Are researchers “largely absent” from public life?
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0276
In a “Science Times” piece this week headlined “Groups Call for Scientists to Engage the Body Politic ,” Cornelia Dean of the New York Times charges that when “asked to name a scientist, most Americans are stumped” and that in “American public life, researchers are largely absent” because they’re trained “to stick to the purity of the laboratory” and they “tend to avoid the sometimes irrational hurly-burly of politics.”
Dean’s combination news report and commentary first observes that the 435 members of the House of Representatives include only one physicist , one chemist, one microbiologist, six engineers and nineteen physicians. Then she reports on several groups seeking to “encourage scientists and engineers to speak out in public debates and even run for public office.” The article cites:
The National Academy of Sciences ’ new Science Ambassador Program, which “will start in Pittsburgh, where scientists and engineers who specialize in energy will be encouraged to work with public organizations and agencies.” Scientists and Engineers for America, or Sefora , which “offers guidance and encouragement to researchers considering a run for public office—from local school boards to the House and Senate.” Ben Franklin’s List, an effort by a handful of scientist-politicians to increase their numbers. The name alludes to the physicist Franklin’s dual participation in science and public life. Fellowships sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science “that put new Ph.D. researchers into Congressional offices and federal agencies.” The Aldo Leopold Leadership Program , which “offers environmental researchers training in how to communicate with the public and policy makers.” Among its founders was Jane Lubchenco, the marine scientist who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Dean speculates that “hopes for technical bipartisanship rest in part on the belief—widespread among researchers—that the nation’s engineers, as a group, tend to be Republicans while its academic scientists tend to be Democrats.” Concerning the prospects for the various efforts cited, she reports that the science-and-politics commentator Daniel S. Greenberg “said in an interview that he thought the odds of success were ‘pretty poor,’ in part because of the widespread belief that [political] activity is inappropriate for serious researchers or taints their objectivity.”
She never expands on her apparent assumption that a strong link exists between a scientist’s recognizability in public and her or his participation in politics. To accompany the online version, the Times offers the sidebar “Name That Scientist! "—a self-administered online quiz in which readers can sort through ten sets of photographs to see if they can identify famous scientists, for example Jane Lubchenco and Steven Chu. (Your science-and-the-media reporter got eight right, including one by outright guessing.)
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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are published in ‘Science and the media.’ He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.