After four years of science-denial, Biden is introducing a new era. Science and facts are in again. Truth matters. No alternative facts. Ignorance and stupidity are no longer honored or tolerable.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Saturday that he was “always going to lead with science and truth” as he announced top science and technology officials on his White House staff, reaffirming trust in the kind of expert research that the Trump administration often ignored or disdained.
Extolling what he called “some of the most brilliant minds in the world,” Mr. Biden said his new team’s mission would be to ask: “How can we make the impossible possible?” He vowed to elevate scientific research and thinking on topics like the coronavirus, cancer research, climate change, clean-energy jobs, artificial intelligence, 3-D printing and other fast-advancing technologies.
The appointees included Eric S. Lander, whom Mr. Biden will nominate to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, a position that will for the first time hold cabinet rank.
President Trump left the position of science adviser unfilled for 18 months and his administration routinely ignored the guidance of government scientists on issues ranging from the coronavirus pandemic to climate change.
Without specifically mentioning Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris drew an implicit contrast with his administration’s dismissive attitude toward expert opinion.
“The science behind climate change is not a hoax,” Ms. Harris said during the introductions, held at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del. “The science behind the virus is not a lie.”
Dr. Lander, who will also serve as presidential science adviser, was a leader of the Human Genome Project. As Dr. Lander’s deputy in the science and technology office, Alondra Nelson, whom was also named by Mr. Biden, is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, who has studied the intersection of science with social inequality and race.
Mr. Biden also named two co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology: Frances H. Arnold, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Maria Zuber, a geophysics and planetary science expert and the first woman to lead a NASA spacecraft mission.
Mr. Biden also said that Dr. Francis S. Collins would remain as the director of the National Institutes of Health.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just to get it out because I’m sure there will be comments about it soon: Lander was the founding director of the Broad Institute in Cambridge. But this is not a criticism. He is brilliant, deserves this responsibility and will, I am sure of this, be the right person for this job. He was a featured speaker of a symposium on the promise of genetics in cancer research–on which I was a useless member of the organizing committee–and gave one of the greatest, most informative scientific presentations I’ve ever heard in my life. He took a topic, genetic differentiation, I didn’t quite understand and made if comprehensible. It became the basis of my stump speech to patients and I still use parts of it. It turned out that everything he discussed is now the basis of virtually all cancer treatment. He has a gift of being able to speak about complex issues to laypersons in ways that they can get it. I look forward to having him teach the nation about the promise of science and medicine. There could not have been a better choice.
Great to read this, Greg.
Forgot to point out that the speech I cited was in 2000. He literally described how science would change in the next 10 years and was correct on every point. Genetics drives virtually all informed cancer treatment decisions at major treatment centers, meaning what was considered one cancer with one type of treatment in 2000 can be as many as dozens of subclassifications that are future subdivided by an individual’s genetics. Lander understood this in 2000 and could convey the concepts to laypersons. Can’t wait to get his insights on the next 20 years.
…that are further subdivided…
So he’s changed his mind and he will ban fracking after all? That’s great to hear! And he’s going to refuse donations from fossil fuel companies? Even better! And he’s going to order a complete shut-down and retroactive stimulus payments until at least 70% of the country has been vaccinated and he’s going to give us Medicare for All? Wow, he really is going to be the next FDR!
Oh, I see, you mean he’s going to mouth a lot of platitudes and say he “believes” in science and we’re supposed to take that as an improvement over the science denier even though he does very little that science actually dictates. Because we wouldn’t want people’s health or the health of the planet to interfere his donor’s profits.
Hatred hardens the heart.
Trump systematically politicized the entire federal government, including all agencies and departments whose work involves scientific input. He put anti-science Christian fundamentalist pro-Trump morons in charge of agencies and departments. He closed down venues for the publishing of government reports in print and online, many of which had previously provided those reports online for free. He issued regulations with a chilling effect on the publishing of scientific reports from studies that received any government funding. He continually spewed lies. Coronavirus is a hoax. Cornoavirus was an attack by China made to undermine his presidency. Global warming is a hoax. Global warming is made up by China to undermine his presidency. We should inject disinfectants. We should nuke hurricanes. We should sent astronauts to the sun. Stealth planes are actually invisible. We have wildfires in California because Democrats don’t sweep the forests.
Do you really think that Biden will be as bad or worse out of a desire to protect his donors? Really? Seriously? [does face palm]
Biden “does very little that science actually dictates”?? Are you insane?
When someone claims Bermie Sanders is a liar, but the Australian democrat-hater who pro-Trump fanboys adore is the truth-teller, they sound as deluded and as full of hate as the pro-Trump folks we saw storming the capitol.
I hope they are all marginalized from now on, whether their voices are far right haters or far left haters who all disdain truthful discourse in favor of lies and hate in their heart. And when someone expresses 100x more hatred toward Biden (and now even Bernie Sanders) than they do toward Trump, something is very off.
Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976 saying he supported universal healthcare but after Carter won he decided he preferred approaching universal health care more incrementally and not even right away. Does that make Jimmy Carter evil?
Biden needs to start listening to the science about kids and Covid. They do get the disease. By puberty, they are getting it at very high rates, much closer to those for adults. There is 50 percent transmission rate when a kid with any Covid symptoms carries it back home. Transmission rates to healthy people by asymptomatic kids aren’t still well known, but these are likely to be the same as the rates for asymptomatic adults.
https://www.wired.com/story/everything-we-know-now-about-schools-kids-and-covid-19/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Reopening all schools with his first 100 days in office–the stated plan–in the middle of a huge spike in infections and deaths is NOT science-based. It’s magical wishful thinking.
Where does one draw the line between very mild symptoms and asymptomatic? It would seem that there is no such line and that it’s merely a matter of degree.
And quite frankly, I suspect that even the number of symptomatic (to say nothing of asymptomatic) covid carriers is being underestimated (perhaps grossly underestimated) given the high false negatives rates of many of the covid tests.
In one case I read about , a woman with symptoms tested negative 3 times (2 times with PCR,the most “accurate” test, which can actually have a false negatives rate of around 40%) before she finally tested positive.
The only reason that the person showed up in the “data” as a “positive” (confirmed) infection is because she “knew” from her symptoms that she most likely had covid and simply persisted until a test showed it. Many (perhaps most) people simply assume that these tests are perfectly accurate when they can be far from it.
And where does the vaccine fit into this? Shouldn’t that be a consideration?
Not incidentally, for the woman whose case I cited, the false negative rate of PCR was actually 67%, since 2 out of her 3 PCR tests came back negative when she was actually infected (false positive rate is much lower, so if a test comes back positive, there is a high probability one is infected and the woman in this case had symptoms of covid besides).
The false negative rate of covid tests is highly dependent on the viral load in the body, which means whether you test positive us dependent on when during the infection development you get tested.
It’s interesting to me that the media and even the CDC are just recently getting around to reporting that covid tests can produce false negatives.
The media have an excuse — most journalists are idiots when it comes to science.
But what is the CDCs excuse?
And economists like Emily Oster who cite “positivities” in schools that are far below the false negative rate of even the most accurate covid test (pcr) under the best circumstances (test performed when viral load is high,) are also idiots,
But that should go without saying.
His plan is not as illogical as it seems: he “promises” that 100 million people will be vaccinated in the first 100 days. So if kids go back after 100 days, and presumably get vaccinated by then, it may work out.
For example, I do plan on teaching face to face (though I am “endangered”) once my students and I get vaccinated. I admit, I have very small classes and large classrooms—-not comparable to a public K-12 school class.
Personally, I do not think it’s wise (and certainly not scientific) to make these kinds of promises. They should start outlining the foundations of “the science of leadership” where leaders do not feel compelled to make promises with 100% certainty.
what a thought: “They should start outlining the foundations of “the science of leadership” where leaders do not feel compelled to make promises with 100% certainty.” 🙂
I forgot to add “since such promises necessarily contradict science”.
This is so important. Thank you, President-elect Biden!
So I’m guessing that’ll mean Biden will soon announce that fracking will soon be banned because… science!
I hope he bans fracking. But I think he made a modified promise: no fracking on federal lands.
Yay, power to the Doctors! 🙂