PCAST

Jeffrey Mervis points out that last month John Marburger and Floyd Kvamme, co-chairs of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), released a letter to future co-chairs and members of PCAST. At the time, they didn't know who the new co-chairs would be, so the advice wasn't directed at the particular people they knew would be following them, but there are already some obvious differences between the Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration.

• "Kvamme says he's 'surprised' that Obama has named two outside co-chairs, both of whom have spent their careers in the life sciences." He thinks PCASTs focus more on technology than on science was a no-brainer. It was, in his view, tailored to support the Bush administration's interest in technology as an engine for economic development. Obama's appointment of two academic life scientists as co-chairs of PCAST (Harold Varmus and Eric Lander) suggests that he sees life sciences, especially health and environmental sciences,¹ as key issues for PCAST during his administration.
• Assuming that the Senate confirms John Holdren's appointment as science adviser, we knew on 20 December 2008 who the co-chairs of PCAST were going to be -- a month before the inauguration. Kvamme was not appointed until March 2001 two months after Bush's inauguration, and Marburger wasn't appointed until the 20th of June, five months after Bush was inaugurated. Obama has "surrounded himself with serious scholars of some of the most critical issues of our times"(New York Times), and he's done so even before he takes office. 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.

Obama's choice of science advisers suggests that he will pay attention to evidence, test the advice he receives against evidence and the advice of other experts, and choose the course of action most consistent with all available evidence (link).