Obama Replies to ScienceDebate2008 Questions
The ScienceDebate2008 initiative, of which AIBS is a part, aims to make key science issues a larger part of the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
The initiative has posed a list of 14 science questions facing America to the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, and the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain. “Most of America’s major unsolved challenges revolve around these 14 questions. To move America forward, the next president needs a substantive plan for tackling them going in, and voters deserve to know what that plan is,” states ScienceDebate2008.
The questions were developed from over 3,400 submissions from the more than 38,000 signers of the ScienceDebate2008 initiative, including scientists, engineers, and other concerned Americans, as well as nearly every major American science organization, dozens of Nobel laureates, elected officials and business leaders, and the presidents of over 100 major American universities.
The 14 questions address energy policy, national security, economics in a science-driven global economy, climate change, education, health care, ocean health, biosecurity, clean water, space, stem cells, scientific integrity, genetics, and research.
Yesterday, August 30th, ScienceDebate2008 issued a press release that Barack Obama has responded to the 14 questions. A response from John McCain is hoped for soon.
And in coordination with ScienceDebate2008, the Scientists and Engineers for America organization (SEA) has posted additional information on the two candidates' positions on major scientific issues, including an online form that can be used to send a message to John McCain asking that he respond to the ScienceDebate2008 14 questions, and a tabular comparison of the two candidates' previous statements on the following science topics:
Climate Change, Alternative Fuels, Nuclear Energy, Off-shore Drilling, Healthcare, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Sex Education, Evolution and Intelligent Design, Research & Research Funding, Broadband access, Net Neutrality, Space.
Here at AIBS we note that in all of the above there also needs to be a more explicit probing of both the candidates on their positions on the teaching of evolution and creationism in the classroom -- not just to gauge their cognizance of evolution's central role in the understanding of all of the biological and health sciences, but also more broadly to assess their comprehension of the basic scientific reasoning and evidence-based inference skills that any graduate of U.S. schools needs to succeed in the highly technical and competitive global economy. There are unanswered questions, for example, about John McCain's position on these issues, especially in light of the fact that his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, is on public record as stating that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public classrooms.