A Tale of Two Committees: an article wot I wrote

I've been toying with the idea of applying for a course in Science Communication (a one-year MA at Imperial, since you ask), and even went to the trouble of preparing some material for my application... but in the end, I got fed up of the whole thing, and decided I wasn't that attracted to any of the career possibilities (I'm enjoying doing stuff rather than writing about it at the moment).

Nonetheless, one of the application requirements was to write an article of 400 words on a subject of my choice, either science or science policy. Why I chose the deeply dull topic I did - well, future generations will be arguing over that for centuries to come. But since it seems a shame for all that effort to go to waste, I post it here. That's what a blog is for, isn't it?

Here goes:

A Tale of Two Committees: a Brief History of Presidential Science Advice

One of the exciting things about science policy under Barack Obama is that history has stopped repeating itself. Up until now, the history of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was looking depressingly similar to its only predecessor, Eisenhower’s “President’s Science Advisory Committee” (PSAC).

Eisenhower convened PSAC in the gloomy days following the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1. Initially, the committee had serious influence – scientific prestige was a key battleground of the Cold War, and the post-war belief in scientific progress was untarnished. Eisenhower valued ‘his scientists’, and the free-for-all discussions that took place mark the Golden Age for scientists in the White House. Under Kennedy, though, PSAC began a long journey into eclipse. The Apollo programme shows how estranged the Committee was from policy – PSAC only agreed not to criticize it as long as Kennedy never claimed the programme was meant to advance science. Finally, Nixon disbanded the Committee in 1974, suspicious of the scientists’ peacenik attitudes towards Vietnam, and incensed by their criticism of a proposed anti-ballistic missile system.

For sixteen years PSAC had advised the President: it was to be another seventeen before it was reconvened, this time under George Bush senior. The relationship was never going to be as close as with Eisenhower, but it was still warm - Bush senior did invite the whole committee to spend a weekend with him at Camp David. But as with Kennedy, so with Clinton; and George W Bush showed himself at least the equal of Nixon in his distrust of scientists. Maybe it is fitting for a committee born of the Cold War that it was the anthrax scares during the War on Terror where history begins to diverge. When Tom Ridge, head of the Department for Homeland Security, picked up the phone and yelled, "I need scientists!" it was John H Marburger, head of PCAST and the President’s science advisor, at the other end of the line.

Now PCAST approaches its 19^th birthday. John P Holdren – a man whose CV seems tailor-made for the post – will succeed Marburger. The position’s official access to the President has been restored. And for its co-chairs, PCAST has swapped one venture capitalist for two respected scientists in Eric Lander and Harold Varmus. It only remains now to see whether this ‘dream team’ will truly have the ear of the new President.

Length: 395 words