1.Comment from Ignacio Chapela
2.Must 'science' mean 'corporate science'?
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1.Comment from Ignacio Chapela on the "Gristmill" posting, re: corporate "science" behind Obama [see item 2]

I think – and therefore I am out of the current electoral madness – that it would be easier to deal with the obtruse McCain-Palin stone-age than with the "pro-science" Obama gang.


During the campaigns at Berkeley against the BP hordes [promoting biotech for biofuels], we have been pointing out the clear commitment of the candidate and all his advisors to the failed and hollow dream of biotech.  Even before he was a candidate, Obama was quoted on BP's own website in the "living resources" section (as opposed to the "mineral resources", like oil, from which BP makes money).    You only need to read the comments in the Gristmill blog (thanks, Richard, for pointing it out) to see where things will pan out: people out there have lost all sense of what "the public" meant in terms of science.    There is no conception that profit-oriented (still worse: stock-market driven) technologizing is a very far cry from science, and anyone daring to even raise the question is pummelled as a luddite or Palin-lover.  A tip of the hat to the advisors of the biotech ruffians, who have been playing that trick to great effect (not long ago, they managed to attach any critique of their
plans as "pro-Bush", in exactly the same rhetorical way as they are doing now).

NB: this is not a commentary to say ANYTHING about what I think of the electoral slate this season, but rather to comment on the shocking level of anti-education which now reigns in the US, forty years after 1968.

Cheers,
Ignacio
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2.Must 'science' mean 'corporate science'?
Wired: Two top Obama science advisors are tied to Monsanto and Amgen
by Tom Philpott
Grist, 19 September 2008
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/9/18/123340/083

I hope the executive branch's "war on science" era ends in January. Heading into a period of climate change, tight fossil energy supplies, growing trouble with food-borne illnesses, declining health metrics, etc, we clearly don't need a bunch of creationists and climate-change deniers knocking about the White House.

At the same time, I hope we don't swing in the direction of a hyper-corporate vision of science: the idea that big problems demand big solutions -- the kind conveniently offered by really big companies.

Well, Wired recently got the Obama campaign to reveal its five main science advisors. Unhappily, two of them have ties to the biotech industry: Sharon Long, Monsanto board of directors, 2002-2007; and Gilbert Omenn, Amgen director, 1987 present. Actually, Omenn has a list of corporate ties as long as your arm; for example, he also serves on the board of industrial-chemical concern Rohm and Haas.

By all means, listen to the corporate perspective: If the world is to feed itself,  Monsanto must operate within a lax regulatory framework -- while also relying on draconian intellectual-property protection. Or, to stay healthy, the public needs a steady supply of novel, rapidly FDA-approved pharmaceuticals from the likes of Amgen.

Fine. But where are the ecologists? Where are the scientists don't see the world as a discrete, independent set of problems ready to be solved by corporate-led science? Where are the scientists who believe in the precautionary principle?

I realize that in the academy, government science funding has withered and corporate cash has filled the vacuum. At this point, if you want to study science, you almost have to play ball. In a sense, "science" really does mean "corporate science."

But Obama could still do better. I suggest he scroll through the board of the Union of Concerned Scientists to look for advisors who can balance the Monsanto/Amgen types.