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IN THE run-up to this week’s solar eclipse, there was one message so ubiquitous that it was hard to ignore: don’t look at the sun without eye protection. But as the moon moved across the face of our star, one person nonetheless did just that. It was the president of the United States.
Had Donald Trump somehow managed to miss all the warnings? Or had he just blanked them? The 45th president is notorious for ignoring scientific advice. Only the day before, his administration disbanded an advisory committee that aims to help the federal government incorporate climate assessments into its planning.
That comes as little surprise. Trump’s administration is widely viewed as irredeemably anti-science, prompting responses like April’s March for Science. But that’s not strictly correct. Last week it published its first Research and Development Budget Priorities. Its key areas are American military superiority, American security, American prosperity, American energy dominance and American health.
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The four-page memo paints science as playing a heroic role in achieving these: it will lead to “tremendous job creation”, “drive the economy” and “improve the quality of American lives”. In short, science has a role in making America great again.
Bombastic it may be, but at least it comes out in clear support of science. Unfortunately, the science appears to belong to a bygone age – specifically the 1950s, with its thriving military-industrial complex and ambitious space programme (see “NASA insists it is going to Mars, but it really can’t afford to“).
Such nostalgia is not entirely unjustified. Whatever you think of the ethics of the military-industrial approach, it delivered.
“The danger now is that US scientists will settle for being on tap to deliver Trump’s priorities”
Today, however, the words don’t match the deeds. Post-war research was showered with money and scientists were considered valuable advisors – though were expected to be “on tap, not on top”, as Winston Churchill supposedly put it. Trump, in contrast, has sought to cut budgets – even in some of his priority areas – and has not even appointed a presidential science advisor or a science policy director.
The challenges faced by the world have also changed, and yet the memo largely ignores them. The environment, unsurprisingly, doesn’t get a mention – in sharp contrast with Barack Obama’s final priorities for R&D, which included climate change, Earth observation and Arctic science.
The world is gradually adjusting to the US’s dereliction of its role in many areas. That goes for science, too. The danger is that US scientists will accept being on tap to deliver Trump’s priorities. In the 1950s, many welcomed their new careers and institutions, and talked up the benefits their research would bring. Few were as vocal about the problems it could detect, or create – some of them the progenitors of today’s more intractable troubles.
It took decades for scientists to unify behind the idea that they can be a force for environmental, as well as economic, good. Trump and his like are willing to ignore any amount of evidence to undo that. They must not prevail. Scientists have rarely been so far from being on top. But they must not settle for being on tap.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Wilfully blind”
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