Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief and Publisher.
Mark Ostow
Like snowflakes upon a sea, and as little regarded, are letters to a new president.
Frustrated former presidents, fretfully retired statesmen, and senators ambitious to sit in your cabinet want you to enjoy their wisdom. Ordinary citizens take to their keyboards, as befits a democracy. Captains of industry, those proud alumni of the Polytechnic of Life, are determined to level with you. Even intellectuals--scientists, economists, and, Someone forgive us, magazine editors--feel the solemn duty to buttonhole you about what you must do in the first months of your administration.
Wired magazine devoted its October issue to "a Smart List of 15 Wired people with big ideas about how to fix the things that need fixing." More selectively, we have asked three éminences of science and technology to advise you. (Letters from Ernest Moniz, the director of the MIT Energy Initiative; John Halamka, the chief information officer of Harvard Medical School; and Charles Vest, MIT president emeritus.) All try to make action urgent and its nature clear.
As will I. Whoever you are, you will have pressing demands upon your attention. As I write in mid-October, a burst financial bubble appears to be leading to a global crisis of liquidity. You must fight two protracted wars. The very weather frightens. And at home and abroad there is a general malaise about the American project: to many, the United States, which Ronald Reagan, echoing Lincoln, often called "the last, best hope of man on earth," seems to have become one of the ordinary nations.
The promotion of science and technology must feel very far from your priorities. But encouraging America's scientists and technologists is essential to the well-being of your fellow citizens and (insofar as the United States has been the world's wellspring of research and development) of everyone alive.
It was so before. In the 20th century, U.S. achievement in science, engineering, and medicine "protected our nation's security, fueled most of our economic growth, and nearly doubled our life span," Chuck Vest writes. "It sent us to the moon, fed the planet, brought world events into our living rooms, established instant worldwide communications, gave rise to ubiquitous new forms of art and entertainment, uncovered the workings of our natural world, and gave us freedom of travel by air, sea, and land."
Science and technology may astonish the 21st century, and they can help solve many of the problems you face; but they will flourish only if the federal government funds long-term discovery research. Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will develop the most commercial discoveries; but the discoveries are the fruit of research for which there is no sure application.
With catalysts created by an MIT chemist, sunlight can turn water into hydrogen. If the process can scale up, it could make solar power a dominant source of energy.
An Indian startup thinks that the right software can make cheap phones a financial lifeline to hundreds of millions.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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RD
212 Comments
Political Diatribe
Your negative comment about Bush doesn't hold water. According to the charts at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/upd908.htm, Bush dramatically increased R&D basic research when he took office, mostly at NIH. And your diatribe convenietly leaves out the last 2 years of R&D funding. According to the AAAS link "Various proposals to give science agencies such as NIH and DOE more money at the start of FY 2009 have so far failed in Congress." Last I checked, the Democrats dominated Congress. It is the continuing resolution that skews some of the budget numbers. "The Senate Appropriations Committee drafted a spending bill that would match the Bush Administration’s request for a 12.5 percent increase in the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget for 2009 to $6.9 billion..." Looks to me that if Congress had not left DC early, we might have had a larger R&D budget.
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jpontin
70 Comments
Re: Political Diatribe
Yes, but after the events of September 11, 2001, federal funding of the NIH and NSF was reduced or was kept level (which meant a decline after inflation) every single year. See the rest of the AAAS figures. The only research that received increases under the last administration were DARPA and its successor agency and the Homeland Security Research Agency. This is a matter of public record and beyond dispute.
In any case, my intention was not to become embroiled in an attack on President Bush. For better or worse, we are turning a page on the last administration. The only issue I wished to address was: will the new President, whoever he is, champion an increase in federal funding of discovery research after years of neglect?
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gabrielg01
450 Comments
Re: Political Diatribe
The Bush administration also starved NASA to the point that now we'll have to rely on the Russians to go to space. Shame!
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