Is Science Back? Harvard's Holdren Says 'Yes'

With the creation of a coronavirus advisory board among its first acts, the incoming Biden-Harris administration has moved quickly to reinstall science as a foundation for government policy after four years of a president who disdained accepted scientific wisdom on subjects from wildfires to hurricane tracks, climate change to COVID-19. The Gazette spoke with John Holdren, Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of environmental science and policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, about what the reversal means. Holdren, Barack Obama's top scientific adviser as assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, discussed the need to restore trust in scientific facts, their potential limitations, and their necessary interplay with other disciplines — including politics — in setting government policy.

Q&A
John Holdren

GAZETTE: In an era when everyone seems to have their own set of facts, how do you restore the public's faith that science really does know what it’s talking about?

HOLDREN: There are a couple of dimensions to that. One is the role of the White House and the other is the role of the scientific community, including institutions like the [National] Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the other professional societies.

It is tremendously important what attitude the president of the United States and the vice president take toward facts, toward science, and toward the use of science and facts in the formation of public policy. We had, with President Obama and Vice President [Joseph] Biden, a fact-friendly and science-savvy leadership. They appointed highly capable, nonideological people to the key science and technology positions across the administration. And that friendliness to facts and science propagated downward and interacted constructively with the inclinations of the career civil servants in the departments and agencies with science and technology responsibilities. Those inclinations have always been to use science and technology to advance the public interest.

That’s what we need to restore under President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect [Kamala] Harris. I think it will be restored once they are inaugurated. But even before, they are already saying all the right things in the course of this somewhat freighted transition. You see President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris talking very constructively about how they will bring science and technology to bear on advancing the national interest. For example, a new panel on COVID-19 that will be advising Biden and Harris on crafting a comprehensive national response, which we have lacked, has already been announced. The panel is bipartisan; it is diverse in terms of gender, in terms of political affiliation, in terms of geography; and above all, it is a collection of absolutely first-rate people. That is going to be the hallmark of what Biden and Harris do in office: They are going to appoint competent people. They are going to listen to them. They are going to interact closely with them. Their science and technology experts are going to be in the room and at the table for the many policy discussions where science and technology are germane.

GAZETTE: And what about the role of the scientific community in restoring faith in science?

HOLDREN: I have said for a long time that every scientist and every engineer in this country should tithe 10 percent of her or his time to engaging with public policy and with public education on science and technology issues. We no longer have the luxury of staying in our laboratories, of sitting at our desks working on advancing our science and engineering disciplines. We have to interact with broader society in ways that communicate what we're doing, why we're doing it, and why it matters. The scientific community has to get better at telling informative stories about how science works and about what it is doing in support of the aspirations of the American people....