George F. Smoot

Science and the nation are inextricably intertwined. The economic and military strength of the county is based upon the technologies that have sprung from our basic science research. Likewise our medical system is fully dependent on a mixture of medical research and physical sciences detector development. Thus the health, well being, safety of our country's citizens depends very directly on the technological fruits of scientific research. [more...]

John H. McWhorter

The typical college student who has studied Arabic for a year has essentially learned how to decode text and utter simple sentences—which is useless in decoding a memo written in running script by a terrorist, or even in understanding a speech by an Arab official. [more...]

Ian Wilmut

Biomedical research in the United States has a distinguished record of contributing to knowledge and to new medical treatments. In the same way, research with cells derived from cloned human embryos will offer unique opportunities to study many extremely unpleasant diseases, perhaps one day to have treatments for these diseases and also to produce safer medicines. This research cannot be carried out in any other way. [more...]

J. Craig Venter

With the genetic material in hand of organisms such as human, mouse, and fruit fly, researchers now have the opportunity to understand these complex creatures so that we may one day better treat disease, fully understand evolutionary biology, and thus understand the most fundamental aspects of life and how we as humans function. [more...]

Steven Pinker

Your father called himself “the education president,” and you have promised new educational policies in which"no child is left behind." [more...]

Ray Kurzweil

... my proposal is on a different front: to dramatically increase funding for promising new methodologies in the field of "human somatic cell engineering," which bypass entirely fetal stem cells. These emerging technologies create new tissues with a patient's own DNA by modifying one type of cell (such as a skin cell) directly into another (such as a pancreatic Islet cell or a heart cell) without the use of fetal stem cells. [more...]

Gino Segre

New insights in developmental biology—our similarities to not only chimpanzees and baboons, but to fruit flies and worms, the genomic revolution and the invigorated emergence of neuroscience are all candidates for unforgettable discoveries. They must be pursued with all the means at our disposal. I would like to address a totally different one: the birth of our universe. [more...]

Stephen H. Schneider

Science does not allocate equal time or space to all ideas once the winnowing process of quality assessment has begun. To follow the political doctrine of "balance" diminishes democracy since it distorts the knowledge base upon which sound decisions should be made. [more...]

Oliver Morton

Your number one priority in science and technology should be a new commitment to international public health. It is not a particularly sexy topic; it needs no new nano-know-how, nor a radical change in our way of seeing the physical world. It will create no great technical advantage for America, nor add to its already impressive defenses. Though it will employ the talents of hundreds of thousands around the world, relatively few of them will be on the cutting edge of research. But it is what you must do, nonetheless. [more...]

Rodney Brooks

I would urge you to set aside perhaps a billion dollars to fund new fellowships for graduate students from predominantly Islamic countries to come and study science (broadly construed) in the United States. [more...]

Seth Lloyd

Science is public knowledge. But science is not the only field where openness is important. The security failures of 9/11 were caused not by too little, but by too much secrecy. And the discussions that form public policy should be public...Science isn't poker: it only works when the cards are dealt face up. Don't go down in history as the Texan who closed the scientific frontier. [more...]

Denis Dutton

I hope your new Science Advisor comes to the job armed with knowledge of the rich history of junk science and false predictions served up to government in the last forty years. [more...]

There are many excellent researchers who would make rapid progress in malarial "post-genomics" if substantial new money became available. It would therefore be widely recognised as a wonderfully enlightened action if you were to ensure that the National Institutes of Health introduced a malaria post-genomics programme, with a new budget of at least $300m, as a first step towards the prevention and cure of this devastating disease. [more...]

Kevin Kelly

Science, like business, has been totally captured by the next quarter mentality, and it will require a deliberate effort to stress the long view so that our knowledge matches our predicament. [more...]

Lawrence B. Brilliant, M.D.

The fear of smallpox as a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists is based either on the public information, which is speculative and anecdotal, or on military or secret intelligence sources which are unavailable. [more...]

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi

The point is, Mr. President, that a National Bureau for the Support of Science, with Cabinet status, is getting to be a necessity. [more...]

Paul Davies

Many commentators are urging George Bush Jr. to finish in Iraq what President George Bush Sr. began in the Gulf War. Mr. President, I urge you to apply this advise in space. Take up the challenge. Go to Mars! [more...]

Robert Shapiro

Our scientific and cultural heritage is abundant, and the threats to it are numerous—it is time to back up civilization. To do this we will need to establish secure sanctuaries (think of the monasteries of the Middle Ages) that preserve and update copies of the vital records and articles needed for the conduct of our society. [more...]

Jaron Lanier

You are in an amazing position. You are the most powerful president in a generation. Be bold! Science and technology are the most potent tools mankind has for improving our circumstances. Let's use this amazing moment in history to create a new period of happiness and prosperity. Please don't let your marvelous position in history go to waste. [more...]

J. Doyne Farmer

...science is patriotic. Good old American know-how is the foundation that has made this a great country. It is no coincidence that so many of the founding fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, had a lifelong passion for science. Science is the engine that has fueled our prosperity. [more...]

Colin Tudge

...science has become bound with wealth and power into a positive feedback loop from which it cannot escape: its perceived role in the present age is to provide high technologies of the kind that generate capital which in turn supports more science, of the kind that will provide high technologies to generate more capital and so on and so on. [more...]

Marvin Minsky

My idea is that the whole "Homeland Defense" thing is too cost-ineffective to be plausible. [more...]

George Dyson

What’s missing is that science (and engineering) is no longer a fundamental priority of the national agenda—the way it was when Sputnik galvanized us into action in the aftermath of World War II. [more...]

William H. Calvin

But only a dozen years ago, no one knew much about abrupt climate change, those past occasions when the whole world flipped out of a warm-and-wet mode like today into the alternate mode, which is cool, dry, windy, dusty. [more...]

David Gelernter

What the president ought to do is obvious: focus the nation's mind on a big, real and exciting problem. Ideally we ought to have a competitor to keep us playing our best game—but if the problem is interesting enough, maybe the competitor doesn't matter. [more...]

Howard Gardner

You went to Andover, Yale and Harvard, respected educational institutions where educational values are debated up front, where you were not a guinea pig in randomized trials, and where you had some of the most gifted teachers in the world. Your children, our children, deserve the same respect. [more...]

Richard E. Nisbett

Beneficial results for innovations in minority education have been obtained at every level from early elementary school through college. Unfortunately, it is frequently assumed, even by educators, that such results are possible only for charismatic individuals and that they cannot be duplicated by normal people in normal school systems. [more...]

Human beings have thrived because, more than any other creature, we are naturally driven to learn about the world around us. Our greatest scientists and most creative companies regularly borrow the best practices of mothers and preschool teachers. Give all our scientists, old and young, lunch, the right toys, a safe place to play, interesting problems to solve, and someone to talk to, and watch them fly. [more...]

K. Eric Drexler

Advanced nanotechnologies, based on molecular manufacturing, will enable the production of computer systems a billion times more powerful than today's, aerospace vehicles with 98% less structural mass, and medical tools enabling molecular repair of cells, tissues, and organs. These and related technologies will be economically and strategically decisive. [more...]

Richard Saul Wurman

The making of scientific information understandable means presenting, designing & structuring this information so that it is accessible, available and actionable. Constructive science is based upon accessibility, understandability, an informed constituency and finally action. [more...]

Gerald Holton

...it is essential to realize that behind the many pressing scientific issues facing our Nation today, one stands out far among the rest: The persistent decline for several years in the past, and into the foreseeable future, of the very health of the scientific/technological workforce of America. [more...]

Maybe you should look for a science advisor in some other field ... um, botany? No, too controversial. Dermatology? [more...]

Accelerating the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere by profligate use of Iraq's vast oil supplies, together with the continuing deforestation of the Amazon, will not only turn the Amazon basin into a parched desert but plunge the entire mid-West into prolonged drought, resulting in famine in your own land. History would then judge you as an apocalyptic Burning Bush, bringing the scourge of parching fire to your country and its people. [more...]

The best way to deal with this particular problem [deep level of ignorance of science], which impedes the solution of most other scientific problems, is to provide an annual bonus on top of their salary to new science teachers of $100,000 a year, and put applicants through a rigorous selection process based on a combination of knowledge, skill and passion for the subject, combined with superb pupil handling ability. [more...]

Joel Garreau

We are entering an era of scientific change that is rocking no less than human nature itself. This directed evolution is unprecedented. It is convulsing everything from the affairs of state, to defense, to commerce, to labor, to education, to health, to welfare, to the economy. It is not science fiction. It has begun to occur and is accelerating this decade. You need an advisor who can help you try to ride this curve of change. [more...]

Mr President, it is the United States of America who long ago brought the evil of prohibition upon the world, and still holds the power to prevent the rest of us from seeking freedom from prohibition. Mr President, you could win the war on terrorism, not by fighting, but by refusing to fight the war on drugs. [more...]

A key aspect of this program is the prize: $100,000 to each high school senior and $1,000,000 to the college counterparts. The total annual cost of the program (including administration) would be less than $250 million, while its impact would be dramatic and long lasting. With serious prize money on the line science would no longer be just for the "weird" kids. Indeed, doing science would be seen as cool. [more...]

Taking all three points together, my advice is to stimulate optimism by making a bold move turning America's focus from its negative role in war brinkmanship to a positive role as a leader who stands for peace, freedom and economic growth. [more...]

David G. Myers

The moral: It is perfectly normal to fear purposeful violence from those who hate us. When Saddam commits more evil, or when terrorists strike again (likely where unexpected), we will all recoil in horror. But smart thinkers will also want to check their intuitive fears against the facts. [more...]

Ernst Pöppel

Scientists are natural ambassadors...It is only scientists who bring people and nations together. Independent of history, religious faith, economic status, gender or color of skin, scientists work together and have worked together to pursue a common goal, i.e. a deeper understanding of nature and culture. [more...]

Lisa Randall

The views of the scientific community could be especially relevant today. Many pressing issues that will shape the lives of Americans and the world in the coming years will be best addressed by leaders who recognize that science, science education, scientific expertise, and international science cooperation are crucial to formulating the best policy. [more...]

Stuart L. Pimm

I have yet to see an area where science has informed any of this present administration's policies. Despite much hand waving about "sound science" I have no confidence that a science advisor would have any useful impact whatsoever. [more...]

Eduardo Punset

Science is pointing towards an LSD-like world without LSD intake. And we are wholly unprepared for both. Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Psychology—the things we are made of—are inextricably intertwined. People though, remain interactiveless and disentangled. [more...]

Lee Smolin

In the modern world, science, democracy and prosperity go hand in hand, and it is no coincidence that throughout history those nations that led the development of democracy also led their times in scientific advancement. [more...]

Rafael Nunez

Without the Infinite, mathematics as we know it, would simply not exist. But where does the Infinite come from? How do we grasp the Infinite if, after all, our biology is finite, and so are our experiences and everything we encounter with our bodies?  [more...]

Mike Weiner

We are benefitted by the significant investments into nano/bio technologies being funded through NIH, NSF, DARPA/DOD. An increase, modest on the scale of the overall budget, with a research mandate encouraging exploring these new areas of potential discovery, can yield enormous benefits in developing diagnostics, and as a result of that, therapeutics, to tackle the many diseases afflicting humanity, and the current enormous cost of treating these diseases. [more...]

Leon Lederman

When you remarked that the nation owes me (i.e. its scientists) a great debt, I could not refrain from asking, "Sir, could you possibly estimate approximately how much that would be?" the crowd broke up and I missed my chance. [more...]

Bart Kosko

But there is a more focused and more urgent crisis of scientific literacy: There is widespread statistical illiteracy among scientists themselves. The signature of this illiteracy is not being able to tell a number from a curve. [more...]

Adam Bly

In times where the most important issues facing your administration, and indeed the nation, are science-centric—from the search for biological weapons in Iraq to human cloning, from global warming to smallpox vaccinations—the voice of the President's chief science advisor must be more pronounced; the public needs to see and hear a stronger scientific presence in the West Wing. [more...]

Randolph Nesse

A World Science Collaboration committed to providing no-strings-attached scientific resources to other countries would change how the United States is viewed by the world community. [more...]

Terrence Sejnowski

A bold new initiative is needed to train a new generation of computational biologists who are equally at home in wet bench science and the world of computational science. [more...]

Mary Catherine Bateson

...we regard more and more problems of individual behavior as biologically determined, but we are increasingly ready to treat them biochemically, and looking forward to treating them genetically. Our fatalism about the individual capacity to learn and heal is matched only by our technological hubris. [more...]

Alan Alda

Too many people think cloning cells for the fight against disease is the same thing as creating Frankenstein's monster. Too many people think evolution is the idea that people are descended from apes. And too many people think that genetic modification of plants is a dangerous new idea, instead of something that's been going on for ten thousand years...The problem is that, although we're all entitled to our beliefs, our culture increasingly holds that science is just another belief. Maybe this is because it's easier to believe something—anything—than not to know. [more...]

Cliff Barney

Your science advisor is really a social advisor, providing an expert's view on how the state can best assist in and benefit from the advancement of science. [more...]

Doulgas Rushkoff

To push a science agenda, we would have to promote the underlying premise of science: that none of the systems we use to understand this reality are pre-existing or true. They were simply the most useful at a particular moment—very often to a particular group. When they stop being useful, we must be prepared to discard them. [more...]

Donald D. Hoffman

But the single greatest mystery facing science today arises, remarkably, each time we see the red of an apple, hear the blast of a trumpet, smell the fragrance of a rose, or reel with anger from an insult. The mystery is this: What is the relationship between our everyday conscious experiences and our brains? [more...]

Steve Giddings

Science is the only way we have of truly understanding how our increasingly complex world works. The scientific view is the long view—it is not short term thinking; it seeks the big picture. The choice is clear: a future of ignorance, or a far better future of enlightenment. [more...]

Lance Knobel

Your friend Tony Blair recently gave a speech where he declared, "We're at a crossroads. We could choose a path of timidity in the face of the unknown. Or we could choose to be a nation at ease with radical knowledge, not fearful of the future, a culture that values a pragmatic, evidence-based approach to new opportunities." Prime Minister Blair believes the second path is the clear choice. It's time you demonstrated the same conviction. [more...]

Piet Hut

However, there is one aspect of my work that does have deadly consequences, more precisely, will have deadly consequences if it is ignored. Here is where heaven and earth meet: in the possibility, and in the long run the certainty, that people will die through the effects of an impact of an asteroid, large or small. [more...]

Robert Aunger

While the findings of anthropologists indicate that we should be tolerant of cultural variation, taking anthropology seriously as a science also indicates that we should not mistake exotic beliefs for science. The fact that people have diverse systems of belief does not give them all equal claims on truth. [more...]

Christine Finn

Without a sense of the past, there is a danger of raising a generation of change-junkies, weaned on the rush of accelerating technologies, for whom history has no relevance. They would recognise technological change only through its material culture—the stuff—brought to them on the street and in a welter of media hits. In their world where nothing stands still, they are left with no space to evaluate why technological change happens and, crucially, its implications. [more...]

David M. Buss

We are endangered from the outside by our avowed enemies. We are threatened from within by killers among us. An urgent need for the nation to establish a deep scientific understanding of psychological circuits dedicated to murder and the causal processes that create, activate, and deactivate those circuits. [more...]

Beatrice Golomb

As recognized pathogens develop multi-drug resistance, and as new pathogens are recognized, our tools for recognizing and treating these agents must keep up. At one time it was thought that infectious diseases had been practically vanquished. We must work hard to keep up. [more...]

Rupert Sheldrake

My proposal is that 99 per cent of the research funds continue to be allocated in the usual way. But I suggest that 1 per cent is spent in a way that reflects the curiosity of lay people, who pay for all publicly funded research through taxes. It would be necessary to create a separate funding body. One possible name would be the National Discovery Center. [more...]

PPrinter version (complete text of all responses)