February 21, 2010
You have to hand it to Eric Lander: he gives a good talk. At last night’s plenary session, he admitted he would have been more comfortable talking about the human genome. But as one of three co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) he was instead tasked with reflecting on science and technology in the Obama administration just over one year in, and he kept the full house rapt.
Here’s a one-minute version (of Lander’s version) of the last 13 months:
Jan: Inauguration speech: “We’ll restore science
to its rightful place.”
Feb: >$100 billion for science and technology in the
economic stimulus package.
March: Obama
overturns Bush-era
restrictions on human embryonic stem cells
April: Obama sets goal of spending 3% of GDP on R&D.
June: “We will open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the
Middle East and Southeast Asia, and appoint new Science Envoys.”
July-Sept: Summer; PCAST
meets; plus lots of
H1N1 influenza.
Oct: Presidential commission
rethinks space
program
Nov: Launches program to boost
science education.
National Lab Day
launched, but turns out to be every day.
Dec-Jan: Winter
Feb: Freeze on discretionary spending; yet Obama
budget requests
nearly 6% increase for R&D.
Lander emphasized that he was talking about his own experiences, not speaking on behalf of the White House. The White House would have been pretty happy with his talk though; at some points you had to wonder if Obama had been doing anything but furthering science in its first year.