If you believe what you read, the dawn of the Obama Administration heralds a return to “evidence-based” scientific thinking — often overdramatically portrayed as rational thought itself.  Although I don’t disagree that some sort of change is coming (and that much of it will be for the better), I think this theme ignores something crucial.

I don’t know anyone personally, but I would doubt that every member of the Bush administration was completely illogical or irrational in how they approached scientific issues. The difference between then, and what Obama supporters are hoping for now, is more likely the underlying values, worldviews, and what constitutes the “facts” or “evidence” on which the different groups make decisions.  The best analogy I can think of is crime: while surely some of it results from poor decision-making, another large portion of it unfortunately derives from rational thinking in the context of a very different set of values with respect to society.

This matters because I get the impression that many people who voted for President Obama feel like the tide has turned, that a huge shift has occurred in the American populace, and that the future will be quite different.

I don’t think the first part of this equation is true.  President Obama won pretty decisively, and polls consistently show most Americans unhappy with the Bush years as they drew to a close.  But Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain can be statistically represented as a room randomly populated with 40 Americans, 21 of whom chose Obama and 19 of whom chose McCain. So don’t focus on how many more millions of votes Obama received than did McCain. Focus on the final score: Obama 21-Bush 19. It was a close game, even if Obama, as he said to Congressional Republians, won.

This matters when considering how to achieve certain science and technology (and, for that matter, other) objectives.  When the Cardinals lost the Super Bowl, they lost — in the end it did not matter how close the score was.  But when Republicans lost the Presidency (and both houses of Congress), the margin of victory does matter — if you doubt that, just look at the House Republicans’ vote on the stimulus package.  Because in politics, the game never ends.

My advice to President Obama, and to Democratic opinion makers in general, is NOT to focus on clearly partisan issues where Democrats and Republicans have divided into opposing camps along clear party lines. Pushing through legislative and executive action in those cases will be a simple power play, and in light of the 21-19 final score will lack the broad social support needed to enact true social change.

Instead, they should focus on making those changes that most Americans — not merely most Democrats and progressives — would like to see, and execute them well.   President Bush was routinely criticized for governing from the hard right even though the final score, in his last game, was Bush 20.5-Kerry 19.5 (and before that Bush 19.9-Gore 20.1!), and rightly so.

The Obama Administration should start with those science policy issues on which then-candidates Obama and McCain mostly agreed (and on which bost disagreed with then-President Bush):

• establishing a cap-and-trade program that sets a national limit on carbon emissions;
• supporting the development of more nuclear power;
• fostering biodefense research, expanding autism research and screening;
• developing a national HIV/AIDS strategy;
• extending international space station operations beyond 2016;
• providing greater federal support for stem cell research, including expanding the number of federally approved stem cell lines; and
• altering immigration guidelines to make it easier for foreigh Ph.D’s to stay in the US.

Issues to avoid for now would be those on which candidate McCain lined up with President Bush and against then-candidate Obama:

• ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty:
• attempting any sort of federal intervention in state-level questions regarding the teaching of intelligent design in school;
• halting the storage of nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, Nevada; and
• allowing research cloning.

The trickiest road to navigate leads to those issues that should be addressed now even though they might prove controversial.  My suggestion would be to pick one or two issues where the “controversial” choice is actually consistent with another issue on which there is much broader agreement. An environmental example would be tightening air pollution standards to what experts recommend, which would most likely be part of setting a national limit on carbon emissions anyway.

A new approach to policies that reflects an evidence-based understanding of how much broad support there truly is for certain course alterations will be a welcome change indeed.

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