
The Largest Number of Scientists in Modern U.S. Is Running for Office in 2018 - ericdanielski
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/entry/science-candidates_us_5a74fffde4b06ee97af2ae60
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nonbel
Be careful, there are lots of people passing themselves off as scientists who
aren't these days.

It is all over the place. From medical research where they call people who try
to check the data analysis "parasites"[1], to psychology where they call
people who do replications "bullies"[2], to physics where they want to get rid
of the need for evidence altogether[3].

[1] [http://researchparasite.com/](http://researchparasite.com/)

[2]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/07/replication_controversy_in_psychology_bullying_file_drawer_effect_blog_posts.html)

[3] [https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-and-
philosophers-d...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-and-philosophers-
debate-the-boundaries-of-science-20151216/)

~~~
jtmarmon
That parasite website is so weird. It sounds so negative, like a piece of
satire, but then you read the actual text and it sounds like a serious award
whose goal is to encourage rigor in scientific research.

Whose stupid idea was it to call it the Parasite Award

~~~
tw1010
Maybe natural scientists are more accustomed to using the strict, cold,
definitions of biological concepts without being emotionally influenced by any
cultural value judgement attached to them.

~~~
Avshalom
Good thing we live in a strict cold culture-less world then.

~~~
tw1010
I think it's too much to ask to expect every little scientific niche, every
subculture, to have to adapt their local personalized context-aware
terminology to the global culture, just because a random person coming from
outside the niche might be confused by their language. It's like demanding
that no part of a public speech should be able to shine a poor light on the
speaker when a substring of it is taken out of context. It's an unnecessarily
harsh constraint.

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mc32
Many current congress members are lawyers and physicians. I welcome additional
people with backgrounds demanding rigor. For example, in SF we have policies
to help the homeless, but often fail to live up to their expectations.
Politicians push through feel good measures that aren't based on rigorous
studies.

Npr will often cite some idea based on a small study somewhere which hasn't
been replicated elsewhere. Maybe technologists will require more rigor than we
now do.

~~~
Quanttek
Why would technologists do that? Especially in those circles there's an
incredible belief in easy solutions (i.e. technological solutions). For your
homeless problem sociologists and anthropologists would probably be most
appropriate

------
mobilefriendly
This is nasty business, the turning of "science" into a partisan wedge issue.
After all, no need to debate if you can just call someone "anti-science".
There's no significant difference in the number of STEM candidates this cycle,
this is fake news stuff generated by a left-of-center advocacy group and
HuffPo.

~~~
sergiotapia
"Settled science" has become a curse word to me. "Science" used to be a
method, now it's a belief system in the first world. It's disgusting.

~~~
merpnderp
It used to be fun sport on Facebook to kid those who followed "I fucking love
science" for not having the first clue about science. But as science became
more and more a partisan word, it just became sad - the birth of a new
religion who's adherents didn't even care to learn their new dogma.

------
merpnderp
A lot of atrocities of the 20th century were purposefully committed in the
name of science and progress, claiming over a hundred million lives.

I much prefer candidates who care more about ethics the rights of individuals
over those who's primary concern is the scientific method.

[EDIT] As a modern example, John Holdren wrote in a 1977 book, Ecoscience,
that forced abortions and mass sterilizations were required to save the
planet. Being a good enough scientist to become appointed president Obama's
scientific advisor, doesn't mean you can't easily rationalize atrocities on a
wide scale.

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rhino369
Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover were the two engineer POTUS's. Take from that
what you may.

~~~
moonka
Wasn't Carter a submariner followed by peanut farming?

~~~
rhino369
Nuclear submariner.

~~~
Turing_Machine
As one of his duties, he personally entered a melted-down experimental reactor
as part of the team that disassembled the damaged core.

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rsuelzer
I worked on the special election campaign for Bill Foster (D-Il). Seeing him
win was one of the most memorable moments of the last decade for me.

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badcede
"The fact is that a mere training in one or more of the exact sciences, even
combined with very high gifts, is no guarantee of a humane or sceptical
outlook."

[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/science/english/e_scien](http://orwell.ru/library/articles/science/english/e_scien)

------
heisenbit
Here in Germany we literally have a nuclear scientist running the government
and frankly politics have become a bit boring. Now that may be a good in a way
but vision is not really her thing.

~~~
im_down_w_otp
Doesn't that allow you to treat your government as infrastructure and your
culture as your source of vision though?

Granted I don't live there, but that sounds appealing to me. A boring,
efficient, and well-run government would be like giving your society a great
COO. Which then opens up the possibility for the people of the society to be
their own visionary CEO.

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starpilot
Is this a good thing? Governing is at its essence people management, and the
best scientists don't always make the best managers. They may not be
persuasive enough to rally others to their cause, or see the importance in
doing so, or understand the give-and-take of politics, just the crusade for
"truth." A scientist may be better and smarter, but impotent and walked over
if he can't actually do politics with other messy humans.

> I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the
> first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society
> governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

~~~
throwaway7645
My company has two engineering departments. 1 that has a very traditional
management chain (non-technical) that is very bureaucratic with lots of
meetings. The other promotes only the best technical engineers with ~10 years
of experience and people skills. The latter typically performs far better
finishing all projects on time and under budget. My boss's boss knows every
table in our database, how each interface to our various apps works...etc. All
our management in that department can speak on the same level as our vendors
and drive key design and architecture decisions and the next day be talking to
shareholders in the political realm. When someone asks them a question they
can give an answer down to the lowest level of granularity if need be. So my
experience based theory of management is to take high performing domain
experts with people skills and put them in management in lieu of typical
Harvard MBA types. Then pay for them to take some finance classes to round off
that skill set if needed.

~~~
nightski
In this case the domain is politics not science. If anything your argument is
in agreement with the parent.

~~~
throwaway7645
I know what you're saying, but I don't think you're catching my meaning. I
believe good leadership involves specific skill sets applied to a particular
area and that very few people can truly serve in the generalist role that the
MBA & politicians try to sell you.

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adamsvystun
Define scientists...

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stryk
No doubt we need to get rid of the climate change/global warming/call-it-what-
u-want deniers, and the outright false information being disseminated without
batting an eyelash is pure insanity, but I still have to wonder if folks who
have spent their lives in academia are compatible with government?

It is possible to swing the needle too far in the opposite direction and end
up with just as many problems.

~~~
jessriedel
Ha! The overwhelming majority of congressmen and senators are lawyers or
businessmen. The number of scientists, between both chambers, is in the low
single digits.

[https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44762.html#_Toc49835...](https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44762.html#_Toc498356618)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2013/01/17/an...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2013/01/17/an-awesome-diagram-of-the-113th-
congress/?utm_term=.9328c871a4d8)

I don't think we're remotely close to "swinging the needle too far in the
opposite direction"...

~~~
stryk
All I'm saying is, academia and government are 2 different ballgames -- I'm
sure there are lots of similarities, but the stakes are on 2 vastly different
levels. I'm not saying having scientists in the government would be bad, to
the contrary -- right now that's what we _need_.

But replace all the lawyers and businessmen in government right now with
professors and administrators from academia and we would still have lots of
issues.

~~~
heurist
I doubt the bureaucracies of academia and government are all that different at
their cores.

------
legionof7
This could go really well or really badly. Scientists are good for making good
scientific decisions, but they might (probably?) not be the best at managing a
country. I think the best thing would be more people with political experience
to run with the position of having lots of scientists as advisors.

~~~
fermienrico
This is such a cliche criticism of scientists running for public office and
frankly I’m tired of it as it detracts from the fundamental truth.

There is no reason why scientists cannot run for public office. Reason, logic
and strategic thinking is what we need - doesn’t matter if it’s a scientist,
engineer or an accountant.

Compared to the shit we have today, this would be a huge step forward.

Plenty of scientists have leadership and political skills. It’s not like
scientists are just completely incapable of dealing with people - that is the
cliche and we need to objectively think about this.

~~~
pavlov
I honestly think Mitch McConnell employs a lot of “reason, logic and strategic
thinking”. Those things are not enough by themselves — you need to have
something to build towards besides short-term partisan points.

Gerrymandering is another example of the abundance of misguided cleverness in
the American system.

~~~
fermienrico
All I am saying is that "Reason, Logic and Strategic thinking" is minimum that
a scientist offers.

There are so many scientists and engineers that lead multi-billion dollar
corporations. They have, in addition to reason , logic and strategic thinking
- organizational, political and people skills.

My point is that just having a scientific background should in no way be a
limiting factor. In fact, it should be a positive thing.

------
gaius
Wasn’t this an episode of The Simpsons?

------
RickJWag
Highly politicized article.

If it were balanced, there should be some mention of medical scientists who
have concerns for humans in development. Science has made tremendous progress
in this area, but they are not covered in the media often.

------
microcolonel
> _President Donald Trump has yet to name a science adviser, leading some to
> declare that Fox News is filling the position._

This is petty drivel, from the pointless and nonsensical jabs, to the bizarre
assumption that PhDs make better politicians.

~~~
tsomctl
I don't think it's bizarre to assume that a PhD is best to be a science
adviser.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Only in the sense that PhDs are often extremely specialized. They are experts
in one field, not general-purpose "science" experts. It may not be immediately
clear why someone with the most advanced knowledge in the world on an esoteric
organism in Indonesia would be a good advisor to the President.

A PhD functioning as an advisor does have valuable experience that would help
them understand how some desired research needs to get done, or discern
whether a particular study is quality or junk, or be able to communicate
effectively in an environment full of technical jargon. Indeed, those are the
characteristics that are really needed - but those are merely qualities that
are hopefully picked up on the way to a PhD, not the research project which
the PhD certifies.

~~~
soVeryTired
A PhD alone wouldn't necessarily make a good scientific advisor, but someone
who came from a high-level position in a university might.

Beyond a certain level, scientists become managers rather than practitioners.
The successful ones have insight into the process of raising funds, the
politics of large-scale research facilities, and sometimes the process of
major international collaboration.

Discerning whether a given study is junk probably doesn't fall under the remit
of Science Advisor. That's more of a tactical issue that would be delegated to
a specialist policy wonk.

------
SapphireSun
Scientists are running because they feel their class interests are being
threatened. Typically, scientists are apolitical because they feel they get
more benefits by maintaining the status quo (e.g. military and civil funding).
In the face of a bald attack on the EPA and climate science, scientists are
attempting to show class solidarity.

Unfortunately, many of the problems we have are not technical problems, but
are clashes between left and right. The favored positions of both sides have
long been established. Science will help implement an ideological solution,
but will not replace ideology. To the extent that the scientists running are
leftists compared with centrist democrats, this will be somewhat significant.

However, I suspect that many established scientists are ignorant of politics
and see the current struggle as some kind of surface level fact vs fiction
debate. They will be disappointed.

