Category: Public Engagement

Science needs democratic accountability, not political vetoes In 2004, David Guston wrote an essay in Issues in Science and Technology with a title that still feels bracing: “Forget Politicizing Science. Let’s Democratize Science!” His point was not that science should…

My science policy friends seem convinced that invoking Vannevar Bush and showcasing a bipartisan parade of former presidents’ support for science will restore public consensus. I doubt it. Last Friday night, June 12th, I attended the Washington premiere of The…

They were not the headliners. I expected the familiar: arrive, deliver remarks, affirm institutional commitments, depart. They did all the familiar, but then they stayed. Three times, in three different settings, I found university presidents not just staying but listening.…

For nearly eighty years, American science policy has lived under the shadow of a single idea: that scientific progress depends on insulating scientists from politics. In 1945, Vannevar Bush’s report Science, the Endless Frontier argued that if government funded basic…