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Politicians and Science
Aug. 9th, 2019 03:29 pmToday I spotted several articles about politicians proposing laws that science doesn't support:
"Proposed Wildfire Legislation Ignores Science"
"The Emperor Has No Clothes when it comes to cows and cheatgrass"
"Fuel Breaks don’t work in sagebrush ecosystems"
Currently, law proposals are primarily made by politicians and secondarily by big business. But what if we changed that? We have 50 states, after all. Any one of them could decide to let scientists try drafting laws about topics directly related to science (e.g. climate change, invasive species). We could also make a habit of trying different proposals in different places, then comparing results to see which works better. Another option would be electing more scientists to public office. I imagine this would not appeal to many scientists, but we might find a few.
If we want to find effective solutions for problems, we need to apply facts to the decision-making process, and that's not happening very much.
"Proposed Wildfire Legislation Ignores Science"
"The Emperor Has No Clothes when it comes to cows and cheatgrass"
"Fuel Breaks don’t work in sagebrush ecosystems"
Currently, law proposals are primarily made by politicians and secondarily by big business. But what if we changed that? We have 50 states, after all. Any one of them could decide to let scientists try drafting laws about topics directly related to science (e.g. climate change, invasive species). We could also make a habit of trying different proposals in different places, then comparing results to see which works better. Another option would be electing more scientists to public office. I imagine this would not appeal to many scientists, but we might find a few.
If we want to find effective solutions for problems, we need to apply facts to the decision-making process, and that's not happening very much.
