Slate: The ‘war on science’ is over. Now what?

Slate has an interesting article on science in the Obama era.

here are a few passages that grabed my attention:

“We’re at the close of the Bush administration’s years of attacks on the integrity of scientific information—its biased editing of technical documents, muzzling of government researchers, and shameless dispersal of faulty ideas about issues like global warming.”

“It would be the gravest of errors for researchers to simply return victorious to their labs and fall back on a time-honored stance of political detachment. If the war on science is over, we’re now entering the postwar phase of reconstruction—the scientific equivalent of nation-building.”

“To succeed in the postwar landscape, science communicators must find better ways of talking to people on their own terms and making research meaningful in their lives.”

“Science is more important than ever—something our new president fully recognizes. Yet for most Americans, science is probably becoming more distant, not less; it’s harder to locate and identify, and it’s often more aggressive toward their core beliefs. In this context, scientists certainly shouldn’t retreat to their labs. Rather, they should reach out to the public like never before.”

image citation: http://www.cottonaustralia.com.au/media/scientist_in_lab.118.JPG