Biden puts science at the top of his agenda – Science Business

In one of the most significant departures from the Trump Administration, President-elect Joe Biden vowed to make science a central theme of his administration enlisting scientists to solve problems at home and across the globe, and giving them unprecedented influence in his administration.

As president, Ill pay great attention to science and scientists, Biden said January 16 in an online briefing introducing his team of top five science advisors. He confirmed his plan to name his chief scientific advisor, geneticist Eric Lander, to cabinet-level rank the first time in US history, because we think its that important.

He also said he will focus his administrations scientific efforts on five main issues: the pandemic, the economy and economic equality, the climate crisis, technological and industrial leadership, and restoring trust in science.

In a similar vein, a day earlier when discussing his COVID-19 plans, Biden vowed that our administration will lead with science and scientists, with a CDC, an NIH, that will be free, totally free from political influence, a surgeon general who is independent, an FDA whose decisions are based on science and science alone. The Centres for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration became political casualties of the Trump Administrations fumbling pandemic response, as political appointees frequently overruled career scientists.

A signal to the world

Taken together, the five appointments and the impassioned rhetoric send a powerful signal to other world leaders that there will be a new boss and a new agenda in Washington from noon on January 20, Inauguration Day. In several capitals, expectations have risen for the US returning to its former prominent role on global climate policy, health research, environmental protection. Indeed, some have started calling for a global summit on science, to better coordinate how humanity should respond to those issues, and the impact of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Certainly, watching the Biden briefings over the weekend, an observer couldnt help but be struck by the contrast with the departing Trump Administration. Trump famously called climate science a Chinese hoax, speculated aloud about the possibility of administering bleach to COVID patients, took a felt-tip marker to a government weather map to make a hurricanes path appear less threatening, and enacted a long series of administrative changes that downgraded the impact of scientific evidence on US policy in many domains.

By contrast, we are going to make sure the United States of America once again leads the way in science and innovation, said Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect, at the briefing.

Echoing Bidens enthusiasm for the scientific appointments, Harris joked that she and Biden can nerd out a little at times. She went on to describe how she learned from her mother, an endocrinologist, about the scientific method as a way of life, of forming a hypothesis and recognising that its not a failure to revaluate that hypothesis when the facts dont add up making a decision based not on ideology but on evidence.

So far, the full sweep of Bidens planned science-related policies arent yet clear though he has in the past month laid out specific new measures, based on scientific advice, to tackle the pandemic, improve environmental protection and revive and restructure the economy.

A slim Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, and a 50-50 Democratic-Republican split in the Senate (with Harris as the tie-breaker), will permit many changes. And his executive powers to enact change especially in the inner workings of key agencies like the FDA and the departments of energy and agriculture are extensive. But the Democratic party itself is riven by internal dissension, and the chance of bipartisan agreement diminished greatly after the House voted to impeach Trump for an historic second time last week.

Science for equality

A few messages came clearly through the Biden science briefings. One was on the need to apply science to helping fix Americas appalling inequalities of income and race. Alondra Nelson, a Princeton University social scientist who was named Bidens deputy science advisor, said that science at its core is a social phenomenon, a reflection of the people. How we build AI algorithms, provide health care, are human choices. It matters who makes these choicesAs a Black woman researcher, I am keenly aware of who is missing from such decisions at present.

Likewise, Landers, the new chief science advisor, said we have to be sure not only that everybody has a seat at the table, but a place at the lab bench.

Another theme was listening to science to improve the chaotic US pandemic response. At the Jan. 15 briefing on COVID, Biden said that from the moment of his inauguration he will make mask-wearing mandatory on federal property, and on interstate planes and trains. Mask wearing, he said, has become a partisan issue. But what a stupid, stupid thing for it to happen. He said wearing masks in his first 100 days could save 50,000 lives.

Referring to the Capital siege in which legislators were forced to shelter together some with, and some without, masks, Biden called it shocking to see members of Congress refuse to wear masks. What the hells the matter with you?

Of the five top science appointees, most are familiar faces from the Obama Administration and in one case, from both the Trump and Obama eras:

Eric S. Lander, presidential science advisor and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). A leader of the successful 1990s US Human Genome Project that sequenced the first full human genome, and currently head of the Broad Institute, a genetics research centre run jointly by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Also, in the Obama-Biden administration, co-chair of the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Alondra Nelson, OSTP deputy director for science and society. Currently president of the Social Science Research Council and a sociology professor at Princetons Institute for Advanced Study.

Frances H. Arnold, co-chair of the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. A California Institute of Technology professor who in 2018 was the first American woman to win a Nobel in chemistry. She co-founded three biotech companies and is a director of Alphabet, the parent company of Google currently fighting antitrust charges from the US Department of Justice.

Maria Zuber, co-chair of the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. A geophysicist who is currently MIT vice president for research, and head of MITs famous Lincoln Laboratory. She has been involved in scientific aspects of 10 US space missions. She was named in 2013 by then-President Obama to the National Science Board, and was reappointed under Trump as board chair from 2016 to 2018.

Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. A hold-over from the Trump Administration, and first named to the post in 2009 by then-President Obama. He is a physician and geneticist, who was also with Lander a leader of the Human Genome Project.

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Biden puts science at the top of his agenda - Science Business