President Obama and science

You probably don't care about the advice I'd give President Obama,¹ but I'm going to share it with you anyway. I'm offering this advice as a scientist, but the advice isn't about science per se. It's about governing.

The editors of Nature took the unusal step of endorsing Barack Obama for president a couple of weeks ago. In making that endorsement they made two important points:

• [S]cience is bound by, and committed to, a set of normative values -- values that have application to political questions. Placing a disinterested view of the world as it is ahead of our views of how it should be; recognizing that ideas should be tested in as systematic a way as possible; appreciating that there are experts whose views and criticisms need to be taken seriously: these are all attributes of good science that can be usefully applied when making decisions about the world of which science is but a part. Writ larger, the core values of science are those of open debate within a free society that have come down to us from the Enlightenment in many forms, not the least of which is the constitution of the United States.
• The Oval Office is not a debating chamber, nor is it a faculty club. As anyone in academia will know, a thoughtful and professorial air is not in itself a recommendation for executive power. But a commitment to seeking good advice and taking seriously the findings of disinterested enquiry seems an attractive attribute for a chief executive. It certainly matters more than any specific pledge to fund some particular agency or initiative at a certain level -- pledges of a sort now largely rendered moot by the unpredictable flux of the economy.

In short, the values of science --- a commitment to using empirical evidence to answer questions, to testing ideas by looking for evidence that could show them to be false, and to open debate -- are values that should inform how President Obama² should govern. As implied by Nature's endorsement, the evidence that President Obama will follow this advice is substantial. He appointed a committee of more than 40 prominent scientist to provide him with advice on science and technology during the campaign. As I wrote last February,

How candidates deal with issues where science is deeply involved tells us a lot about how they use evidence, how they evaluate expertise, and how they reach decisions, all critical features for a leader who cannot possibly know all of the technical details about any policy (s)he adopts. As Roger Pielke points out, the problems posed by the use of science in formulating policy are very similar to those posed by using intelligence.

Candidate Obama showed that he uses evidence to make decisions, identifies experts on whose advice he can rely, and evaluates the evidence and the advice of experts in making decisions.

My advice to President Obama? Hold true to the values that served you so well in the campaign.

• Look all of the available evidence, especially evidence that contradicts your favored ideas.
• Ensure that you receive advice from experts with a wide range of views, provided that those views are compatible with hard evidence about the world.
• Test the advice you receive both against the available evidence and against the contrary advice of other experts.
  
• Choose the course of action that you judge to be most consistent with all available evidence.

You and I are sure to disagree on particular policy choices,³ but if you allow evidence and reason to guide your choices, you will have my support.⁴