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There Is Another OSTP

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 26, 2017
Filed under
There Is Another OSTP

Obama’s science diaspora prepares for a fight, Washington Post
“Phil Larson, who focused on space exploration issues at OSTP under Obama for five years before leaving for SpaceX and now the University of Colorado, said the way Obama and Holdren emphasized science and technology left a mark on those who worked there. “Their time at OSTP specifically under President Obama and Dr. Holdren galvanized a whole new kind of passion from them, because they saw it being paid attention to at the highest levels. … The Obama administration was considered among the most science-friendly administrations in history, so it isn’t surprising that his staffers at the center of that effort feel a sense of mission that carries beyond the White House gates. And now, with the Trump administration’s assault on science taking form, that mission is rapidly increasing in scope and magnitude.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

10 responses to “There Is Another OSTP”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    You know, I didn’t realize just how bad that swamp needed draining until I read articles like this.

    • Michael Kaplan says:
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      Are you implying that science is a “special interest”?

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Anything that gets government funding becomes a “special interest” as an “industry” dependent on that funding emerges to “support” it and, of course, campaigns for more tax payer dollars to be spent on it. Science is no different.

        • Michael Kaplan says:
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          That’s a pretty naive view of how Government funded science largely works. Do you have any direct, personal experience to back up your broad claims pertaining to science? Science is an evidence-based process that seeks knowledge to answer questions to seek truth. So are you saying a process that seeks truth is a “special interest?”

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Funny how every special interest thinks it so special and better than the others. ROFL

            Nice try to also confuse the scientific method with big government science. You don’t need to be funded by government to do science, anyone is free to do so.

            But what big government science has become is another industry with corporations like RAND, SAIC, Southwest Research Institute earning billions in revenues. In the academic world it has corrupted the hiring and tenure process. No one cares how good a teacher a faculty member is, they base hiring, tenure and promotions on how much federal dollars someone brings in. Let the grad students teach the classes, the faculty is busy seeking federal grants.

            You want to study the mating behavior of Red Admiral butterflies? Forget it. But say your are studying the effect of climate change on the mating behavior of Red Admiral butterflies and money rains down. It is whatever the funding trend and fad that drives big science today, not the spirit of inquiry. Same with publications.

            The scientific method is a way of generating knowledge, but the science industry today is driven by emotions, fads, biases, opinions of pundits, lobbying just like any other industry. But scientists still pretend its pure and noble inquiry rather admitting what it has become.

            Really it seems that the only real science anymore is done by amateurs, when its permitted, who are really in it only for the sake of knowledge.

            Big science is part of the swamp in Washington, it is time for folks to recognize it and become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

          • fcrary says:
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            Be serious. No one would fund a proposal to study “the effect of climate change on the mating behavior of Red Admiral butterflies.” You have to say it the other way, “using observations of the mating behavior of Red Admiral butterflies as a diagnostic of climate change.” The stated result has to be the part with the fashionable catch phrase.

          • fcrary says:
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            I don’t think he was talking about science. I note that filling potholes is a straight-forward, completely apolitical technical job. Deciding which potholes to fix and how much to spend on it is heavily political. So is any discussion of science _funding_. How much to spend on science is political; how much to spend on terrestrial geophysics versus planetary science is political; even changes to NASA’s list candidate of New Frontiers missions is political.

            But when it comes to science itself, that can also be political. The debate over plate tectonics in the mid-twentieth century was both political and bitter. Even at a less extreme level, anytime a scientist wants to make a measurement or observation to “prove his theory” or “convince people of his idea” rather than find out if he’s right or wrong, he’s making the process political.

    • DP Huntsman says:
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      Sorry, Tom, you get a down arrow on that. American science and technology is about the future for America (and, all the people of Earth, as American has been- at least, up to now – a leader in them). It’s about finding out how things work; the people’s health, safety, plans for the future, what can be found out and what should be found out….and that is now, factually, in danger, and under active attack. It’s the swamp that is attacking America’s science, technology, and future; and these clearly loyal Americans (who themselves are not an industry ‘special interest”) see all of our futures in danger, and want to find a way to fight back. That’s honorable.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Nice spin, but misses the point completely of what the swamp is. It’s everyone in Washington believing their cause is so critical taxpayers MUST support it without question. While the peasants are starting to ask questions and starting to see who the wizards are behind the curtain demanding their money.

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          The National Advisory Council for Aeronautics was chartered in 1915, only a dozen years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, because even then we were losing the race to conquer the air. The European countries had recognized that without government support for research and development, their countries would be left out. The Wright Brothers had left for France.

          It isn’t the peasants that are demanding their money. It’s the small group of people who already have almost all the money, and want even more.