Michurin in our midst

This article in today's New York Time Magazine is generally well written; though it's primarily a profile of John Marburger, science advisor to President Bush, it also devotes some lines to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and similar efforts to bring to light modern conservatism's misuse of science.

I suspect that we will never know what Marburger--a Democrat--truly believes about this adminstration's stance towards science until sometime after 2008. The end of the article attempts to be a little too fair to him, though.

"'Science needs patrons, and our patron is society,' he told Science shortly after the 2004 election. 'But if we're not careful, the scientific community can become estranged from the rest of society and what it cares about.' He was referring to the need for scientists to be sensitive to the religious and ethical concerns of many Americans, but much of the scientific community interpreted his remark as a warning that its criticisms might be affecting the administration's willingness to finance science."

First off, I'm not entirely sure if, in the face of teaching non-science in science classes and the direct harassment of climate scientists by members of Congress, we should somehow be sensitive to these concerns. Beyond that, the interview [subscription required] referred to in the article does send a pretty clear message:

"U.S. presidential science adviser John Marburger has some sharp words for researchers who publicly opposed President George W. Bush's reelection: Wrong message. Wrong audience. Wrong candidate."

and

"Marburger said his remarks were directed at the 48 Nobel laureates who publicly endorsed Kerry last summer and a group--Scientists and Engineers for Change--that spent $100,000 to stage about 30 events on university campuses around the nation at which researchers criticized Bush's policies....'I don't think that it was good for science to have done that,' he says. 'It was clear from the beginning because of the sweeping nature of the charges that the list of concerns were coming from the Democrats.'"

Fact is, those statements came in the context of other statements:

"[Marburger's] co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Silicon Valley financial guru Floyd Kvamme, goes one step further. He argues that science doesn't need a larger slice of the discretionary pie. 'We're close to the limit of the amount of spending that the research enterprise can effectively absorb,' says Kvamme, partner emeritus of the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers. Of course, there are lots of other sectors demanding a share of that money. But I think we've reached a ceiling. It's unrealistic to talk about science taking up 15% or 20% of the discretionary budget.'"

It sounded like shut up and let us do the politicizing or else we'll pull the plug. Can we actually say this decision or that would or would not have been reached under the Clinton or Carter administrations with (hypothetical) democratic majorities? No. But there is definitely a trend to supporting only the science modern conservatives feel comfortable with, and this might have long-term chilling effects on numerous aspects of society.