

A science committee that doesn’t get science  - chinmoy
http://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/10/editorial-meet-a-science-committee-that-doesnt-get-science/

======
tptacek
Assignment to the House Science Committee correlates with a -$46,000 drop in
fundraising relative to all other committees in the House. Though Science has
oversight over important agencies, like NOAA and NASA, they aren't a lobbying
target. The result is that the best & brightest in Congress avoid Science, and
adverse selection produces the worst possible Committee.

What's particularly aggravating about this is that there are agencies properly
in the purview of Science & Technology that _are_ lobbyist targets, but that
aren't managed by House Science. FCC, for instance, is overseen by House
Commerce; DARPA, obviously, is House Defense.

The fact of Congress is that if you don't play the game, and get the best
committee assignments you can, you lose your seat. Each Congressperson can
only have 2 committee assignments. Principled pursuit of the right assignments
is thus a bit of a stag hunt.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Call me a pessimist. When I see guys like Akin and Broun on a science
committee, I assume that it didn't happen by accident, and that they probably
have an axe to grind. At best, they may be looking to have their ethics
represented on subjects like the ethics or morality of subjects like stem-cell
research.

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
It's not an accident. It is exactly what tptacek described. Every other
smarter/better representative wanted, and got committees which pay them more.
And that forced these losers to end up on the science committee.

No accident, but also no "axe grinding" conspiracy. Just simply money.

~~~
saym
Off-topic: How do you remember your username?

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
I don't. I don't give a damn about karma. This is like my 3rd HN account. Not
that I had any reason to create new accounts, besides logged out for some
reason and didn't remember credentials.

Now watch everyone else in horror down-vote this, and for someone to post the
link to the HN change your password page.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
If that second h was 3 then you'd simply have 4 triples of inline keys on a
qwerty keyboard. Doesn't seem especially hard to remember.

fgh-345-sdf-hr3 : bet that's someone's password.

~~~
Agathos
God damn it now I'm going to remember the name of some guy's throwaway account
until the day I die.

------
prawks
Articles like this always renew my distaste for discussing politics. There are
_clear_ problems with the US's legislative process and elected officials, but
there seems to be no way to effectively induce change in them, especially as
an individual. Not just riding the science bandwagon here either; partisanship
in general, etc. are all incredibly frustrating to discuss, and I'll almost
always just stay out of discussions on politics as a result.

I'd love to help change these kinds of things, but I don't feel I could give
up my job to start some sort of organization against it, nor do I feel such an
organization would gain much traction anyhow. Maybe I'm just an a-typical
slacktivist.

Any suggestions on stifling my feelings of futility? It seems the only way to
affect change in this country is to get enough upvotes on reddit (see: SOPA).
So I'm upvoting this.

~~~
rayiner
I think the best thing is to cultivate some perspective, and not hold the
political system to unrealistically high standards.

We live in a 236 year old democracy of 310 million people. Let that sink in.
We have more people than there are lines of code in an entire Linux
distribution. Think of the complexity of a human being, over a human being's
lifetime, versus a line of code. We're an incredibly heterogeneous, diverse
country that has never agreed on anything, not even on our founding
documents.* We are, by virtue of our post-WWII status, the de-facto political
and military leader of the world. We're the world's largest economy. We're the
world's reserve currency. We have all of the responsibility that comes with
that status.

We do not blink twice when we hear of a company like Yahoo (14,000 employees)
or Nortel (86,000 employees at peak) becoming unmanageable basket cases. Yet
we rail on the President for not getting more done than he does! We forgive
Windows for being layers upon tangled layers of bug-for-bug compatible code,
but complain endlessly about the complexity of a tax code designed to regulate
300m people acting together in a $15 trillion economy.

I am of the opinion that too many people, especially engineers who maybe have
a particular love of simplicity, simply expect too much of the country they
live in, and as a result become disillusioned with the whole system.

It is my opinion that these expectations are unreasonable and counter
productive. The fact of the matter is that the US government is a paragon of
virtue and efficiency compared to most others. Some of the western European
countries may have better governments, but they also have far simpler and more
homogenous societies to govern. We certainly have a better government than
most any country in Asia. China, which has no particular love of anything
American, has spent the last couple of decades trying to model their legal
system after America's. Think about that: something that most Americans
consider to be a broken part of our society, is a model for a country looking
to cement it's place among the world's great societies.

So if you're frustrated by the system, take a step back and appreciate the
fact that it probably doesn't get any better than it is now. As I've gotten
older and this realization has sunk in, I have found politics far more
enjoyable.

*) The more you learn about the Constitution, the more you realize it's ridiculous to ask "what does the Constitution mean?" The 40 signatories to the Constitution had 40 different opinions about the meaning of the document they were signing!

~~~
saraid216
Absolutely. Scandinavia is often held up as an example of a set of ideal
democratic states. After a friend moved there, I start poking around for
details and the first thing I found was a mild warning that they were
xenophobic. Visiting Sweden was the first time I had ever felt visible because
of my race. It's not that they're racist (they're not); it's just that they're
more homogenous so differences become quickly obvious.

> appreciate the fact that it probably doesn't get any better than it is now

I can't agree with this line, but mainly because you're talking about the
future. I agree that it probably _couldn't_ be better than it is now, but we
can certainly improve it.

> The more you learn about the Constitution, the more you realize it's
> ridiculous to ask "what does the Constitution mean?" The 40 signatories to
> the Constitution had 40 different opinions about the meaning of the document
> they were signing!

There's an entire branch of government dedicated to answering that question on
a daily basis, too. Established _by_ the very thing they're interpreting.
How's that for meta?

~~~
rayiner
> I can't agree with this line, but mainly because you're talking about the
> future. I agree that it probably couldn't be better than it is now, but we
> can certainly improve it.

Oh, I'm not saying you can't improve it, even in the present. What I mean is
"better" in a fundamentally different way. E.g. within the constraints of our
existing society, you're always going to have partisanship, etc.

------
joshuahedlund
> They've been put in place when the US is arguably more dependent upon
> science and technology than at any time since World War II.

I could say the US is arguably _less_ dependent upon _the government's role
in_ science and technology than at any time since World War II. I honestly
don't know if that's true, but it would at least be an interesting discussion
(I'm thinking of the transitioning privatization of space exploration, for
starters); I don't see that it's clearly obvious either way.

~~~
_delirium
I think operationally this is getting more true, but not as much funding-wise,
so intelligent control over appropriations is still important. For example,
SpaceX is a private company, but largely publicly financed: government
contracts provide the majority of their revenue, since they don't yet have
significant private-sector clients. If their NASA contract were cancelled
(e.g. because a committee cut that program), they wouldn't be solvent as a
company.

Also common in the private-sector research world, outside a few big places
like MSR that are mainly privately funded. A lot of biotech companies depend
on public/private NIH research grants, and the SBIR/STTR programs are also a
big source of funds for riskier research in small companies
(<http://www.sbir.gov/>).

------
fusiongyro
This is basically a Daily Show segment from last week with some additional
details thrown in.

------
Zakharov
If you look at this from another angle, it's not so bad. Would anyone be angry
if there were three pacifists on the Defence committee? A certain portion of
the American population opposes science, and as harmful as that is to the
country, a democratic system means they get their say.

EDIT: For the record, I wish these people had never been elected, and think
the American government should increase science funding significantly. It's
not my call, though.

~~~
saraid216
On one hand, you're right. On the other...

Well, "representation" is not quite what it sounds like. A representative is,
by his office, held to a higher (and different) standard than non-elected non-
officials. That's why you can say "I wish these people had never been
elected".

Effectively, what you're describing here is analogous to a tolerance of
intolerance, whereas actual tolerance requires an intolerance of intolerance.
The relevant quotation, rather than being "I disagree with what you say, but I
would die to defend your right to say it", is instead, "All opinions are not
equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well
supported in logic and argument than others."

------
bicknergseng
I just want to point out something I haven't seen anyone else discuss.

It's politicians like this who push CISPA or the laws in DC attempting to
protect the cab industry from Uber's disruption.

While politics seems distant and has totally gone off the deep end these days,
this stuff does matter. It helps shape the direction our society decides to
take. If everyone in science and tech checks out of politics, politics will
move on without and possibly against us. It is unimaginably important for us
to continue advocating for science, math, and technology in politics.

------
sageikosa
What would we do without government committees, and how did we ever survive
without them?

~~~
zb
We had kings to make our laws unilaterally without parliamentary scrutiny.

~~~
sageikosa
Not in the US of A.

About 1.75 centuries elapsed between 1776 (when the US said a farewell to
kings) and 1958 (when the predecessor committee was established). I guess
science in the United States just progressed without non-scientific scrutiny
during that time.

At least for the topic at hand.

------
zerostar07
I wonder why people don't see political campaigns as a system ripe for
disruption. People are basically voting for their rulers the same way they
vote their favorite movie. Kind of scary how anachronistic the election
procedures have remained. Certainly a number of actors benefit from it.

~~~
pc86
Because you can't just say "we're going to disrupt the way people
campaign/vote/get elected." It is a staggeringly massive government
bureaucracy even at the most local levels, and it prevents that kind of change
at every point possible.

Edit: Not to mention the fact that as much as we like to pretend all
politicians and millionaire slime balls, they're working people providing for
their families. Very few are going to entertain the idea of running their
campaign in an entirely different way because chances are they'll lose their
job if they do.

~~~
zerostar07
I don't see a reason you can't. I believe mass media dominate campaigns
because of the sheer amount of money thrown onto them.

~~~
pc86
> _I don't see a reason you can't._

I've worked on campaigns professionally from 2002-2010 and I've run local and
state races, including my own for borough council and school board.

Why can't we change the way campaigns are run?

Campaigns would be the easy part to change, but even then it depends _what_
you want to change. Are you talking about new technology? The Romney campaign
is doing a decent job of utilizing technology in how they're collecting voter
contact results from phones and doors, organizing volunteers and managing
fundraisers. Obama did an excellent job as well in 2008, especially compared
to the CF that was the McCain campaign.

If you want to make changes to the way fundraising works and the influence of
money in politics, it will need to be incremental. That isn't something you
can just cut off overnight for several reasons, the two biggest being that (A)
nothing happens overnight in Congress, and (B) Members of Congress would
essentially be shutting down their means of securing re-election.

Why can't we change the way people vote?

For the same reason a PA court placed an injunction on that state's Voter ID
law: you can't deprive an otherwise qualified individual of his or her
constitutional right to vote.

You want to have internet voting? You better have a plan to give everyone in
the country high speed internet access and be prepared for the unrelenting
torrent of lawsuits when the server goes down.

I'd personally like to see internet voting someday, but you really need to
have massive redundancy systems in place and plenty of checks to prevent
fraud. What happens if the server is down all day? What about peak traffic?
What if the database gets wiped 30 minutes before the end of voting? Anyone
who knows about how government contracts are structured knows that would be an
IBM and/or Diebold contract in the hundreds of billions. And it still wouldn't
work.

> _I believe mass media dominate campaigns because of the sheer amount of
> money thrown into them._

This statement makes it look like you think one is correlated to the other,
which I'm not inclined to agree with. Because there's a lot of money in
politics, that somehow means mass media "dominates" campaigns, whatever that
means?

I'm not sure what your alternative would be aside from information directly
from the campaigns themselves (which is almost guaranteed to be skewed, if not
incorrect).

~~~
zerostar07
I was thinking of self-organized citizens, in the way some self-governed open
access projects on the net have established hierarchies (i.e. wikipedia).
Everyone can be a candidate, people can judge their contributions almost
directly, and thus be more informed voters. Politics in much of the west
depends too much on who you know, and who pays you to pay old media pundits to
promote you. The tech sector has barely touched the way politics is conducted
(i believe mainly because geeks detest the way politics is run and opt to
escape to libertarianism).'

I don't really think it's a big deal if online-voting servers go down. It's
not like you have to pay billions to re-run the elections.

------
tete
Officials not grasping reality? As sad as it is, but I think this stops being
newsworthy.

------
newbie12
This post is partisan and too short on supporting facts. The author claims
that a couple of goofy public statements by 3 lawmakers mean they don't "get
science". That's 3 members on a committee of 40. Also, the scientific debate
over climate change is far from settled.

~~~
CountHackulus
How is this partisan? He explicitly calls out both parties.

~~~
Ntrails
I assume partisan is being used in place of 'heavily biased'. I can see it is
a reasonable substitution in most cases.

The 'Pure Science' people (similar grouping to the militant atheists) are,
like it or not, pretty dismissive of any non scientific opinions and beliefs.
This makes many religious people take a very defensive (aggressively so)
position on many matters.

This is simply a different version of the "two parties facing each other and
calling each other dumb" political system.

Edit: I could be misreading though

~~~
tensor
You are correct only in the sense that atheists and science committees are
completely dismissive of non scientific opinions.

But I take great issue with the rest of your post. This is not a case of two
parties calling each other dumb, nor is it the case that positions of science
and positions of opinion are equal. Science does not deal in opinions. There
are very specific requirements that need to be met for an idea to be
considered a scientific theory. Religious ideas by and large do not meet these
criteria. There is no such thing as "non-pure science." This is by definition
of the term and process.

Further, your use of the term "militant atheist" is offensive. You call an
atheist "militant" merely because she dares to voice her thoughts? This is
what religious individuals due daily in church and other places, yet never are
they called militant for it. Worse, religious advertising routinely gets away
with suggestions that non-believers will _suffer eternally_ or are otherwise
evil or immoral. Such rhetoric is a far cry from a logical discussion of what
we actually know that you might find from a typical vocal atheist.

Slurs like "militant atheist" are so common you no longer ever recognize them
for what they are: insults and a labels intended to marginalize.

~~~
eropple
I think you're overreacting. I'm an atheist and regularly use "militant
atheist" to characterize the sort of atheist who I don't want to be associated
with--i.e., the douchey ones.

I am no fan of religion, but I'm also not a fan of assholes.

------
777466
We all know it's an awful situation. But what do you do about it?

~~~
hexagonc
You know, I feel ashamed every time I think this because I know I haven't
fully thought it through, but why do we need to share the same country with
these bird-brained politicians? I mean, would it really be so bad to let these
people secede and have their own country? Yes, there is the argument that we
are stronger (in some sense of the word) together than apart, but who really
gains from this arrangement? Let them live in their own middle ages like the
Taliban and leave everyone else alone.

~~~
bduerst
Honestly, the solution here would be to give the federal government less
control and allow the states to have more control.

The states were established so that U.S. citizens could move to the state with
the laws that best suited them.

~~~
Jtsummers
That's not really an accurate description of why the states were established.
The initial states were the consequence of different centers of colonization
and the limits of transportation and communication speeds. Their borders were
mostly arbitrary geographical boundaries (hey, there's a river!). They
developed unique economic and cultural traditions based on what could be
grown, produced, or not, in their borders. That people didn't want to join
them up into one stronger federal government has stronger ties to the general
tribal nature of people and the significantly different economic and cultural
needs. Movement between them was hardly the motivation.

~~~
saraid216
> That people didn't want to join them up into one stronger federal government
> has stronger ties to the general tribal nature of people and the
> significantly different economic and cultural needs.

To be fair, one of the reasons _was_ to limit the power of the federal
government. But that power was limited partly in order to prevent one state
from having power over another; that's why the Senate is so laid out
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise>), and one of the
reasons the federal government is seated in neutral territory (Federalist
#43).

------
noobplusplus
doesn't instead of dosen't

------
Surio
Now I've seen everything! !Bang!

<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeenItAllSuicide>

~~~
Surio
Downvotes? I don't believe it. To that title, I now humbly add: A scientific
audience that doesn’t get humour!

