of science, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, joined by nearly 200 universities, called upon the presidential primary candidates to hold ScienceDebate 2008 in Philadelphia a few days before the April Pennsylvania primary. With half a dozen universities, academic medical centers, and major pharmaceutical firms, the Philadelphia area is well-populated with scientists and their families, and would seem to be fertile territory for politicking on a scientific theme. But the remaining candidates — Clinton, Obama, and McCain — saw no profit in committing precious campaign time to courting the science vote. First of all, it tends to be Democratic anyway. But more important, it’s not politically organized along professional lines, a la physicians, lawyers, real estate brokers, etc. The wizards are able complainers about politics and public policy, but don’t team up to raise money and ring doorbells in behalf of supportive candidates.
Shunning organized political involvement as indecorous and inappropriate for their profession, scientists in recent time have refrained from presidential politicking, except for a few half-hearted forays that amounted to nothing. The only substantial effort was mounted in 1964, inspired by fears of Republican Barry Goldwater’s loose talk about using nuclear weapons. That long-ago mobilization on behalf of a presidential candidate remains a pertinent model for scientific engagement in politics. Under the banner of Scientists and Engineers for Johnson-Humphrey, thousands of scientists organized local chapters, raised money for the campaign, published advertisements, and set up speakers bureaus. A counterpart Republican organization failed to achieve a comparable scale.
There’s talk of political activism in the scientific community, and there’s ample time to get it organized. But the tradition of remaining on the sidelines comports with the delusional faith that science is above the fray, and needed and honored on a bipartisan basis. Even after seven years of bashing by Bush, that faith remains strong.
