Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it

November 21, 2007 9:15 AM

The changing role of the U.S. presidential science adviser. (PDF)

Wartime tends to bring the White House and scientists together, and this was evident with Franklin Roosevelt's National Defense Research Committee, headed by Vannevar Bush.

It was during America's next war in 1951 that Harry Truman created a more stable body in the Science Advisory Council. The launch of Sputnik heightened Cold War animosity and led Dwight D. Eisenhower, fifty years ago last week, to bring the council deeper into the White House inner circle by upgrading it to the President's Science Advisory Committee.

The presidential science adviser was a thriving role until tensions over the board's findings spurred Richard Nixon to dissolve the post. It took an act of Congress to reestablish a science advisory board, though the new Office of Science and Technology Policy would never again have the intimate access of its predecessors. This is the form the U.S. science adviser has held to this day. Occasionally there are still disagreements between the president and his adviser.

posted by Terminal Verbosity (4 comments total)

It does seem inevitable that there would be tension between a faith-based president and any representative of the reality-based community.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:25 AM on November 21, 2007 [6 favorites]

Dr. President: The next president of the United States of America will control a $150 billion annual research budget, 200,000 scientists, and 38 major research institutions and all their related labs. This president will shape human endeavors in space, bioethics debates, and the energy landscape of the 21st century.
posted by homunculus at 11:10 AM on November 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm a bit hazy on why the current administration would even bother having one.

Hillary Clinton will probably pick Oprah to be her science adivosr or something.
posted by Artw at 11:18 AM on November 21, 2007

It does seem inevitable that there would be tension between a faith-based president and any representative of the reality-based community.

While funny, that is also the truest thing I've read today.
posted by dreamsign at 5:14 PM on November 21, 2007