Tag Archives: Rush Holt

Science and the 2016 US presidential campaign

An Aug. 10, 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) news release (received via email and issued on behalf of ScienceDebate.org) has elicited an interesting response from David Bruggeman on his Pasco Phronesis blog. But first, here’s more about the announcement from over 50 science societies and organizations in the US regarding their list of 20 questions about science for the four 2016 US presidential candidates,

A blue-ribbon coalition of fifty-six leading U.S. nonpartisan organizations, representing more than 10 million scientists and engineers, are calling on U.S. Presidential candidates to address a set of twenty major issues in science, engineering, technology, health and the environment, and encouraging journalists and voters to press the candidates on them during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election season.

“Taken collectively, these twenty issues have at least as profound an impact on voters’ lives as those more frequently covered by journalists, including candidates’ views on economic policy, foreign policy, and faith and values,” said ScienceDebate.org chair Shawn Otto, organizer of the effort. A 2015 national poll commissioned by ScienceDebate.org and Research!America revealed that a large majority of Americans (87%) say it is important that candidates for President and Congress have a basic understanding of the science informing public policy issues.

The group crowd sourced and refined hundreds of suggestions, then submitted “the 20 most important, most immediate questions” to the Presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein, “along with an invitation to the candidates to answer them in writing and to discuss them on television,” said Otto. The questions and answers will be widely distributed to the science community, journalists, and the general public to help voters make well-informed decisions at the ballot box this November.

The list of organizations is a who’s who of the American science enterprise. “Sometimes politicians think science issues are limited to simply things like the budget for NASA or NIH, and they fail to realize that a President’s attitude toward and decisions about science and research affect the public wellbeing, from the growth of our economy, to education, to public health. Voters should have a chance to know where the Presidential candidates stand,” said Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. “We want journalists and voters to ask these questions insistently of the candidates and their campaign staff.”

Nonpartisan organizations participating in the effort include:

**ScienceDebate.org
*American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of Geographers
*American Chemical Society
American Fisheries Society
American Geophysical Union
*American Geosciences Institute
American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
*American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Institute of Professional Geologists
American Rock Mechanics Association
American Society for Engineering Education
American Society of Agronomy
American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
American Society of Mammalogists
Association for Women in Geosciences
Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
Automation Federation
*Biophysical Society
Botanical Society of America
Carnegie Institution for Science
Conservation Lands Foundation
Crop Science Society of America
Duke University
Ecological Society of America
Geological Society of America
*IEEE-USA
International Committee Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Materials Research Society
NACE International, The Worldwide Corrosion Authority
*National Academy of Engineering
*National Academy of Medicine
*National Academy of Sciences
National Cave and Karst Research Institute
*National Center for Science Education
National Ground Water Association
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Northeastern University
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Paleontological Society
*Research!America
Scientific American magazine
Seismological Society of America
*Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society
Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections
Society of Fire Protection Engineers
Society of Wetland Scientists
Society of Women Engineers
Soil Science Society of America
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Tufts University
*Union of Concerned Scientists
University City Science Center
*U.S. Council on Competitiveness
The Wildlife Society
World Endometriosis Research Foundation America

*Codeveloper of the questions
**Lead partner organization

An Aug. 10, 2016 article by Brady Dennis for the Washington Post explains that while ScienceDebate.org organizers would prefer a debate they feel they are more likely to get responses to a list of questions they provide the candidates,

Climate change. Mental health. Space exploration. Vaccinations. The health of the oceans. Antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

These are not the typical meat-and-potatoes topics of presidential debates. Often, the candidates and people who ask them questions skip over such topics entirely.

But dozens of non-partisan groups that represent millions of scientists and engineers across the country are eager to change that. For the third consecutive presidential election, the folks behind ScienceDebate.org are asking candidates to hold a debate exclusively about major issues in science, engineering, health and the environment. Since that almost certainly won’t happen (it didn’t in 2008 or 2012, either), the organizers have put together 20 questions they are asking candidates to address in writing.

You can find the group’s list of 20 questions here.

As for David Bruggeman’s response, in an Aug. 11, 2016 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog, there’s this (Note: Links have been removed),

A point of blog history worth noting – I’m no fan of ScienceDebate, so you can guess the emphasis of the writing to come.

Yesterday ScienceDebate released the questions it wants the Presidential candidates to answer.  While it still makes the motions toward an in-person debate, past experience suggests it won’t do any better than receiving answers from the campaigns.

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if the organizers actually engaged with the Presidential Commission on Debates, which sponsors the debates (for the general election) and sets everything up several months in advance.  While I doubt they would be immediately open to having a debate focused solely on science, they might be persuaded to make those questions a significant portion of a debate focused on domestic policy.

I recommend reading David’s post in its entirety for his speculations as to why ScienceDebate has not approached the Presidential Commission on Debates. Btw, thank you David for the information about the commission on debates. It certainly changed my take on the situation.

What’s happening to the scientists in Turkey?

In the wake of the July 15-16, 2016 attempted coup in Turkey, there have been widespread reprisals including one focused on the scientific community. An Aug. 3, 2016 news item on the Al Jazeera website describes a situation at Turkey’s national science research council,

Turkish police have raided the offices of the national science research council, private broadcaster NTV reported.

Many people were detained in the raid on the offices of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tubitak) in the northwestern province of Kocaeli on Wednesday [Aug. 3, 2016], NTV said.

Tubitak funds science research projects in universities and the private sector and employs more than 1,500 researchers, according to its website.

An Aug. 3, 2016 CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news item adds some detail,

… a Tubitak official told Reuters the raid had happened on Sunday [July 31, 2016], adding he did not have any details about the number of detentions. He declined to comment further.

The raid on TÜBİTAK takes place within the context of widespread retaliation. A July 20, 2016 article by John Bohannon for Science magazine describes the situation,

In the wake of a failed coup attempt last weekend, the Turkish government has brought higher education to a grinding halt. It appears to be part of a massive political purge in which the government has arrested and fired thousands of people. And educators across the country are bracing for more bad news after the government this week suspended teachers and academic deans. “They are restructuring academia,” says Caghan Kizil, a Turkish molecular biologist based at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany who has been in close communication with colleagues in Turkey. “People are very scared and not hopeful.”

In the span of a few days, more than 45,000 civil servants in the military and judiciary have been fired or suspended. Although there are ambiguous and conflicting media reports, it appears that some 15,000 staff members of the ministry of education also were fired, 21,000 teachers lost their professional licenses, and more than 1500 university deans were all but ordered to resign.

The latest clampdown took place yesterday [July 19, 2016] when the government ordered universities to call back Turkish academics from abroad. “They want to take the universities under their full control,” says Sinem Arslan, a Turk doing a political science Ph.D. at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. “Academic freedoms will no longer exist. I don’t think that anybody will be able to work on research areas that are considered taboo by the government or write anything that criticizes the government.”

With its latest raid, the Turkish government has raised concerns about Turkish scientists and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has produced a letter in response. From an Aug. 3, 2016 AAAS news release,

As the Turkish government restores order after the failed coup, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and seven other leading science and engineering societies today expressed concern for the human rights of the Turkish scientific community, which has reportedly been subject to restrictions including travel bans and the ordered return of Turkish academics working abroad.

“The future prosperity and security of any nation depends on its ability to be a knowledge-based, innovative society and to a considerable extent on the work of its scientists, engineers, academics, and researchers,” the science group wrote, in a letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.

They emphasized that the health of the scientific enterprise requires that scientists have freedom to think independently and innovatively and are able to engage with scientists around the world. Noting that the Turkish government had previously stated that “democracy, freedom, and the rule of law are nonnegotiable in Turkey,” the science organizations urged President Erdoğan to “follow through on this pledge to fully respect human rights, the rule of law, and due process” to protect both citizens and the scientific community.

The letter was signed by AAAS CEO Rush Holt, executive publisher of the Science family of journals, as well as the leaders of the American Anthropological Association, the American Association of Geographers, the American Physical Society, the American Sociological Association, the American Statistical Association, Sigma Xi, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

“Reports of forced resignations, suspensions, and travel bans affecting thousands of Turkish scientists and academics are deeply troubling, and deeply problematic for any civil society,” said Rush Holt, CEO of AAAS and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. “We urge President Erdoğan to follow through on his pledge to protect basic human rights, the rule of law, and academic freedoms for citizens and scholars alike.”

This is not the first time in this decade that the Turkish government has ordered repressive measures against scientists. Here’s more from my Sept. 9, 2011 posting, a time when Erdogan was Prime Minister,

Scientists in Turkey are threatening to walk out on the Turkish Academy of Sciences due to some recent government initiatives affecting the academy’s governance. From the Sept.9, 2011 news item on physorg.com,

Members of TÜBA [founded in 1993], the Turkish Academy of Sciences, are threatening to resign en masse in order to fight a decree issued by the government of Turkey that would strip the Academy of its autonomy.

The decree, issued on 27th August, which was just after the start of a nine-day holiday in Turkey, says that one-third of the members of the academy will now be appointed by the government and a further one-third by the Council of Higher Education, which is also a government body. [emphasis mine] Only the remaining one-third will be elected by current members. The president and vice-president of the academy will in future be appointed by the government rather than by sitting members. In addition, honorary members will lose their voting rights and the age at which members are deemed honorary will be reduced from 70 to 67.

A Sept. 7, 2011 editorial in Nature provides a more comprehensive description of what was then occurring,

On the eve of a week-long holiday to celebrate the end of the fasting period of Ramadan, the Turkish government executed an extraordinary scientific coup. On 27 August, it issued a decree with immediate effect, giving itself tighter control of Turkey’s two main scientific organizations: the funding agency TÜBİTAK and the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA), the governance of which is now so altered that it can no longer be considered an academy at all.

The move has startled and appalled Turkish scientists. It should also sound an alarm bell throughout Turkish society. The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is also taking greater control of other sectors through a series of decrees requiring no parliamentary debate. …

This time scientists are being targeted along with many other groups and, if rumours are even partially correct, government actions are more severe than they were in 2011.

Hydrogels and cartilage; repurposing vehicles in space; big bang has ‘fingerprints’

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has made a selection of four articles freely available (h/t Mar. 9, 2015 news item on Azonano).

From a March 6, 2015 AIP news release,

WASHINGTON D.C., March 6, 2015 — The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the world’s most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.

You are invited to read, share, blog about, link to, or otherwise enjoy:

1) STIFF AND SUPPLE CARTILAGE SUBSTITUTE

Physics Today‘s Ashley Smart reports on hydrogels that mimic the tricky nature of cartilage thanks to magnetically aligned nanosheets.

“In the realm of bioengineering, hydrogels are something of an all-purpose material. Made up of networks of interlinked, hydrophilic polymers, they tend to be soft, biocompatible, and highly absorbent…. The new material mimics the articular cartilage that lubricates our joints: It can support a heavy load along one direction while stretching and shearing with ease in the others.”

MORE: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2707

2) GIVING SPACECRAFT A SECOND LEASE ON LIFE WHILE HURTLING THROUGH THE COSMOS

Physics Today‘s Toni Feder reports on the innovative processes undertaken to repurpose various spacecraft in flight, including Kepler, Voyager, Deep Impact, Spitzer, and the Hubble Space Telescope.

“A comeback like Kepler’s is ‘not unique, but it’s unusual,’ says Derek Buzasi of Florida Gulf Coast University, who reinvented the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) after it failed following its 1999 launch. ‘Spacecraft are built for a specialized purpose, so they are hard to repurpose. You have to come up with something they are capable of at the same time they are incapable of their original mission.’

Deep Impact’s original mission was to hurl a copper ball at a comet and watch the impact. In its continued form as EPOXI, the spacecraft went on to visit another comet and, on the way, served as an observatory for user- proposed targets.”

MORE: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2713

3) CONGRESSMAN & FUSION RESEARCHER REFLECTS ON SCIENCE POLICY

Physics Today‘s David Kramer interviews Rush Holt, the New Jersey congressman who retired from office and this past December took the helm of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“PT: What do you consider to be your accomplishments in Congress?

HOLT: I focused a lot on science education. Our real problem is not that we’re failing to produce excellent scientists, because we are [producing them], but rather that we have failed to maintain an appreciation for and understanding of science in the general population. I was able to keep a spotlight on the need but wasn’t able to accomplish as much as I wanted. We got science included in the subjects emphasized by federal law. But we haven’t really improved teacher professional development and other things we need to do.”

MORE: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2714

4) PARTICLE PHYSICS AND THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND

In this article, physics researchers John Carlstrom, Tom Crawford and Lloyd Knox discuss the fingerprints of the Big Bang and quantum fluctuations in the early universe, which may soon reveal physics at unprecedented energy scales.

“With its empirical successes, inflation is by consensus the best paradigm—notwithstanding some notable dissenting views—for the mechanism that generated the primordial density fluctuations that led to all structure in the universe. Its success has motivated physicists to search for the siblings of those fluctuations, the gravitational waves, via their signature in the polarization of the CMB. If discovered, that gravitational imprint would open up an observational window onto quantum gravitational effects, extremely early times, and extremely high energies.”

MORE: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2718

I have checked; all of the links do lead to the articles.