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A Call For Science Policy Debate Among Presidential Candidates
Marissa Fessenden writes about a campaign to get Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to address important scientific issues in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election. ScienceDebate.org and Scientific American have posed a set of questions to the candidates, as well as congressional leaders, and they're rallying support for those questions to be answered before the election. The responses will be published and graded for citizens to see. The questions include topics such as biosecurity, climate change, the safety of food and water supplies, vaccination, and environmentally sustainable energy. This comes at a time when the basic scientific literacy of elected officials is under heavy scrutiny.
I think you need to travel into the rural areas more often.
I have relatives that fit every single one of these questions. I agree they are a minority, but they exist and the Republicans cater to their every whim.
Merkel is a moron, comparing her to Gauss and even Thatcher is wrong. Don't get me wrong I hate Thatcher, but she was way smarter than Merkel. There is a German political comedian who says "I like to quote Merkel because I can't find a better way to insult her". Although given some of the candidates/presidents the US has I can see why she may not seem so thick.
I think Science Debate is the greatest thing to happen to those of interested in science and politics. When they got Obama and McCain to answer science questions in the 2008 election, I immediately cancelled my membership to the Union of Concerned Scientists and started donating to this grassroots organization.
I have one issue that I vote on, and that's science. It's the only issue I understand well enough to evaluate the candidates on. If they know their science or have advisors that understand science, then I will trust them with most everything else. I summarized Obama's 2008 responses here, McCain's here, and my calls for who won on each issue. Obama's responses won on most issues, but McCain did not do poorly. Since Obama has taken office, he has impressed me with his support of science with Data.gov, Science.gov, a Memorandum on Scientific Integrity, proposed major increases in science funding, and put the Office of Science and Technology Policy back in the Whitehouse.
These might seem like small accomplishments, but compared to the Dark Ages of the Bush Administration they were a breath of fresh air. Unless Romney answers the science debate questions this election cycle, I won't even consider him.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
It's funny you should mention that since it is conservative groups that ended segregation, and supported suffragettes. Through history Democrats have long been the party to resist real progress, and very little has changed.
You're really going to have to elaborate on that gem a little. Conservatives as advocates for the downtrodden and disenfranchised. If they were the real champions of progressive values, wouldn't they, ummm, not be conservatives anymore? Or is this yet another shining example of their prodigious talent for turning reality upside-down?