When Nature and Science Asked Bush and Kerry About Their Support for Science. (September 18, 2004)

    Some time back the scientific weeklies Nature (UK) and  Science (US) submitted separate lists of questions to the US presidential candidates George W Bush and John Kerry asking for their views on a number of specific scientific issues. In due course they returned the replies framed by their respective scientific advisors, subject of course to careful scrutiny by the respective political advisors.

Even with the eye of faith you would be hard pressed to find much of substance so far as specific commitments are concerned, i.e. both candidates left themselves ample weasel room.

That said, Science elicited more information from the candidates than Nature as to their positions. Donald Kennedy, Science' Editor-in-Chief, in his introductory editorial to "The Candidates Speak" notes pointedly to two areas one of difference the other of similarity:

•  The climate change query produced some interesting differences. Bush quoted sentences from a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report that indicated uncertainty about the effects of anthropogenic sources of global warming in this century, but omitted reference to the recent report from his own administration’s task force that accepted the importance of those effects. He then turned to his plans for research on clean coal and hydrogen technology. By contrast, Kerry called the evidence for human involvement convincing and supported a cap-and-trade system that would resemble that in the McCain-Lieberman bill now before the U.S. Senate.

• In their responses on space, both candidates said good things but ducked an important choice. Bush reprised his man-Moon-Mars (3M) project and talked almost entirely about human exploration. Kerry praised NASA and spoke of both manned and robotic successes. But neither he nor Bush dealt realistically with costs, especially not the price tag for 3M or other manned missions, nor did they realistically approach the challenging question of which kind of space exploration produces the greater scientific yield per dollar invested.

Both articles are available online but may require active subscriptions to be accessed. The two links for Science are first to Kennedy's editorial comment and second to the write-up itself.

Nature: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v431/n7006/full/431238a_fs.html

Science:   http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1105134v1

                http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1104420v1