Science Cheerleader

I’m an R. Surprised an R would dedicate her career to science literacy and citizen participation in science and policy? Me too!   I can understand why Newt Gingrich isn’t keen on spending public dollars to create, yet another, Congressional agency. But he’s wrong to think the Office of Technology Assessment, which he axed in the 1990s as part of his Contract with America, was a waste of public dollars and resources. The scientists and policy wonks who worked there published hundreds of reports at the request of Congress to help them make sense of often complicated science and technology policy matters. You can find archives of the reports here. Many are still referenced today.

Last year, I launched a national effort to reopen the OTA and it has sparked a strong, well-organized movement within the science community now to lobby Congress to refund the OTA. On one hand, I’m thrilled! Wait, let me back up a bit to tell you how I became obsessed with the OTA.

I stumbled upon the OTA as a graduate student at UPenn (this is me on graduation day with comedian Yakov Smirnoff, seriously!) where my History and Sociology of Science professor handed me an assignment to “write about the rise and the fall of the OTA.” I read every piece of literature that existed and contacted many of the authors and former staffers of the OTA. I even met with Newt Gingrich and Rep. Rush Holt and chatted with Rep. Vern Elhers and several of the architects of the OTA.
I was convinced that Congress was lost a bit without its only source of dedicated, nonpartisan tech assessments and believed the Office should be refunded (it was never really killed by Congress…it was just stripped of its $23million +/- budget).

However, in this era of public participation, open source, collaboration, and transparency, I sought to open a new, decentralized, 21st Century OTA, one that would provide a mechanism to both inform the public and seek their input before Bills are posted for public comment (who really comments on posted Bills besides lobbyists and special interest groups anyway?). It’s not an entirely new idea. Richard Sclove, the founder of the Loka Institute, more than hinted at this suggestion back in the 80s. Ironically, following a major public, political and economic disaster surrounding the 1990s roll out of genetically modified foods in Europe, the E.U. opened parliamentary OTAs with a twist: the science and technology assessment undertaken by the experts at their OTAs often include citizen participation as this has been found to help assess risk, create a better informed public, and better understand societal implications of emerging technologies. All of which are key ingredients in good policy making decisions, no?  Do you want scientists or special interest groups to represent you and your questions/concerns societal impacts of science and emerging technologies? Congress knows no more than you do about these and many other scientific issues and they openly admit this. While I think it’s imperative for scientists to drive a discussion and impart their expertise on such matters, it’s equally vital that WE are afforded the opportunity to learn about and weigh in on these matters BEFORE Bills are created.
This is where the organizers of the current effort to reopen the OTA (the science community) and I differ. For the most part, they either do not understand or they don’t see the value in public participation. I can understand why if recent Town Hall meetings are what they’re basing their opinions on…but that’s not the type of participation I’m advocating for. I’m talking about a deliberate, well-constructed, inclusive approach that’s been proven to be successful in Europe (and even in China for crying out loud) and here in the U.S. although those efforts were not directly tied to Congress.

For this reason, while I wish the scientists well in their effort to persuade Congress to refund the old OTA (for the most part, although Congress did recently appropriate funds to the Government Accountability Office specifically for “technology assessments” )  I am helping to organize a new network that values the significance of both expert and citizen analysis in technology assessment. I’ll have more to say on this in the coming weeks. It’s pretty exciting and I hope you’ll join me for the journey.
In the interim, here’s what Newt recently said about the OTA. Editorial note here: this idea is worse than reopening the old OTA w/o public participation-not only is he suggesting an “expert-only” approach, but a mere handful of experts at that. This former cheerleader can smell a clique a mile away

When irony is just too much.    In my never-ending effort to help “average” citizens get involved in science and science policy matters, I had quite an eye-opening experience Saturday night.
Local bartender (granted he was drunk) said to me ” I defriended you on Facebook you know. I got tired of what you were posting. Science this and science that, waa, waa, waa.”
Me: “Why, I never grow tired of your posts about your new baby’s pooping schedule.”
Him: “Seriously, you shouldn’t be writing about stuff like that. We need to stick together. Let those people [finger quotes] write about and think about that and let us talk about stuff we should be talking about. You need to remember your place in this world.”
Me: “Hmmm. I may need to find a way to filter certain [finger quotes] voices from any crowdsourcing, participatory activities I’m planning…(thinking back to people telling me why we shouldn’t have the public weigh in on science policy issues…  ”you haven’t met enough people if you really think everyone should be invited to weigh in.”)
Him: “Well now that we have an understanding, I’ll refriend you on FB.”

Clearly Joe doesn’t feel worthy of taking a seat at the “participatory” table. It’s unfortunate and surely Joe’s not alone. He doesn’t want to learn about issues he feels he has no business talking about. Joe has no shortage of opinions. He’s also an influencer (he made a point of telling me he has more friends on facebook than I do…nice). By enlisting people like Joe, real change can start to take place. But Joe needs to be convinced that he’s entitled to participate. I’ll work on Joe but anyone involved in science and policy should consider having these types of conversations outside of their labs, offices, classrooms and conferences. Go to your corner tap room from time to time to take the pulse of the American public. I promise you , you’ll learn something.

For those of you who may be wondering what’s become of the effort to Reopen the Office of Technology Assessment, with public participation, I’ll have something to report in a few weeks!

Welcome to NASA’s brand new Open Government Web page where the White House’s three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration “form the cornerstone of an open government”. The website’s not NASA’s only astronaut boot planted firmly on-board the Transparency Train…check this out:

The NASA App for the iPhone and iPod touch is now available free of charge on the Apple App Store. Among other cool tricks, the NASA App allows users to track the current positions of the International Space Station and other spacecraft currently orbiting Earth

Why do this? “Making NASA more accessible to the public is a high priority for the agency,” said Gale Allen, director of Strategic Integration and Management for NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. “Tools like this allow us to provide users easy access to NASA information and progress at a fast pace.”

GOOOO NASA!

h/t Bart

On February 1, 2010, President Obama sent Congress a $3.8 trillion budget request,  $147.7 billion of which is to be used for federal R&D. Susan Morrissey of Chemical and Engineering News says this means “science wins”. Read her report. (Thanks to Paul for sending this.)

Talk about a fun radio interview! Last week, the Science Cheerleader was featured on Weekend Workout (”a fun, entertaining, edifying and sometimes twisted look at the world of fitness, food, and supplements”).

My chat about science literacy, with the host Jose Antonio–who didn’t shy away from asking some provocative questions–followed a conversation on “functional underwear.” Success! Truth be told, it feels great each time I can spread the gospel of science to a new audience. Thanks Weekend Workout!

Wonderfully written piece in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, by Faye Flam–cutting straight through urban myths and public misunderstandings of science–on climate change.
“What scientists know, and what cannot be denied, about global warming, carbon dioxide, the greenhouse effect.”  Flam sheds light on where the politics end and science begins with this issue, and answers some questions we’ve probably all pondered, such as:

Who came up with this greenhouse gas concept and how seriously is it taken?

According to physicist and historian Spencer Weart, the idea can be traced to French mathematician Joseph Fourier. Back in the 1820s, Fourier did some calculations to show that a rock like Earth orbiting at 93 million miles from the sun should be a big snowball. He suggested our balmy temperatures could be attributed to our atmosphere, which might hold in heat – sort of like a greenhouse.

There wasn’t much experimental evidence to back this up until the 1850s, when British scientist John Tyndall started shining infrared light through various gases.

Tyndall knew the Earth absorbs solar radiation and emits infrared. If the greenhouse theory was right, gases that make up the atmosphere would absorb some of this infrared, thus raising the temperature.

At first he almost disproved the greenhouse effect by showing that infrared passes straight through oxygen and nitrogen – the main components of our atmosphere. But before he quit, Tyndall tried a few other gases, including CO2, and found it was a powerful absorber of infrared. Water vapor had the same property.

That suggested that while carbon dioxide makes up less than 0.001 percent of our atmosphere, it’s working along with water vapor to prevent infrared radiation from escaping to space. These gases also emit radiation, some of which is directed back toward the ground. “As a dam built across a river causes a local deepening of the stream, so our atmosphere . . . produces a local heightening of temperature at Earth’s surface,” Tyndall wrote.  Read full article here.

Knowledge is power. Understanding the basic science behind these claims will sharpen your Spidey senses so it won’t be quite as easy for folks to confuse me…I mean you! Get informed then get engaged. My colleagues Professor David Guston and Dr. Richard Sclove helped shape the first of its kind global citizen engagement initiative this summer. The effort made it possible for thousands of people to learn about and weigh in on the topic of Global Climate Change. We know where the people stand. This week’s conference in Copenhagen will speak volumes about the mindset of the world’s political leaders. Stay tuned or check out Chris Mooney’s live feeds from the conference on MotherJones.com.

TechPresident (one of my favorite sources of political tech news) shared this:

“Sure, U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra, U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra, and White House new media director Macon Phillips come in for a round of Jon Stewart’s special blending of mocking. (How many times do you think Chopra’s been called “an Indian George Clooney” since this aired?) It’s got to ouch a bit. But there’s a way to look at it as a very good thing, indeed. Technologists in politics have reached a level of public interest where they’re good Daily Show fodder.”

Here are several posts we’ve published about Open Government.

And here’s what you really came to see!

Exciting week! Score ONE for our ongoing efforts to help Congress get the information it needs to form sound science policy!

The American Association for the Advancement of Science announced a venture, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, called Expert Labs. This new, non-profit independent lab, will “help policy makers in the U.S. Federal Government tap into the expertise of their fellow citizens.” Fellow EXPERT citizens, that is. You, me, folks like us…well, we’re still left out of the discussion, for now. But I’m here to tell you, things are a-changing! Stay tuned.

In the interim, I ask of the AAAS, MacArthur Foundation and the very talented director of Expert Labs (Anil Dash): Why didn’t you just include a way for non-expert citizens to weigh in on the societal implications of these policies? That’s the real point of “opening government to the people” isn’t it? Peer-to-Policy so to speak.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled at this latest development and all 661 of you who signed this petition should be, too. But, clearly, our work isn’t finished. Not until our “non expert” opinions are taken into consideration….
Cheers!

Darlene

What is the most important thing the U.S. can do to improve global health over the next 15 years?

A passionate, convincing answer to that question is all you need to be eligible for $1,000 and publication by the CSIS Commission on Smart Global Health. Submit your 500-800 word entries by November 20, 2009, and your innovative idea will be included in a January 2010 report that charts the future for U.S. global health policy.

CSIS is specifically looking for ideas that are sustainable for the long-term (15 years or more) and impact the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people. If you’ve had a personal experience in global health, either as a professional or volunteer, use your stories to illustrate your point. Importantly, students and non-students will be judged for prizes in their respective category, which means we won’t be competing with tenured professors or world-renowned experts. CSIS is most interested in personal, persuasive arguments that will bring about major change.

One idea . One thousand dollars. And only one week left!

Visit the CSIS Global Health Essay website or get connected on Facebook and Twitter.