President Donald Trump and his daughter-adviser have been going all out to tout the administration’s commitment to “high-quality STEM and computer science education” as a means of boosting the U.S. economy. But Trump has yet to choose a top science adviser, who would play a crucial role in turning the White House horn-tooting into reality.
The White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) has been without a boss for the longest stretch since its establishment in 1976, a former longtime member told Newsweek.
John Holdren, who served as former President Barack Obama’s science adviser and as the Senate-confirmed director of his OSTP, is raising an alarm about what he calls the “very sizable vacuum” that persists in the science-advisory realm under Trump.
Holdren asserts: “If you don’t have science and technology advice in the White House, you’re going to miss opportunities to use science and technology to advance the rest of the leadership's agenda. You’re going to make decisions, in some cases, that would be better decisions if they were informed of the science and technology dimensions.”
If the nation is in the midst of, say, discussing a potential North Korean missile attack on the U.S., Holdren said, it might be prudent to include an expert who understands “the likely effectiveness of U.S. defenses against ballistic missiles.”
The same would apply, he said, if and when the Trump administration faces public health crises of the kind the Obama administration had to deal with, such as the H1N1 flu pandemic and the Ebola virus.
Not hard to imagine why this post has been left vacant, and why it will likely stay that way until Trump is no longer in the White House.
Simply put Trump does NOT like smart people around. He wants to always think he is the smartest guy in the room, and that becomes nigh impossible if you have some egghead with a PHD standing around telling you how wrong you are.
Besides once again this is a thing that President Obama was known for. He LOVED science, and hosted a science fairs in the White House and he was the FIRST President to ever get an article published in Science magazine.
The problem with this however is that not having a science adviser in the White House might make Trump feel smart, but it endangers the rest of us.
Source http://ift.tt/2hIsrow
