Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/thanks-to-trump-scientists-are-planning-to-run-for-office/514229/?single_page=true

by justin66 • 9 years ago

119 187 9 years ago

theatlantic.com

croon11• 9 years ago

Great!

I get the appeal of non-career politicians voted into office, but I'd much rather take reasonable, well-educated scientists than the opposite.

return0• 9 years ago

There's a lot of politics in science, so these people have a fair share of experience i would guess.

ysr23• 9 years ago

Great? Angela Merkel, Maragaret Thatcher, Frauke Petry. Whatever your political persuasion there is, i'm sure at least one of those you would not describe as 'great'

croon11• 9 years ago

I'm not sure what your point is, regardless of my view on those examples.

It wasn't an emphatic "This is great in every single scenario", but I very much think that it has a much larger chance of being great than the alternative, which is the long form of what I wrote.

burkaman2• 9 years ago

And you would probably also not describe that one as "reasonable", which is one of the criteria.

soundwave106• 9 years ago

No matter what you think of them as far as policy goes, two of those three have ended up being very dominant politicians in their nation and time.

Margaret Thatcher is near the top of most historical rankings of UK PMs in most surveys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Prime_M...).

It's probably too early to tell whether Merkel is considered "good" or "bad" from a historical perspective, but her term as chancellor has been quite influential, enough for many publications to describe you as "de-facto leader of the EU" (and for Forbes to name Merkel as the 2nd most powerful person in the world in 2015).

Obviously the converse exists, but Thatcher and Merkel seem like good examples for reasonable, well-educated scientists doing "great" in politics.

jasonkostempski• 9 years ago

I think tech people should be doing this too.

cderwin4• 9 years ago

You say that, but take a look at the HN thread on Peter Thiel's prospective gubernatorial campaign[0]. It's needless to say the idea of a Thiel governorship was not very popular.

This isn't to say the criticism found there is unreasonable, just that it's not special. People in science and people in tech can get involved in politics, but most of the political issues out there are not scientific or technological so support for them will break down on ideological lines, not technocratic ones. The case of Peter Thiel isn't special, i.e. a conservative member of the tech community would not prefer Richard Stallman to Marco Rubio, just as a progressive member of the tech community would not prefer Peter Thiel to Jerry Brown.

If you want technocracy, I would suggest encouraging tech-minded folks to move to the public sector rather than run for office. Personally I would oppose that, as I think most tech talent would be somewhat wasted there.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13401358

drzaiusapelord3• 9 years ago

Hardcore libertarianism is the exception, not the norm in tech. Tech tends to float in big cities and as such is naturally liberal. A lot of the successes of early tech startups is in part due to liberal hiring policies welcoming women, gays, and minorities who otherwise had a hard time working or getting hired at the old conservative shops like IBM.

Its the weirdos who gave us the Apple // and the Mac. Not the button down conservative culture Thiel represents. I'm not sure its even fair to call Thiel a tech industry person. He's very much now a financier and investor. He's not making the future, he's worrying about what stocks to short and who to invest in.

jasode• 9 years ago

The article doesn't mention the word "technocrat" but the wiki seems relevant even if the scientists only have modest goals of participating in government rather than grand ambitions of controlling the government from the top down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

sremani2• 9 years ago

Most of the "technocrats" at least the American versions of it come from "Soft" Sciences. e.g: Elizabeth Warren, Samantha Powers.

I welcome technocrats from hard-sciences and engineering.

hueving12• 9 years ago

Elizabeth Warren is not a technocrat IMO. Studying Law does not give you any background in science or engineering. It does make you very good at making arguments in support of arbitrary things and bullshitting, but I'm not sure that's something we should encourage in politicians.

croon11• 9 years ago

I'm not sure it applies. You can still be well educated and greedy/egotistical and not work for your constituents.

But within elections, what else SHOULD we vote for other than merit?

What really bothered me when Obama was elected was people throwing the word "elitism" around, because he was smart, eloquent and well educated, like that was somehow a bad thing.

I sure as hell hope that the people elected are smarter than me, because I would have no idea what I was doing in office.

But I guess we'll now see what happens when you elect someone that's "just like us", except born with money.

maverick_iceman2• 9 years ago

The idea that smarter people will be better at government is a fallacy which was conclusively disproved during 20th century. Since Plato's time there was this hypothesis that philosopher kings would somehow bring utopia or at least be better than the average ruler. Alas, the experiences of the 20th century belies that assumption. Communist parties were invariably led by formidable intellectuals (e.g. Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot) but they only left utter hopelessness and destruction in their wake.

Sacho2• 9 years ago

I remember history a bit differently, with Obama being attacked due to his lack of political qualifications - he was too young, too inexperienced. I believe it was Clinton that ran with that narrative, although I may be misremembering.

wyldfire• 9 years ago

With ever-more-complicated technical marketplaces into which legislation pokes its head, the need for technical guidance for this legislation arises. Here in the US at least, lobbyists (usually funded by trade groups) are able to fill that role and in some cases might be a net benefit.

What I want to know is -- is there a market for a "constituent pro-bono consultant"? I don't want to become a career politician (not even part-time), but I would be willing to consult with legislators on technical matters without compensation. I won't buy my representatives lunch or even coffee, but I'd be willing to try and be a balance against the trade groups for the sake of the people.

hueving12• 9 years ago

For now, 314 Action will only back Democratic candidates.

Great. When you're being accused of being partisan, the best way to come back is to form an organization backing potential political candidates of just one party. What a joke.

This is a squandered opportunity to try to get scientific minded people into running for the republican seats, which is how you would get real change in the discourse. Anyone who thinks there aren't fiscally conservative scientists out there who want to shape the Republican party into something better is deluding themselves.

croon11• 9 years ago

When science is a partisan issue, what else can you do?

tomjen3• 9 years ago

Right, but then why would you back a party that hates GMOs and vaccines?

mjolk• 9 years ago

This is delivered a bit to dry for me to know if I should laugh.

virmundi8• 9 years ago

First, realize that science is not just a partisan issue. The liberals in the United States hate science just as much when it's not on their side. They don't reason things through.

I can't find it but there was an NPR story about a teach whose black students performed worse than the white students. The school's response, "Racist test!" The teacher reviewed the test, found nothing racist and looked further. The school was a bit peevish, but couldn't stop him since he was doing it on his own dime. The end result? The black students were all lead poisoned from their homes. The teacher worked with local clinics for free treatment and local rehabs to mitigate the lead in the houses. At the end of the year, the black students dramatically improved. That is science. Test a hypothesis with data.

You need to look for people in ALL parties that will listen to you. I could be such a person in the Republican party. I haven't been an official member since I ran a campaign for Coroner in South Bend at 18. I agree with them far more the Democrats. I also think that the party has left its core tenant of "Do what you want, but not on my lawn or public."

Publicly attacking half of the voting populace by explicitly excluding them from any consideration is a) impolite and b) un-fucking-scientific.

cderwin4• 9 years ago

Even if you don't expect any scientists to want to be on a Republican ticket, why refuse to support prospective scientists who would do so? There might not be many conservative scientists, but I'm sure they exist.

The only answer that seems feasible to me is that they're not really interested in getting scientists elected, instead they're more interested in scientists who are willing to abuse their authority to promote progressive causes.

sampo2• 9 years ago

When science is a partisan issue, what else can you do?

At least when it comes to GMO crops and food, there is a pretty strong anti-science movement in the Democratic Party, too [1]. When more than one third of all currently alive science and medicine Nobel laureates have signed a pro-GMO letter [2], it is pretty strongly anti-science to be anti-GMO.

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/opposition-stalls-gmo...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2...

mkaziz2• 9 years ago

Considering how anti-science republicans tend to be, I'm not surprised.

mac01021• 9 years ago

They may tend to be, but they are not universally so.

And the appearance of partisan bias is much easier to avoid if you have at least one guy from each party.

maverick_iceman2• 9 years ago

You forget that Bernie Sanders wants mandatory labeling of GMO foods. That's also anti-science scaremongering.

jonwachob912• 9 years ago

Yes, b/c republican's aren't allowed to believe in climate change and scientist aren't allowed to believe in small government, power to the states, and that the constitution is not a living document...

maxxxxx• 9 years ago

If anything they should be happy to get scientifically minded people from any party. This seems stupid from the start.

wnevets• 9 years ago

With facts now being banned by the current republican white house, is this really a surprise?

jackmott• 9 years ago

The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person.

I realize that you, like many people, simply do not see it that way, and imagine that there is some kind of equivalence or near equivalence in how corrupt and crazy both parties are, but most of us don't. What we are seeing is horrific, a party that is against reason and goodness and civility at almost every step. They picked a rapist trust fund baby autocrat as their leader. He is now our president.

So yes, we are going to be partisan. We wouldn't be allowed to run as a republican if we were 'fiscally conservative' but felt that gays should be treated as people, refugees with compassion, women with respect, the environment with car, and that religion was crazy.

Furthermore anyone with a scientific bent would look at the empirical evidence provided by other nations with good standards of living and economic freedom and NOT BE fiscally conservative in the way the republican party is. It has no evidence supporting its efficacy!

philh• 9 years ago

The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person.
I realize that you, like many people, simply do not see it that way,

Are you saying that hueving is not an intelligent, honest person?

aaron-lebo2• 9 years ago

What you are advocating sounds like fundamentalism. That's a bad starting point for objectivity.

Arizhel3• 9 years ago

and that religion was crazy.

This is the real sticking point here. If you're not a highly religious person (or at least willing to claim to be one), and not willing to publicly advocate religion in your campaign, then you're not going to get anywhere in the Republican Party.

Republican voters simply will NOT vote for someone who isn't religious. And non-religious voters will not vote for a Republican.

jedi_stannis• 9 years ago

This is a squandered opportunity to try to get scientific minded people into running for the republican seats, which is how you would get real change in the discourse.

I believe his point is that getting scientists into Republican seats might re-shape the party from being anti-science, to being a pro-science, fiscally conservative alternative to the Democrats.

One of the major parties being unacceptable is highly problematic.

hueving12• 9 years ago

The republican party is simply unacceptable on many levels for any intelligent, honest person.

Anyone who would say this with a straight face isn't intelligent or isn't honest, so they can't speak for intelligent honest people.

but most of us don't.

Who exactly do you think you are speaking for? Identity politics and strong liberal populations in universities has made it social suicide for anyone to admit they have any doubts about the Democratic party.

We wouldn't be allowed to run as a republican if we were 'fiscally conservative' but felt that gays should be treated as people

Two seconds of Googling reveals your bullshit: http://ijr.com/2014/10/185584-9-prominent-republicans-who-su...

Humans have and can be elected into the Republican party and that's how you achieve change.

freedom and NOT BE fiscally conservative in the way the republican party is. It has no evidence supporting its efficacy!

The situation in Greece and various other European countries seems to suggest you can't buy your way out of a recession with entitlements either. You'll find very little evidence supporting the efficacy of any system that translates well to the US, which has the irritating job of being the entire Western World's military.

mudil• 9 years ago

This is an insulting comment that should be whited out.

leesalminen• 9 years ago

You sound like a pretty angry person. We really are all stronger together ;).

Instead of digging your heels in the ground why not stop for a minute and listen to those you disagree with and attempt to find an acceptable middle ground?

The future of this country is not a zero sum game.

mattferderer• 9 years ago

The Republican party politicians rejected Trump. Voters in the primaries elected him as their candidate. Many Republicans wanted to pick someone else but were worried that it would destroy their party by failing to listen to voters.

You cannot paint all members of either party with a broad brush as you're doing. Believe it or not we are a diverse country & so are our politicians that are forced to join one party or the other. Many flip flop.

It appears that many Republicans are learning to work with Trump instead of fight against him. That (compromise) is a skill that makes a good politician by the way. It's something everyone should start trying to do. Trump is a person who has changed his views & party often. You can persuade Trump.

Extremism helped create Trump & win him the election. That is what this type of thinking is furthering. It is much more dangerous & long term than Trump.

- Obligatory I didn't vote for Trump and am not a member of either party -

MaxfordAndSons2• 9 years ago

But if the official party platform includes climate change denial and other explicitly anti-science positions, wouldn't it just be a waste of time and money to try to put up candidates who the party would refuse? Sure, it worked for Trump, but I think he's an exception - good luck finding conservative scientists with his particular mix of personality traits and pre-existing celebrity status (and perceived business acumen).

More broadly I think the "changing the party from the inside" tack is a dead end, especially for the Republican party whose power actors seem to only ever double down on their positions and tactics.

cryoshon4• 9 years ago

scientists are liberals, almost exclusively.

there are a few oddballs who aren't financially liberal, and a few oddballs who aren't socially liberal-- but we're talking like 1/100 for each of those cases.

realistically, most of the scientists i've ever met would fall into the green party best, but hold their nose and vote democratic party because it's the closest they'll get to actually liberal policies.

to get scientific minded people into running for the republican seats

the republican electorate is largely anti-intellectual and distrustful of scientists, so that won't work. i don't mean to be dismissive here... but it just isn't going to work because of the culture. no way, no how-- those people are not accessible by the eggheads. i guess if you got a climate denier or creation scientist or some other quack out there, it might work... but that would defeat the point.

i do agree that the only way we'll survive is by driving a wedge within the republican party so that they don't vote as a unified bloc consistently. i'm really not sure what demographic to go after in order to make that happen, though.

Arizhel3• 9 years ago

There isn't one. A scientist (a non-quack one at least) running on the Republican ticket would be wasting his time. The Republican voters do not care for science (esp. anything that contradicts their worldview), and insist on anyone they vote for being highly and openly religious. That's not going to work too well for scientists, even if they were fiscally conservative.

nkoren5• 9 years ago

Agreed. By most metrics I am very liberal (although am orthogonal to the left/right axis by some metrics), and I would love to see Republican primaries jammed up with intellectually honest science-believing fiscal conservatives. And should any of them make it through the primaries, I would be double plus thrilled to see a contest between two people who weren't batshit insane.

We really, really need this.

Having one party be the designated party of batshit insanity, and the other party be the party of... well, not much, aside from non-batshit-insanity... is very bad for society. It does nothing to promote good civic dialog, and holds the second party to an incredibly low standard. Don't get me wrong: on average I want is for Democrats to win, but I'd say that America really needs is more sanity amongst Republicans.

aaron-lebo2• 9 years ago

Agreed.

What happens if we get rid of the Republican party? Those same groups will coalesce as factions within the Democratic party and politics will just be more obscured. The single-party South didn't do anyone favors.

I think people are of the mindset that the Democratic party doesn't share a lot of the same issues. The Clinton coalition worked because it was full of conservative Democrats. As an example, how's this for mixing religion and politics?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5NsrSPMGnc

cryoshon4• 9 years ago

but I'd say that America really needs is more sanity amongst Republicans.

agreed entirely... but sanity might not be enough to win those sane republicans any seats.

Practicality• 9 years ago

For what it's worth 314 Action is more about supporting 4 issues: http://www.314action.org/issues/

The headline is a little misleading, but this isn't actually a "support scientists, in general, running for office," but rather "support specific scientists running for office who support the issues 314 wants to address."

mjmsmith• 9 years ago

You know how whenever there's a terrorist attack, Republicans are the first ones complaining that "good Muslims" aren't out there speaking out and condemning it? Why aren't all the "conservative scientists out there who want to shape the Republican party into something better" speaking out and condemning their party's continual assault on science?

nonbel8• 9 years ago

Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even civilization-) destroying practice:

"We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century, of course, they will be working on guided missiles and advising the medical profession on the control of disease, and there is no limit to the extent to which they could impede every sort of national effort."

Fisher, R N (1958). "The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2: 261–274. http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher272.pdf

Do not be blinded by a degree, there are a lot of these people out there. As a heuristic, you may have to limit "scientist" to mean physicists and engineers, as those communities have been least affected.

aphextron• 9 years ago

Ok, but please do not vote for anyone calling themselves "scientist" who practices NHST, you will only be perpetuating this nation- (even civilization-) destroying practice:

Can you expand on this? What is NHST?

omginternets4• 9 years ago

Null-hypothesis statistical testing

The parent poster has ... for some inexplicable reason ... decided that this technique is invalid. This reeks of a profound misunderstanding of the technique, and a failure to discriminate between poor use and invalidity.

nonbel8• 9 years ago

Null hypothesis significance testing. It is a "method" of statistics that resulted from confusion between Ronald Fisher's significance testing with Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson's hypothesis testing sometime in the 1940s. None of those three are free of blame either.

While there is all sorts of things wrong with NHST, the primary thing is that researchers never actually test their own hypothesis. Instead they test a "null" hypothesis that acts as a strawman, usually that some parameter equals exactly zero. Then when the strawman is "rejected", they go on to say the results support whatever theory/idea it is they favor.

Rather than come up with precise predictions deduced from their idea, they leave them vague (If I am right, A will be correlated with B). Then calculations are used to reject the very precise strawman, giving an entirely false sense of rigor to a handwavy, nonsensical ritual.

It is very common, and seems to get more and more popular every year despite all efforts by scientists and statisticians to stop it (because it lets you seem scientific about proving whatever you want). I was trained to think that way myself not too long ago, with absolutely zero mention of any controversy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4347431/

http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/ft/gg/GG_Mindless_2004.pdf

http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/me...

http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/30/why-the-garden-of-forking...

richmarr6• 9 years ago

Are you suggesting that use (or otherwise) of statistical significance tests in a scientific field would have an affect on your performance as an elected representative?

nonbel8• 9 years ago

First, there is a difference between a significance test and a null hypothesis significance test. The former was proposed by Ronald Fisher, the latter is something different that arose anonymously. See my other post for some links.

I'm suggesting that people who do NHST would encourage more funding to go towards others who do NHST, while also making policy decisions based off of it. At least when politicians are mostly clueless about science they use intuition and common sense.

exabrial• 9 years ago

Scientists I think are too ideological to make good leaders by themselves. It takes all kinds of kinds. You need historians, engineers, scientists, marketeers, salesman, and finally organizer-executors. Right now our government seems mainly ran by salesman...

Agustus• 9 years ago

What can a scientist do that no other person can at a macro-level?

On minimum wage, there are scientists who have two schools of thoughts:

a. Minimum wage can be increased without negative impact to individuals b. Minimum wage is a horrible action that harkens back to racist unions trying to keep black people out of jobs and has unseen consequences in a labor market.

In this instance, the answer from the 314 Action group is that those scientists that agree with Democrat policies are more equal to others.

Another example of this would be in the realm of climate change modeling. Let's say we have two climate models that utilize carbon dioxide as an input. Model A uses less of a feedback loop than Model B, resulting in less global average increase in temperature. Both were put together by top scientists, there is just an existing dispute in the scientific community as to the amount of feedback that can occur. Will these scientist politicians be able to allocate resources any better than a politician? If according to the Atlantic, the next five years is the time to act, will there be time to set up a committee to review the differences and make recommendations?

j2kun• 9 years ago

For one, they can read and understand the significance of various scientific literature that is intended to shape their policy decisions. They also generally don't support people who spew falsehoods and bullshit.

Of course anyone can learn these skills, but so few do.

arouqa• 9 years ago

I remember reading that the majority of government officials in China are either scientists or engineers.

Would be very intriguing to see this play out in a democratic society.

mgberlin• 9 years ago

As a former scientist who is very sad about the way politics are going right now, I was extremely excited to see this group forming. Then I saw that they've inexplicably co-mingled gun control and science. By all means we need to take every measure possible on climate change, energy production, and science education (the other issues listed on their site), but scientists are no better suited to have an opinion on gun control than any other citizen (except some of them might have a slightly better understanding of statistics, but those can lie in either direction).

burkaman2• 9 years ago

You can't run for office and only have an opinion on three issues. If you want to be a leader, you need a clearly stated position on every issue.

wfo• 9 years ago

Doesn't the very fact that statistics lie in either direction mean that someone with knowledge of statistics (any scientist would be more knowledgeable than nearly every politician i.e. lawyer that we have today) would be crucial to ferreting out the consequences of gun control legislation, and therefore better able to make an informed decision? I do agree that a group promoting science shouldn't pre-suppose an answer to a question the jury isn't out on yet like gun control. And even if the question were answered (suppose legal guns cause enormous increases in death) there's still a moral question to be answered there, weighing the freedom to own them vs. the destruction they cause. Just like no scientist will disagree that climate change is real and caused by humans; plenty of reasonable scientists disagree on what we should do about it.

donretag• 9 years ago

So much has been written about this in the past. The American political system is mainly geared to certain professions.

Why Don’t Americans Elect Scientists?: https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/why-dont-...

Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists: https://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-to...

Scientists and engineers cannot simply give up their positions for several years and then easily return to their industries, and not just academia like the article points out. Professions such as lawyers have it easier in that regard.

squozzer• 9 years ago

It reminds me of something Asimov wrote -- scientists are used to inflexible facts and not flexible people -- that might make scientists either unelectable or imcompetent.

OTOH, I pulled this gem from an Asimov quote website -- "[Creationists] make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."

ocschwar6• 9 years ago

Not just scientists. Engineers should to, and for the same reason

If you're a civil engineer, chemical engineer, electrical engineer, or a software engineer, you can find far too many examples of Republican politicians offering rhetoric and policies that are directly at odds with the domain knowledge of your profession.

We can't let this continue.

gremlinsinc• 9 years ago

I'd frankly love to see a President Billy Nye Science Guy

Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

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