There is, today, a political battle in progress that will determine the future of the United States. The war is between those who think that it is important for national leaders to make decisions based upon solid science, science that has been hammered out by SCIENTISTS who engage in the self-correcting process known as "science," and those who think that their ideas, their wants ("druthers"), and the desires of funding groups will yield the "facts" they need to promote their point of view. This is not a new battle, but one that has been on-going for many years.
Government leaders really first became convinced that they needed good hard scientific advice during the depression. As the nation began to take increasing notice of the machinations of the axis powers (to be), it became obvious to President Roosevelt that he needed help. So he created a wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development under Vannevar Bush (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush for a brief biography). Under President Eisenhower, the President's Science Advisory Committee, under MIT president James Killian gave the President needed advice. That office lasted until killed by newly sworn-in President Richard Nixon. Since then, presidents have made do with a series of more or less effective advisory groups, often on an ad hoc basis.
In 1972, Congress, feeling the need to legislate with effective scientific information created the Office of Technology Assessment ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment for a brief overview of that office). It came under severe criticism from Republicans when it published a paper, by physicist Ashton Carter, that warned that the Reagan era Star Wars program would not protect America. A series of papers confirming that came under severe Republican criticism. The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, began to increase its attacks on OTA. When Newt Gingrich and his colleagues came to power in 1994, they suceeded in de-funding (killing) OTA. Congress has since had no internal organ to assess science or technology, despite calls for its re-creation. Today, political leaders hold hearing and invite "science experts" who agree with the hearing chairperson, hardly a path to unbiased scientific knowledge or advice.
In the meantime, attacks on scientific consenses continue, especially by far right-wing politicians. In a 2005 book, "The Republican War on Science," by Chris Mooney, the author documents dozens of attacks on science over the last thirty years. His book ends in 2005, when Mooney felt that the attacks couldn't get worse than they were then. That was before the 2012 Presidential campaign began in late 2010 and the attacks did, indeed, get worse. Today the attacks are broad-based and cover the gamut of the environment, energy, basic biology (of all things), climatology, medicine and other fields.
When this author worked in Naval Intelligence (for a bit less than two years), he read a book that cautioned that absolute knowledge of an enemy's intentions can never be had - for the dictator might change his mind after he leaves the final meeting. Likewise, we cannot know, for certain, that the current crop of Republican Presidential hopefuls really believe what they are saying. Pandering to the crowd is an old and acceptable feature of political life (here, as elsewhere). If one had to venture a guess, it would be that 25% or less of the people in a political rally audience, know much about science. Oh, they can twitter their minds out, make phone calls at 75 mph, but they have no clue how any of that magic actually happens. Their expectation is probably that it will always get better and better. So, in that environment, office seekers can tell the crowd whatever makes the crowd louder and more supportive. Do Perry, Bachmann, et al, really believe that creationism trumps evolution, that climate change is "just a normal thing and will get better no matter what WE do," that there will ALWAYS be more oil to suck out of the earth, or that medicine doen't need to be based on modern biological concepts to improve? If they do believe it, is it possible that they, with almost no scientific knowledge, could they be right? What would their tomorrow look like? If they don't believe it, what on earth do they believe, except that they somehow have the right to high political office and the power and wealth that would bring to them. Is that it? What kind of tomorrow is that?
We can't know the answer to any of that. And not knowing is really, really scary.
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