It’s official. Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Barack Obama have been invited to ScienceDebate2008.
The location? Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, named after one of our nation’s greatest scientists (and greatest patriots). The date? April 18, just before the Pennsylvania Primary.
If there was ever a time that we need your help, it’s now. We need to make a ton of noise about this. We need to make the campaigns say they’ll come to the Philly debate. (As a Pittsburgher, I’d rather have them in Western PA, but I admit to liking Philadelphia as long as we’re not talking baseball, football, or hockey.)
A list of things you can do–contacting the campaigns, writing letters to the editor, further spreading word about ScienceDebate2008–and how you can do them can be found here:
http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2008/02/its_official_candidates_invite.php
For other links:
Press release: http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=21
Offical candidate invite text:
http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=20
Franklin Institute: http://www2.fi.edu/
Campaign Contact Info:
http://actionforspace.blogspot.com/2008/01/interview-with-chief-counsel-for-spacex.html
PDF 
his cause could never look as bad as your tie
Dear anonymous,
Why am I arrogant and ignorant for supporting an activity that offers the leading contenders for the presidency a chance to share their thoughts on science and technology policy with the voters?
Frankly, despite the passion of Ron Paul’s supporters, which I respect, he has not yet demonstrated the ability to attract broad support from the public at large. I don’t make the rules for the debate, but I think the organizers have thought it through carefully.
I’m neutral on whether Paul should have been excluded, but not supporting the debate on those grounds would be sacrificing the good in a fruitless quest for the ideal.
Show up at the Franklin Institute and picket with your Paul for President signs. Keep fighting the good fight on his behalf, since you believe in him so strongly. But stop wasting your time arguing against ScienceDebate2008. You only make your cause look bad.
P.S.: You’d be more credible if you identified yourself in your posting
Fred Bortz — Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
From SLC
Attached is a link to an article in Business Week on the science debate topic. It’s a start but we need some publicity in the mainstream media (e.g. NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CBS News, CNN, etc.) to put the pressure on the candidates to agree.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db2008028_503873.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives
Anonymous does Ron Paul no favors by hiding his identity and slinging insults.
Dr. Paul and his cause deserve much better than that.
As noted, I’m not involved in setting the rules for who gets invited to ScienceDebate2008, but I admit to being glad to see science and technology policy gaining some visibility in this campaign.
Furthermore, even though I could not vote for Paul because of his strong libertarian views, that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in understanding his approach to the various issues that relate to science and technology policy.
So will someone please rescue Dr. Paul from his anonymous supporters who have nothing to offer but insults to me, and, by extension, to the serious readers of Science Blog?
If Dr. Paul would get an invitation, what would you expect him to say in either broad terms or specifics?
Fred Bortz — Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
You support an organization which excluded Ron Paul from speaking. This in itself is against science at it’s core.
Science is the search for truth. All science must include all circumstance. No ommission or fact or possible fact.
If by your own action you create an outcome then your science is flawed.
You know this!!!!!
So don’t complain. You brought it on yourself. Let Dr. and I repeat DOCTOR Ron Paul speak. You may not agree with him, but science seeks truth and required all the facts to make a decision. Otherwise you live in belief and religion and not fact.
Look to your own for the problem and see your error of observation. You call yourself a scientist? hmmmmmmmmm
“..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority to set brush fires in people’s minds.â€
— Samuel Adams
“With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.†— Abraham Lincoln
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.†— George Orwell
“The state can’t give you free speech, and the state can’t take it away. You’re born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free…â€
— Utah Phillips
quixotic quest
From SLC
For the information of Dr. Bortz, Mr. anonymous has been posting this screed on a number of blogs under the tag RonJ. My position is that if this is to be a joint news conference involving the candidates of both parties, excluding Representative Paul is justified as his chances of winning the Rethuglican nomination are slim and none and slim is on the bus headed out of town. On the other hand, if it is to be separate news comferences for each party,then a case could be made to include him in the Rethuglican news conference.
By the way, since we are this far along, does Dr. Bortz have any ideas as to possible moderators/questioners? The two people most responsible for pushing this idea, namely Chris Mooney and Lawrence Krauss, are both liberal Democrats. There is no way that the Rethuglican candidates will accept a moderator and panel of questioners, all of whom are liberal Democrats. On the other hand, we certainly don’t want scientific illiterates like Wolf Blitzer or Tim Russet involved.
SLC, don’t worry about dominance by one particular point of view.
An earlier blog posting notes the following:
It was at that point that I began to see the effort as genuinely viable. Up until then, I was willing to boost it as an idea with good potential.
I give Mooney and Krauss credit for going beyond their own political inclinations and recognizing that science and technology policy is not a strictly partisan issue.
Fred Bortz — Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
SLC
I would guess that Dr. Bortz is assuming that the dual moderators, and presumably questioners, will be Representatives Ehlers and Holt. Unfortunately, I am not so sure that the Rethuglican candidates will accept Representative Ehlers.
About a year ago, there was a Congressional panel formed to look into the issue of global climate change. Representatives Ehlers and Bartlett (from Western Maryland) both applied to the Rethuglican leadership in the House to join the panel. These gentlemen actually have some scientific qualifications as Representative Ehlers has a degree in physics and Representative Bartlett has a degree in organic chemistry. They were both turned down by the Rethuglican House leadership on the grounds that they were considered too disposed to accept the notion of global climate change. Thus, it could well happen that the proposed Rethuglican candidates, McCain and Huckabee would be under pressure from that same House leadership to reject Representative Ehlers as a co-moderator.
Anon, you misunderstand the role of Ehlers and Holt. They are co-chairing the debate initiative and so will be instrumental in choosing the moderator and other questioners (as well as the way questions are selected), but they will not be moderators or questioners themselves.
Fred Bortz — Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
SLC
Fair enough. When are they going to choose the moderator and questioners? Can we get some idea as to what possibilities are being contemplated?
Kathryn,
It is good to see a thoughtful argument about Ron Paul’s exclusion from the debate. Most of the people making this case have been Paul-bots and nothing more.
I’m sure Shawn Otto appreciated your tone after having suffering overload at the hands of others angrily demanding Paul’s inclusion.
I’m not personally involved in the effort other than to add my voice as a supporter of the idea. In this case, I think Paul supporters would do better to picket the debate and distribute flyers with his positions on science and technology policy.
I say that because adding candidates without a realistic chance of being elected, and I certainly would include Nader in the non-electable group before Paul, will only dilute the discussion.
After the Ohio and Texas primaries, it might not be reasonable to include Huckabee in the discussion, but the invitation has already gone out. In fact, Hillary Clinton needs impressive showings in those states to remain viable.
In the end, the organizers are bound to have difficult choices, and I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and credit them for making decisions in the best interest of the cause of putting science and technology policy on this year’s political agenda.
Fred Bortz — Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
I am a postdoc at Johns Hopkins and I think “Science Debate 2008″ is a great idea. It is really unfortunate that they have decided to exclude one of the five remaining major-party candidates due to their arbitrary definition of “viability”: Ron Paul. Maybe with the news that Ralph Nader is running, they should extend invitations to both Ron Paul and Ralph Nader.
By the way, I emailed Shawn Otto about this and he replied saying that Ron Paul did not respond to the AAAS invitation to speak in Boston. I assume he means this should be some sort of excuse, but Mike Huckabee did not respond to that invitation either and he is invited. Additionally, it sounds like the AAAS forum was kind of last minute (“A spokesperson for the AAAS said that the organization had put together the session ‘at the last minute’”… Yahoo!News).
I do not think the Science Debate people have really considered this fully. Ron Paul has been excluded time and again for being not “viable”…doesn’t this get to be circular reasoning at some point?
As for what he would say, I imagine he will recommend that we stop using corporatism to prop up Big Pharma and that we should scale back on funding science at a federal level and leave it to industry and charities to make scientific breakthroughs. This may not be popular with some scientists, but that doesn’t mean it should be censored. Scientists can make up their own minds, can’t they? Why are we censoring some candidates and not others?
-Kathryn
I understand why you are saying that Nader is less viable than Paul, but this really speaks to the problem I have with any exclusion: Not a single vote has been counted in the general election and you are writing off Nader!
I listen to NPR daily and despite non-stop coverage of the primaries throughout January, Ron Paul’s name was not mentioned once. Why is NPR telling us who is and who is not viable before 45 of the states have even voted? Likewise, Fox News excluded Ron Paul from a “debate” after the Iowa primary even though he beat the “frontrunner” Giuliani, who since dropped out. I just really expect more from my fellow scientists than to continue to follow in the footsteps of these clearly biased forums. We are smart enough to think for ourselves, so why don’t we?
The choice is not really that difficult for the organizers: invite people who have announced their candidacy on the date of the debate. How is increasing the field from 4 people to 5 or 6 really a problem?
-Kathryn