[ RadSafe ] "Politicians listen to THE science"?

[howard long]

Thankfully, this President listens to others than "THE scientific elite",
or we would not have his support for more nuclear power!
 
Howard Long

John Jacobus <crispy_bird at yahoo.com> wrote:
>From Nature 436, 454-455 (28 July 2005)

In defence of data
Emma Marris
(Emma Marris is a Washington correspondent for
Nature.)


Top of pageAbstractAs spokesman for America's
scientific élite, Ralph Cicerone will have to do some
tough talking in Washington. Emma Marris asks him how
he'll ensure that politicians will listen to the
science.

Less than a month into his new job, Ralph Cicerone is
already on the offensive on Capitol Hill. Taking over
as the 21st president of the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) on 1 July, Cicerone has had to leave
his office littered with unpacked boxes as he heads
for Congress to do battle over climate change.

Cicerone earned his reputation not as a fighter but as
a temperate manager and rational thinker. That
level-headedness may serve him well in the volatile
environment of Washington, but he clearly is not
averse to standing his ground.

In his new role, Cicerone will have to work with a US
administration that has often clashed with scientists
over findings that oppose its approved policy. But he
is clear that if the academy's reports come to
unpopular conclusions, he won't be shy about letting
the world know. "Once we come up with a position, I
don't want to hide it in the closet," Cicerone told
Nature last week. "I want it to be out there and
useful and maybe a little bit aggressive."

Cicerone seems equally at home dealing with politics
as he does defending scientific evidence. One of his
early acts as NAS president was to engage Congressman
Joe Barton (Republican, Texas) over a letter sent out
last month. Barton had demanded that three climate
researchers turn over reams of data on their
climate-change research, a stance that has sparked
disapproval among his fellow Republicans as well as
other scientists (see Senate hearings strengthen calls
for US action over climate). Cicerone entered the fray
to offer Barton an independent NAS report to stop
individual scientists from being intimidated.

Balancing act
Balancing science and politics is a basic
characteristic of Cicerone's new job. As president of
the NAS, he represents the nation's most distinguished
scientists. But he is also head of the National
Research Council (NRC), which generates most of the
influential reports advising the government on
scientific issues.

Those reports don't always tell policy-makers what
they want to hear, particularly when it comes to
Cicerone's own field. As an atmospheric chemist, he is
well equipped to deal with issues relating to climate
change — a major scientific flashpoint for the Bush
administration.

Cicerone is probably best known for his contribution
to work in the mid-1970s showing that human activities
could damage Earth's protective ozone layer. He also
played a prominent role in the debate over banning the
use of chlorofluorocarbons to ease ozone depletion.

In Washington, scientific knowledge is just one of
many factors taken into account when making a
decision, and quite often not the most important.
Cicerone says he is preparing himself to deal with
that. "Being an engineer and a scientist, I tend to
think that the facts and the data should dominate
everything," he says. "I have to get used to the fact
that a lot of people don't start that way."

Cicerone's career history spans US scientific
hotspots, including the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
in La Jolla, California. Most recently he served as
chancellor at the University of California, Irvine,
where he founded the Department of Earth System
Science.

Clear vision
The 62-year-old Cicerone has been involved with the
national academies for years, and has served on 20 of
their study committees. In 2001, he chaired an NAS
panel on climate change. The resulting report, Climate
Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, was
widely praised as straightforward and easy to
understand. It was also phenomenally fast. Academy
reports normally take one or two years to complete;
Cicerone got the job done in a month.

The report helped to put Cicerone's name near the top
of the list to succeed Bruce Alberts as NAS president,
says Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical
Garden in St Louis and chair of the nomination
committee that put Cicerone's name forward. Cicerone
had extensive Washington experience, is a skilled
fundraiser, and knew the NAS so well "he could hit the
ground running", says Raven.

Cicerone can expect to deal with issues ranging from
stem cells to nuclear power — two topics he mentions
as possible subjects for the relatively rare
self-funded studies undertaken by the academies.
Cicerone's fundraising skills may help pump up the
$332-million NAS endowment and allow for a few more
homegrown projects, his supporters say.

He will also have to balance government interests
against scientific openness. Earlier this year, the
NAS was caught in a dispute over a paper in its
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The
paper presented a model of a bioterrorist attack using
botulinum toxin, and officials at the Department of
Health and Human Services asked journal editors to
pull it, citing security concerns. Alberts, Cicerone's
predecessor, delayed the paper, but published it in
the end. Cicerone was involved in the decision, and
plans to ask the newly formed National Science
Advisory Board for Biosecurity for opinions on what
could have been done.

But how feisty on political matters is the soft-spoken
Cicerone likely to be? "I'll probably be a bit more
conservative than people want," he says. "I don't want
to be part of an organization that just shoots off its
mouth with opinions that are not as well justified as
can be."

"I don't want to be part of an organization that just
shoots off its mouth with opinions that are not as
well justified as can be." -- Ralph Cicerone

For instance, he is prepared to weigh in on arguments
over whether science is being misused for political
purposes. "I don't want to shy away from those
disputes," he says, "because I have such a reverence
for science. I don't want to see it twisted or
distorted." But at the same time, he is not ready to
say that there is an ongoing pattern of politicization
of science that would justify putting a panel together
to study the issue. Instead, he thinks the best
strategy is to keep the NRC reports flowing, so that
if someone tries to mischaracterize science, a study
can be slipped off the shelf and presented for a quick
refutation.

Cicerone does have ideas about specific science
policies that the United States should adopt, but the
only ones he is eager to talk about at the moment are
politically acceptable topics such as energy
efficiency. He argues that some simple fixes, such as
making sure manufacturers use energy-efficient
lighting and motors, aren't made because they are
swamped by the charged atmosphere surrounding climate
change. "I find it very frustrating," he says, "that
because of the really difficult questions that cause
political polarization, we are missing some of the
cherry-pickings."

Sherwood Rowland, a climate scientist and longtime
colleague of Cicerone's at Irvine, expects him to
speak out strongly in his new role. "He spent almost
his whole career in areas of science that have very
strong policy implications, and he has always been
upfront about the policies that ought to go along with
that," he says.

Public figure
Rowland also mentions one of Cicerone's skills that is
crucial for successful political manoeuvring: "Ralph
has a phenomenal memory for people — who they are,
what they do, what their strengths are, and what to
look out for."

But any amount of political savvy on Cicerone's part
won't bridge the gulf between when people want
scientific answers and when the NRC can provide them,
or between the massive academy reports and the
one-pagers that make up the informational diet of most
lawmakers. "It's a perpetual, continual source of
tension here," says Cicerone. As one possible
solution, he envisions making the reports' executive
summaries shorter, and releasing interim reports more
often. But he also shifts some of the onus onto those
who request the reports, urging them to "ask questions
that won't go away this budget cycle. Ask questions
that have longer-lasting value."

Such old-fashioned rationalism drives Cicerone. When
creating study committees, he prefers to look for
unbiased thinkers rather than balancing an advocate
from one side with an advocate from the other. He is
aware that some say this is an impossible task. "Many
people say that's hopelessly naive: that science is
not objective, everything is relative, everything
stems from an individual's philosophy of life,
ideology and so forth. I don't believe that."

When he's not working for the benefit of scientists,
Cicerone plans to set up a long-term project to
improve the public understanding of, and enthusiasm
for, science. He feels that interest in science is
beginning to decline, partly because good popularizers
are rare. "I miss Carl Sagan," he says wistfully.

But he is not willing to go along with the
often-repeated tale that Sagan was denied NAS
membership because of his fondness for appearing on
television and writing popular books. During the
arguments over whether or not to elect Sagan "there
were good people on both sides of the debate", says
Cicerone. Spoken like a true Washington insider.