{"id":400,"date":"2009-04-28T04:02:42","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T08:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=400"},"modified":"2009-04-28T04:02:42","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T08:02:42","slug":"one-way-obama-has-supported-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=400","title":{"rendered":"One way Obama has supported scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

By giving me a free blog post.\u00a0 From his address to the National Academy of Science (full text here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won and Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Lincoln signed into law an act creating the National Academy of Sciences.\u00a0 Lincoln refused to accept that our nation\u2019s sole purpose was merely to survive. He created this academy, founded the land grant colleges, and began the work of the transcontinental railroad, believing that we must add \u201cthe fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery … of new and useful things\u201d …<\/p>\n

At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science. That support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree…<\/p>\n

I am here today to set this goal: we will devote more than three percent of our GDP to research and development … This represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history…<\/p>\n

The fact is, an investigation into a particular physical, chemical, or biological process might not pay off for a year, or a decade, or at all. And when it does, the rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by those who bore its costs but also by those who did not.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the private sector under-invests in basic science \u2013 and why the public sector must invest in this kind of research. Because while the risks may be large, so are the rewards for our economy and our society…<\/p>\n

We double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits \u2013 from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from testing \u201csmart grid\u201d designs to developing advanced manufacturing processes. And my budget doubles funding for the Department of Energy\u2019s Office of Science which builds and operates accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and facilities for making nano-materials…<\/p>\n

Our future on this planet depends upon our willingness to address the challenge posed by carbon pollution. And our future as a nation depends upon our willingness to embrace this challenge as an opportunity to lead the world in pursuit of new discovery…<\/p>\n

On March 9th, I signed an executive memorandum with a clear message: Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.\u00a0 Our progress as a nation \u2013 and our values as a nation \u2013 are rooted in free and open inquiry. To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy…<\/p>\n

We know that the quality of math and science teachers is the most influential single factor in determining whether or a student will succeed or fail in these subjects. Yet, in high school, more than twenty percent of students in math and more than sixty percent of students in chemistry and physics are taught by teachers without expertise in these fields…<\/p>\n

My budget also triples the number of National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships. This program was created as part of the Space Race five decades ago. In the decades since, it\u2019s remained largely the same size \u2013 even as the numbers of students who seek these fellowships has skyrocketed. We ought to be supporting these young people who are pursuing scientific careers, not putting obstacles in their path…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had only one quibble with the speech.\u00a0 The President says: “The calculations of today\u2019s GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago.”\u00a0 True enough—but they depend not only on SR but even on GR, which was “put to paper” around 1916.<\/p>\n

Predictably, coverage of this speech has concentrated on (1) some remarks about swine flu, and (2) a trivial incident where Obama got ahead of his TelePrompter.\u00a0 Clearly, he has a ways to go before matching the flawless delivery of our previous leader.<\/p>\n

I’m back in Boston, having returned from my trip to Berkeley and to the Quantum Information Science Workshop<\/a> in Virginia.\u00a0 I understand that the slides from the QIS workshop will be available any day now, and I’ll blog about the workshop once they are.\u00a0 (Sneak preview: it turns out that more quantum algorithms should<\/em> be discovered, battling decoherence is<\/em> important, and interdisciplinary insights are<\/em> needed—but there were actually some pretty spectacular results and open problems that I hadn’t heard before.)<\/p>\n

I’d also like to blog about two books I’m reading: Outliers<\/a> by Malcolm Gladwell, and First Principles<\/a> by Howard Burton (about the founding of the Perimeter Institute, and the first scientific history I’ve ever read for which I was there when a lot of it happened).\u00a0 Then again, if enough people discuss these books in the comments section, I won’t have to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By giving me a free blog post.\u00a0 From his address to the National Academy of Science (full text here): A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won and Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Lincoln signed into law an act […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-procrastination","category-the-fate-of-humanity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}