What's particularly encouraging is that these leading scientists are not only great researchers but proven administrators, with demonstrated skills at managing people and building consensus that will be crucial in tackling these challenges. These scientists include most notably the following:
* Dr. Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist nominated to be U.S. Secretary of Energy, who has been Director of the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2004;
* Dr. John Holdren, Professor and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and President and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center, who has been appointed Assistant to the President for Science and Technology;
* Dr. Harold Varmus, Nobel Prize-winning physician and President of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, who will serve as Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, along with John Holdren and Eric Lander;
* Dr. Eric Lander, Founding Director of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard and one of the driving forces behind mapping the human genome;
* Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the Oregon State University Professor of Marine Biology and former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who has been nominated as the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This is truly a scientific dream team that President-elect Barack Obama has assembled, and we're going to need them, for America faces science challenges on many fronts, and all of them need to be addressed strategically, thoughtfully, and quickly. Those challenges include, among others, the following:
First, we must confront the twin technical challenges of how best to address global climate change and the need for alternative sources of energy. These are pivotal issues for the planet; they can be ignored no longer, and there is arguably no higher priority.
Second, we must re-invigorate American research in two ways: increase federal research funding, which has declined in real terms for the fourth year in a row, and enhance career opportunities for young scientists. The chance of a young researcher (age 42 or below) being successful in a grant competition at the National Institutes of Health has now been reduced to a remarkably low 4 percent. Continuing to discourage young scientists, the intellectual lifeblood of the future, is much like adults of an endangered species "eating their young." The end result is short-term satisfaction and long-term extinction. Creating more research opportunities and encouraging promising scientists to continue as researchers are both crucial to maintaining American preeminence in the sciences.
Third, we must increase science literacy among the American people. The United States, once the clear world leader in the sciences, is now lagging behind up-and-coming Asian nations in the percentage of science and engineering graduates it produces. Public schools in the United States are struggling just to provide enough math and science teachers, many of whom lack adequate credentials in the field. As a result, our students aren't keeping up academically. A 2003 survey of math and science literacy ranked American 15-year-olds against those of other industrialized nations. In math, our students came in 24th out of 28 countries; in science, we were 24th out of 40 countries, tied with Latvia.
The United States has arguably the greatest scientific legacy in world history, and it's a primary reason for our past economic strength. Rebuilding that strength will depend on the sciences as well. The dream team that President-elect Obama has drafted is suiting up when they're needed most, but the nation must be behind them, providing the support that they need to win.
The author is President of Research Corporation for Science Advancement, a foundation dedicated to science since 1912.
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Now all we have to do is boot political correctness and political agendas OUT of the environmental movement so we can have real science....scientists that aren't afraid to speak their mind for fear of being punished for not believing the "correct agenda".
You picked the wrong post. Nobody here to satisfy your "attention deficit".
There needs to be more funding of "studies" programs in universities and we need some more fine arts majors. Willie Ayers needs a lot more grant money so that he can develop programs where teachers let their students do what they want without the constraints of structured education.
Math is difficult, the sciences are difficult - students are coddled rather than spending three or four hours a day with homework, etc. There is no easy way to learn math, trig, calc, diff-e-q, etc.; it is brain busting hard work. A "shut up and study" approach from those who educate our teachers is needed rather than the "do what you want" approach that our liberal universities have instilled in those who teach our children.
You have a point but you are blaming the wrong ones. Where this goes wrong is not our universities but our high schools. There is a significant difference between a university and a high school. Most students at a high school are there because they have to be there. Most students at a university are there because they want to be there. Therefor if a student fails in high school it's usually because the teachers have done a poor job or the environment was not suitable for learning. But if a student fails at a university it is because they were lazy or simply not suited for the science/art they were trying to master. When a student fails high school it is a catastrophe for that student. A student who fails university is merely a waste of time. They can always try something else.
I wish you all the best and hope you will be able to master a real science course at a really good university one day.
Thanks for the wishes. While "mastery" is somewhat subjective as is a "really good university", I may have fulfilled your hopes for me around 30 years ago. I did not proceed beyond the A I received in Calculus of Variations at University of Missouri
"Third, we must increase science literacy among the American people."
That is way more important in the long run than anything else we can do. And it is probably the one thing I am most pessimistic about. It takes more than just political decision making to turn a people from magical thinking back to reality. Something in the psyche of this nation has gone wrong and I could, for the life of me, not identify the reasons why we went from being the most pragmatic to one of the most voodooistic nations in this world. If somebody knows, please explain it to me.
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