Time for Science and Innovation to Reclaim Its Progressive Roots

[FayeforCure]

We at Science Progress have grown increasingly inspired, though, by the range of smart ideas outside those conventional circles and by the public hunger to become more a part of the process of bringing the art of science to good governance. With Science Next we take the conversation to a new level, and invite you to be part of it. After all, “wonk” spelled backwards is “know.” And it is knowledgeâ€"including public knowledge and understanding of science as an engine of progressâ€"that will reveal solutions to today’s most pressing problems, including climate change, energy independence, and national security.

The phrase “science progress” is, arguably, a bit awkward. Some would say it is redundant; others, less sanguine about where science is going, might call it contentious. But we who have been cultivating the pages of Science Progress find the construction provocative in the best sense of the word. It reminds us that we are the inheritors of the Enlightenment’s confidence in the possibility of improving the human conditionâ€"a possibility predicated on values of individual freedom, social equality, and democratic solidarity, and one that values reason as superior to dogma or blindly “received wisdom.” From this standpoint, scientific inquiry is the paradigmatic exercise of Enlightenment values.

You got a problem with that? Well let’s go at it, because one of the things we love about science is that it is nothing if not argumentative. Both as a way of thinking and as a wellspring of novel ideas and products, science is a tumultuous truth-seeking process and even further, we contend, a revolutionary force for human liberation. This understanding of science as progressive does not deny that the power of science may be misused. Nor does it exclude the importance of other sources of inspiration or belittle the need for guidance and even regulation to ensure that the products of our progress are distributed fairly. But it does assert that the core values of science are democratic and antiauthoritarian. And it reflects a philosophical commitment to perpetual change and improvement over certainty and stasis.

The very words “science” and “progress” took on their modern meanings in the nineteenth century, and it should not be surprising that they came of age around the same time. It was an era in which microscopes and telescopes were drilling down and up into nature, while stethoscopes were revealing the body’s mysterious inner space. Systematic investigation involving the careful manipulation of isolated variables was beginning to prove itself superior to mere observation, speeding the shift from mere anecdote to real evidence. The possibilities that could emerge from human insight were beginning to seem endless.

Science as progressive, however, boasts philosophical and political skeins stretching much further back into the American historical experience. Francis Bacon’s utopian New Atlantis is often credited as being the first literary work to express the modern idea of progress in terms of advancing science and technology. It was a vision that was to have a profound effect on later seventeenth-century thinkers, including those who provided the intellectual justification for the American Revolution. For all the founders’ disagreements, they shared the conviction that the new nation’s promise was necessarily bound up with its innovative genius. Even those bitter rivals Jefferson and Hamilton were of one mind as they made their synergistic contributions to America’s identity as a nation dedicated to modernity: Jefferson through the patent statute and Hamilton by laying the foundations for history’s most successful capitalist economy, which together have so rewarded and nourished inventiveness.

It is no coincidence that so many of the concepts at the very heart of how America has come to understand itselfâ€"ideas such as the frontier and the Westâ€"demand an experimental attitude in grappling with novel challenges. The optimistic “can do” spirit; the approval of bigness, boldness, and adventure; the lure of “the road”â€"all are associated with this sensibility and are at the heart of our veneration of this country’s great inventors, people like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Jonas Salk, and Bill Gates. We hold these truths of perseverance and perspicacity to be, if not self-evident, at least within our grasp.

Even as America’s western frontier has vanished, the pioneer spirit and the virtues and values associated with it have maintained their powerful hold over the American psyche. Inspired by that vision, Americans have repeatedly heeded the call to cross new and ever more challenging frontiersâ€"including those well beyond the comforts of our cozy planet. Indeed, few government initiatives have been so wildly successful in capturing the public imagination as the space program of the 1960s, which explicitly drew upon the American frontier spirit. “[W]e stand today on the edge of a New Frontier,” John F. Kennedy exhorted in 1960 as he clinched the Democratic nomination for president. “Beyond that frontier are the uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.”

Generations of Americans have come to characterize the United States itself as an experiment, a romantic and visionary theme compatible in orientation with pragmatist philosophers and early progressives. In this view, the only sure path to social and scientific advancement is as an iterative process of hypothesis, systematic experimentation, and data-gathering, followed by reform in light of experience. That the human condition can and should be improved by any means necessaryâ€"whether through government or private enterprise or some combination of the two, but with government as the ultimate guarantor of the public interestâ€"has come to be the essence of progressivism, ever grounding those alleged improvements in the best possible evidence.

America’s emergence as a nation of perpetual progress is all the more impressive given that this historical theme is not an inherent element of Western culture. The Greeks tended to think of their own time either as inferior to the mythical Golden Age or as part of a cycle of advance and decline. Imperial Romans saw themselves as in stasis since the establishment of the empire. Medieval Roman Catholic thinkers largely gave up on worldly progress in favor of spiritual improvement while awaiting Armageddon.

And perhaps reflecting these cautious and frankly depressing roots, the conjunction of science and progress in the modern era has not always been welcomed as an unalloyed good. Just as the words’ modern meanings were coming into consciousness there were also the first signs of alarm, in a tradition that began famously with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and continues to exert a powerful hold on popular culture today. Taken to an extreme, this view holds that far from being a guarantor of progress (a promise that even progressives could not reasonably make), the potentially inhumane and even dehumanizing drift of science threatens the furtherance of progress itself.

One common criticism of progressive science policy is that it naively adopts an instrumental view of science without reflection on the goals of innovation. At Science Progress, we appreciate that progressives have too often appeared to worship at the altar of change, and we reject the notion that a philosophy of innovation must be dumb to moral values. As you will see, Science Next considers ends as well as means, moral values as well as instrumentalities, as it explores the places where new ways of thinking can inform good governance.

Similarly, at the risk of invoking a hackneyed reference to spirituality, we also believe that science occupies an exalted dimension, that the growth of reliable knowledge is in effect an expansion of consciousness. Science may not be the only path to a greater grasp of reality, but it makes a unique contribution to enhanced understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. To be sure, science is a social enterprise, conducted in the service of the metaorganismâ€"We the Peopleâ€"that is funding the work, and it bears a profound responsibility to respect its roots. But to distort the process of inquiry through the imposition of political or religious filters amounts to a narrowing of vision, a corruption of imagination, and a threat to our freedom as beings endowed with intellect.

One need not hark back to Copernicus or Galileo to see how such distortions can affect the arc of progressive science. It seems to many Americans that in recent years the respect for evidence and the spirit of open inquiry has been undermined and even sabotaged for the sake of short-term political advantage. The complex machinations of the American electoral system have recently placed the United States under new management, and there is reason to hope that science may once again find a more respected place at the policymaking table. It should be obvious to all that it is in the nation’s long-term interest to have the best evidence availableâ€"evidence that in many cases only science can provideâ€"to foster commercial innovation, economic growth, energy efficiency and environmental stewardship, educational advancement, military defense, and the best possible array of intelligence options.

In the twenty-first century, more than ever, it is no exaggeration to assert that only free and rigorous inquiry, and not authoritarian dicta, can provide the reliable information required for our physical survival. Open inquiry is also the best ticket to developing the tools that will allow us to fulfill our moral obligations to others in need, and to the planet itself. Perhaps most important, progress in science is essential for a continued sense of our national purpose as participants in a historic experiment in freedom and self-governance, as one people joined by a common future rather than a common past, a future we cherish not only for ourselves but for the sake of the generations ofAmericans to come.

Now we invite you to dip into Science Next, where our future may be written.

â€"Jonathan D. Moreno and Rick Weiss

http://www.scienceprogress.org/2009/03/science-next-excerpt/

[FayeforCure]

Research!America 2008 Advocacy Awards Gala
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opening Remarks by The Honorable John Edward Porter
Research!America Chair, Former Illinois Congressman


I am proudâ€"and you should be, tooâ€"of what we have accomplished together. But the job is far from completed.

As every organization must, we need to step back and assess where we are at this point I time, and, to be candid, the picture is not pretty.

At a time when scientific opportunity has never been greater, we have had, or will have, six straight years of miniscule increases-translation, real decreases, totaling 13% for NIH. We have had basically the same miserable funding for AHRQ and for the physical science agencies. CDC in its core programs has been hit even worse.

We have had an Administration where science has had little place at its table. We have had a President opposed to embryonic stem cell research and in favor of teaching Intelligent Design. We have had an Administration that at times has suppressed, rewritten, ignored, or abused scientific research.

All of this has been devastating for the scientific community, our research institutions, and our young investigators and their families.

It has stalled our scientific leadership at a time when global challenges to America's science and technology preeminence are growing every day.

It has helped to undermine our economy, which can sustain and increase our living standards only through technology, innovation and research.

And not least, it has slowed progress toward better health, greater longevity and the well-being of our citizens.

Now, when do we get mad? When do we say, like in that old movie, Network, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore"?

I have said repeatedly elections in America have a way of sorting things out.

Already, the most fascinating primary season of my life has sorted some things out that we can celebrate. We know that the next President of our country:

Will support embryonic stem cell research;
Won't favor teaching Intelligent Design in our schools; and
Will respect scientific integrity and evidence-based research.

But it hasn't told us yet whether he or she will truly put science at the table, at his or her right hand, and whether research will be very high on their priority lists and reflected strongly in their budgets and speeches and policies.

Now more is at stake than the Presidency on November 4. The entire 435 seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are also up for election.

So, what can we do in the next seven and a half months to substantially increase the probability that we will have the right person in the White House and the right people in the Congress to put research at a very high priority in the next Administration and the next Congress?

I'm talking about a lot more than voting on November 4 and paying your dues to a professional society or making a contribution to a voluntary health association.

I want to tell you exactly what I've been telling every group of stakeholders to whom I've been privileged to speak, most recently to scientists at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston.

It was my honor to chair 2004 NAS Committee on S&T presidential and federal advisory committee appointments. Our report, "Science & Technology in the National Interest" should read by you, at least the Executive Summary with our seven recommendations. Or, even better, wait for the report of the 2008 committee, which I also have been asked to chair. It will be out well before the general election.

Although in early 2005, we went to see the people at the President's Office of Science & Technology Policy, presented our report and urged its recommendations to be implemented. This Administration did nothing.

So, what should you do now?

Not just your professional societies, your pharmaceutical or biotech company, your voluntary health organization or national association. Not just what should they do on your behalf. Because that can only go so far.

I'm talking about every single stakeholder in America who cares about federal investments in research.

Individually. I'm talking about you.

Get the lead scientists for the next Administration identified, committed and ready to go, as much as possible.
Find your candidate for Science Advisor to the President-your Neal Lane or Allen Bromley-as quickly as possible
Get the scientific community prepared to quickly weigh in for him or her.
That doesn't mean that will be the new President's selection, but it will certainly provide new Administration with choice
Get the scientific community behind the recommendations of the NAS committee.
You know my bias, but I'm asking for your help. The report will be out, we expect, before September. We need to get the candidates' science people thinking about the transition.
If possible, don't concentrate all your efforts in one political party. You never know how elections will turn out. Besides, you want both parties invested in the importance of science to America's future and committed to support science R & D.
Support for science should be bipartisan. Don't fall into the Rove trap and be written off.
Sign onto sciencedebate2008.com.
This is a site urging candidates to have an entire debate dedicated to science issues.
Even if that doesn't happen, a huge number of individuals and organizations are supporting it, which sends a message to media that science is important to the electorate and that they should be asking questions on science, too.
You can sign on-it takes 60 seconds.
Your organizations can sign on, too.
Pick your favorite candidate (President, Senate, Congress, Governor, state senators and representatives-I was one once).
Call his or her campaign, tell them you'd like to help advise the candidate on science matters and issues. They'll love it. Tell them you'd like to be the candidate's science advisor or serve on his or her science advisory committee. If they say they don't have one, tell them you'll create one for them. Chair it yourself and recruit your colleagues.
Get inside their campaign, then press to put science into the candidate's messages to voters. Remember, less than 3% of Members of the U.S. House and Senate have any science background. They need all the help they can get. Your help!
Once your candidate has won, offer to continue in your role to advise your new officeholder on science policy and funding questions.
Ask yourselves: Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the candidates had science advisors or advisory committees. They will, if individual scientists would step up to the plate.
Log onto the science voter guides.
Research!America has its YourCandidatesYourHealth.org - It includes all federal candidates of both parties, including candidates for President. They are asked to answer questions on their positions on research and funding.
PARADE magazine urges people to check our site and see if your candidates for House, Senate, and President responded.
Check it and see. If they haven't, call their campaign and ask them to. You have a right to know where they stand.
Run for office yourself!
It's disheartening to see so many public officials with so little knowledge of science.

Bill Foster, a physicist, just ran for and won the House seat of former Speaker Dennis Hastert.
Dr. Michelle McMurray, is running for the California House seat left vacant upon the death of my colleague and close friend in Congress, Tom Lantos. And Michelle is here with us tonight. Please stand and be recognized, Michelle, for your commitment, your courage, and your leadership.
If they can do it, you can do it.
If you can't bring yourself to do that, at least aim at a position of science policy in the next Administration or a position on a federal advisory committee.
In other words, act outside your comfort zone. I'm sure you think most public officials come to it naturally. Some do. Many do not. I can't tell you how nervous I was when I first started. But if you're always comfortable, you never grow.
Oh, and by the way, most importantly, your country needs you! Not to sit on the sidelines and watch, but to get into the game.

So get off your-chair-and do something outside your comfort zone and make a difference for science!

This is the most important election for science in my adult lifetime.

All of us must be creative about what we can do to make a difference for the things we believe in.

Thanks for listening to me.
Tools For:
Use this menu to find what's most relevant for you.
PublicLearn more about the importance of research to improve health, and how you can get involved!
Our MembersTake advantage of all the resources Research!America offers.
ResearchersLearn how to advocate for research to improve health. Advocacy is the right of every citizen.
CongressFind out where your constituents stand on health and research, plus background on a number of important health and research issues.
MediaUse our tools to aid your reporting about health and research.
Related Resources
Download our 2008 Advocacy Awards Gala and National Forum Summary.
Join our e-Advocacy network or stay up-to-date with our news and publications.


http://www.researchamerica.org/remarks_porter_gala08

[buckethead]

Is this a group of people seeking political power as well as public funding?

Just asking.

[jaxnative]

We have had a President opposed to embryonic stem cell research

Opposed to the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

[BridgeTroll]

Exactly... In addition... he was really only opposed to new lines of stem cells.  Research was continuing on the previous batch of discarded embryos.

[FayeforCure]

Exactly... In addition... he was really only opposed to new lines of stem cells.  Research was continuing on the previous batch of discarded embryos.

How can you get innovation from old deteriorated stem cell lines?

Two Lines Account For Most Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Researcher Finds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2009) â€" For the past eight years, scientists who wanted to use federal funds for research on human embryonic stem cells had to restrict their studies to 21 cell lines approved by the National Institutes of Health. But an analysis by a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests that only two of those lines have been used routinely.

"I was surprised by these results," said Christopher Scott, director of Stanford's Program on Stem Cells in Society. "I never imagined that we would find that three-fourths of the requests would be for the same two cell lines."

On the one hand, the findings raise concerns about the reauthorization process of cell lines under way at the NIH â€" if these lines are now excluded from federal funding due to ethical considerations, researchers may abandon them, and their previous research, in favor of other lines. On the other, the findings draw attention to the possibility that these two lines may have abnormalities or characteristics that make them not as useful as newer lines.

"Not only are scientists asking for these lines, they are publishing on them," said Scott, a senior research scholar at Stanford's Center for Biomedical Ethics. "They have become the reference standards against which new embryonic and iPS cell lines are being compared." (An iPS cell is an adult cell that has been induced to look and act like a human embryonic stem cell; comparing them with existing embryonic stem cell lines is important, as there is much debate about whether these iPS cells are functionally equivalent to human embryonic stem cells.)

Scott collaborated with researchers from the Mayo Clinic and the University of Michigan to conduct the research, which will be published Aug. 7 in Nature Biotechnology. Together they analyzed the number and timing of requests placed by scientists for human embryonic stem cell lines housed at the two largest stem cell banks in the country: the National Stem Cell Bank at the WiCell Research Institute in Madison, Wisc., and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Massachusetts.

Although the National Stem Cell Bank is meant to be the source of all NIH-approved lines, Scott and his colleagues found that at no time have all 21 lines been available for distribution; a maximum of 18 lines were available at the beginning of this year. Two cell lines, known as H1 and H9, made up the majority of requests â€" 941 out of 1,217, or 77 percent, since 1999. One other line, H7, was requested 111 times. In contrast, 13 of the previously approved lines were requested fewer than 10 times in the past decade.

Research on the three most-requested lines from the NSCB is prevalent in the scientific literature: 83 percent of 534 peer-reviewed publications from 1999 to 2008 discussed research on H9, 61 percent on H1 and 24 percent used H7 (the numbers exceed 100 percent because many studies used more than one cell line). In contrast, fewer than 36 percent of the publications used any of the other NSCB-curated cell lines.

Requests for cell lines from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute included a wider selection of lines, but even these were still relatively narrow, the researchers found. The majority of these cell lines were created by Harvard researcher Douglas Melton with private funds. Of the 17 cell lines available since 2004, 234 of 946 requests, or 25 percent, were for one of two lines: HUES1 and HUES9.

Even though the Harvard stem cell lines increase the diversity available to researchers, their impact in the published research has so far been minimal: Only about 3 percent of the peer-reviewed articles included in Scott's study reported research on the two most popular Harvard lines.

"It could be a first-mover advantage," said Scott of the researchers' bias toward just a few lines. "If one group publishes on a particular line, other groups want to replicate and extend that research." It's also possible, the authors theorize, that the complex thicket of federal and state restrictions on embryonic stem cell research simply made researchers skittish about branching off into new cell lines.

"The trick will be to avoid this kind of situation with the NIH's new stem cell registry," said Scott, referring to the system that the agency will be establishing to ensure that only research on approved lines gets federal funding. Future policies should be designed, he said, to preserve researchers' ability to continue to work on these well-characterized lines while also encouraging them to plumb the new lines that are expected to become eligible for federal funding under the new regulations. "We're starting with a very scarce resource, and we have to figure out how to make it high quality."

The research was supported by the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090807141852.htm

Most Republicans have distanced themselves from Bush and his failed regressive policies which stifled innovation.

[Captain Zissou]

That whole Research!America (yay woohoo) article made me think of my favorite South Park episode.  Here is the only clip i could find from it.  If anyone  finds a clip of the otters please post. 

"Their science is flawed!!! They chop down millions of trees to make tables when they have perfectly good tummies to eat off of."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8asQkegV_wk&feature=related

[BridgeTroll]

The point is... Faye... you intentionally misrepresented Bush's position.

[Tripoli1711]

It reminds us that we are the inheritors of the Enlightenment’s confidence in the possibility of improving the human conditionâ€"a possibility predicated on values of individual freedom, social equality, and democratic solidarity, and one that values reason as superior to dogma or blindly “received wisdom.” From this standpoint, scientific inquiry is the paradigmatic exercise of Enlightenment values.

You got a problem with that? Well let’s go at it, because one of the things we love about science is that it is nothing if not argumentative. Both as a way of thinking and as a wellspring of novel ideas and products, science is a tumultuous truth-seeking process and even further, we contend, a revolutionary force for human liberation.

If only this were the case with the climate change debate.  Those who wish to question and disagree with the scientific models used to justify the existence of man-made climate change are summarily dismissed as quacks and worse by those who favor the doctrine.  Reasoned debate on the scientific merits of the existence of man-made climate change is near impossible to come by at the UN and at the EPA.  While there may be reason to suspect its existence, scores of great scientific minds have equally compelling reasons to conclude there is no such man-made climate change.  Sadly, this exercise in "reason" is quashed by rule to those adhering to a dogma and "received wisdom".  The public, the purported beneficiaries of scientific Enlightenment, are spoon fed that man-made climate change is "settled science" (read: received wisdom) and one dare not question it lest they be branded a fool.  This public relations blitz has therefore succeeded in turning climate change into a dogmatic principle that creates a false dichotomy-  If you believe in man-made climate change, you believe in science.  If you question it, you are an enemy of science and a fool to boot. 

[buckethead]

Was that woman who ate the brain of an infant doing stem cell research or performing a late term abortion?

[FayeforCure]

Was that woman who ate the brain of an infant doing stem cell research or performing a late term abortion?

Well, I know you mean for this to be a joke, but honestly I don't think I can take much of what you say serious anymore.

[buckethead]

Certaily a bit of gallows humor, with a teency little abortion/embryonic stem cell research commentary attached.

You had to click on the icon to open the attachment. (like in an email)

For the record, I have no clear position on the morality of Abortion, other than at some point, an embryo (group of cells) becomes a human (group of cells). At what point does that happen is the 64,000,000 infant question.

As for Roe v Wade.... Not a shining example of the SCOTUS defending the constitution.

[Ocklawaha]

"...and thinking themselves to be wise, they became as fools."  GOD

OCKLAWAHA

[FayeforCure]

"...and thinking themselves to be wise, they became as fools."  GOD

Yeah, Bush left a pretty abysmal record all the way around and even on the all important idea of innovation as a necessary part of our economic engine