What will Trump’s presidency mean for American science policy?

Soon after his electoral college victory, President-elect Donald Trump was atypically conciliatory. “For those who have chosen not to support me in the past,” he said, “I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.”

Whether he can do so will have significant impact on his ability to govern effectively and repair the damage this election has wrought. So far, there’s little reassurance for the scientific community, as those advising Trump have a collective history of attacking scientists and their work.

First, there’s Myron Ebell, leading the Environmental Protection Agency’s transition. Much reporting has focused on his extensive ties to climate denial. But he was also the silent hand behind the Bush administration’s efforts to rewrite scientific reports on climate change. Then there’s David Schnare, an EPA transition team member who has made a career of taking money from the coal industry to harass climate scientists by drowning them in open records requests.

Under a dark-money Cabinet, science will become more vulnerable to spin and suppression. On the shortlist for energy secretary is oil magnate Harold Hamm, who pressured the University of Oklahoma to fire researchers who suggested a link between fracking and earthquakes, and then sued someone over a Facebook post that criticized his actions.

Over the longer term, we can expect such threats to multiply. Echo chambers are likely to get worse. Net neutrality is in peril. Media blacklists are becoming a trend. Abhorrent behaviors that were normalized during the campaign may be normalized.

Legislation to weaken the scientific foundation of laws such as the US clean air act will be more likely to pass. President Obama threatened vetoes on bills that would have increased political control of National Science Foundation grants, upped industry influence over the EPA Science Advisory Board, and paralyzed the EPA’s ability to issue science-based public protections. We cannot expect the same from his successor.

So what are scientists to do?

It is not time to throw up our hands but to roll up our sleeves. Jack Stilgoe and Roger Pielke rightly argued in this blog last week that scientists must engage with the Trump administration. We should not vilify those who choose to serve in executive branch science advisory positions, or assume such service is a lost cause.

We have elected a president, not a dictator. We should recognise that what a candidate says on the campaign trail is often different from how one governs. Campaigns allow for extraordinary statements, but governing is constrained by the rule of law. Checks and balances may be dwindling, but they still exist, and we should take full advantage of them to ensure that science continues to serve the public interest.

Before the election, Trump’s answers to policy questions posed by Sciencedebate.org were vague but heading in the right direction. What will be his administration’s regulatory policy? “Science will inform our decisions on what regulations to keep, rescind, or add,” he responded. What about preventing political interference in science? “My administration will ensure that there will be total transparency and accountability without political bias,” he wrote. Engagement helps hold him to such commitments.

But engagement is not the same thing as appeasement.

Read more https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2016/nov/18/what-will-trumps-presidency-mean-for-american-science-policy

Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd