Neural Gourmet: How is the weather on your part of Mars?

Phoenix: The weather is pretty chilly here on Mars. We landed during a bit of a heat wave and we actually hit above zero Celcius, but most of the time I hit around -20 Celcius during the day and -100 Celcius during the night. I also have a full meteorology station that takes the pressure and temperature readings constantly, measures the amount of dust in the atmosphere using a laser, and my main camera takes pictures of the telltale. The telltale is similar to a wind vane and can tell us wind speed and direction.

Neural Gourmet: What is your typical day like?

Phoenix: While I don’t know if I ever have a typical day on Mars, there are some things I do every day. I constantly take pressure and temperature readings. I take images of the sun with special filters to measure the optical depth so the engineers can estimate how much power I’ll have the next sol. I also usually take several images of my telltale. I’m usually doing something with my robotic arm, whether it’s scooping up soil, scraping at ice, or taking pictures with the camera on the end of it. Sometimes I’m baking stuff in my oven or performing wet chemistry experiments. I take lots and lots of images of anything from the ground to the sky.

Neural Gourmet: From what I understand, your two primary jobs are to study the history of water on Mars and how easy it might be for anything to live on Mars. You must be very excited about recently finding water ice right underneath you and so early on in your mission, but what kinds of experiments can you do that will help humans understand about water in Mars’ past?

Phoenix: By taking images, we can monitor the current geology and determine patterns. The soil chemistry will also tell us if anything had to have formed in or around water.

Neural Gourmet: How sure are you that what you discovered was really water?

Phoenix: We looked in the Dodo-Goldilocks trench on sol 20, and when we looked again on sol 24, the little white chunks had disappeared. The scientists were debating on the white stuff being either salts or ice. Salts don’t disappear, so it must be ice. The next most often asked question is how come we know it isn’t dry ice. It can’t be dry ice because right now, it’s too warm for dry ice to exist where I am.

Neural Gourmet: Do we have any idea much water or ice there is on Mars right now?

Phoenix: The Mars Global Surveyor had an instrument that measured hydrogen content, and in the polar regions, there was a lot of hydrogen. We guessed it was ice, and I was able to confirm that the large hydrogen amount is indeed due to ice. I don’t know how much there is percentage wise, but there’s a lot of subsurface ice!

Neural Gourmet: Aside from the prescence of water on Mars, you also got some exciting results from some soil you recently analyzed. Could you tell us a little more about the soil on Mars? Is it the same all over? And could you really grow asparagus on Mars?

Phoenix: The soil I analyzed was basic. Basic is the opposite of acidic, so the soil is more like baking soda than vinegar. This also means there’s a lot of salts in the soil. We don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, and until more missions (and hopefully humans!) come out here, we won’t know. The atmosphere is too thin and it’s way too cold to grow asparagus out here, if it was brought back to Earth, it could probably be used to grow whatever you’d like.

Neural Gourmet: In order to study the soil on Mars you have a lot more tools than just than your “Easy-Bake Oven” (TEGA). For instance, to find out the acidity of the soil you used your Wet Chemistry Lab (WCL). But you also have two kinds of microscopes and probes to measure how well the Martian soil conducts electricity and heat.

What will each of these instruments tell you (and the scientists back on Earth) about Mars? Aside from discovering water ice and that Mars soil cold be used to grow plants, what other neat things have you learned lately? What’s next on the agenda?

Phoenix: With these instruments, I can determine the properties of the soil and atmosphere unlike any way scientists been able to before. I discovered the pH of the soil is around 8 or 9, which means it’s basic. I found a lot of salts in the soil too. I’ll know if the soil can conduct electricity within a couple sols. The next major thing on my agenda is to deliver a sample to TEGA to see what’s in that ice.

Neural Gourmet: One of things everybody knows is that life as we know it is built around carbon — life can’t exist without it. Have you tested for carbon yet, and if not, will you be testing for it?

Phoenix: I tested for hydrocarbons in TEGA, but my first test didn’t show any. However, it did show a reaction that may have burned up all the hydrocarbons during the bake. I’m hoping to catch them in the next TEGA bake in a couple sols.

Neural Gourmet: Since we last talked it was found that you suffered a short circuit when your TEGA oven was first fired up. The engineers think is was because they had to have you shake yourself to get the soil into the opening of the oven and they’re concerned that the next time you use your ovens there could be another short circuit. They’re also worried that this time it might hurt you badly enough where you couldn’t wake back up.

Phoenix: Well, I simply don’t know what will happen. Will I never wake up? Will I only go into safe mode? Will I be just fine? I’m not quite sure, and I won’t really know until I do it. However, even if something bad happens and I don’t wake up, I’ve still provided a lot of important information to the team back home. Sure, it means I wouldn’t have completed 100% of my objectives, but I’ve still led a pretty successful mission!

Neural Gourmet: In the past couple of days you’ve been really busy. I know it was planned for you to use the probe at the end of your robotic arm to measure measure the electrical and thermal characteristics of the soil. What does that tell us about water in the Martian soil?

Phoenix: It tells me about where the water is. The scientists want to know if it is mixed evenly thoughout all the layers in the ground, or maybe concentrated in one layer, etc. It can also tell me if the water is frozen or unfrozen in the soil. Scientists think there may be a very, very thin layer right above the ice where liquid water can exist in the soil and not get zapped by solar radiation. Since I don’t know, the scientists back home are hoping to find out!

Neural Gourmet: You’ve also been using your atomic force microscope, a tiny needle that is attached to an amazingly sensitive pressure sensor, all no bigger than a sliver. By running the tip of the needle over particles of Martian soil you’re able to build up an incredibly accurate 3D picture of soil particles much smaller than the width of a human hair. Aside from just being really cool, what do we learn by knowing how the particles in the Martian soil are shaped?

Phoenix: The shapes of the particles can help the scientists understand possibly how they were formed. The scientists can also look for distinct patterns and itty bitty crystals from different minerals.

Neural Gourmet: What kinds of experiments will you be doing that will help scientists understand what kinds of life, if any, that Mars might support?

Phoenix: By analyzing the chemical aspects of the soil using my wet chemistry lab and oven, we can determine if possibly microbes could use the soil as fuel to live. We don’t have the ability to detect life itself, but we can certainly find out if conditions are right for life.

Neural Gourmet: Do any of the experiments that you’re doing have any potential to help humans live on Mars?

Phoenix: The soil could potentially be used as a fuel source, and by finding the ice, humans could certainly use it for water on long term missions.

Neural Gourmet: The soil could maybe be used for fuel? How so?

Phoenix: If hydrogen was hauled from Earth, it could combine with the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere to make methane for fuel and water for the astronauts. For more details, I reocmmend The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. He does a pretty good job of analyzing all aspects of a manned Mars mission.

Neural Gourmet: You’re not able to get up and move around like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars. Do you ever get lonely? Is there ever a possibility that you’ll get to meet Spirit or Opportunity

Phoenix: I don’t get too lonely out here. The scientists talk to me at least once a day, and my orbiter pals pass over all the time and I can chat with them. I even wake up during the night to say hello. Spirit & Opportunity are way too far away for me to ever meet them, but I chat with them on Facebook.

Neural Gourmet: Finally, can you tell us, personally, why the work that you’re doing on Mars is so important?

Phoenix: It is a historical trend that in countries who are experiencing prosperity that that do things that don’t have a practical application at the moment. For example, the Library of Alexandria in ancient Greece fostered learning, and several scientific theories are considered now basic education and fundamentally important were made back them, with no real application for them at the time. Most will not benefit from knowing Martian soil is basic, etc. However, this information may benefit you humans sooner than you think. NASA’s Project Constellation program is getting ready to send people back to the Moon, and after that, on to Mars. If we know this sort of information in advance, then the astronauts can use Mars to their advantage. If we know there’s water ice, we can melt it and use it to drink, shower, etc. It means we won’t have to bring as much from Earth, so we can instead send more scientific experiments to further our understanding of the cosmos. So to sum it up, the information I beam back everyday won’t affect your everyday lives, but will make a difference in the long run.

Neural Gourmet: I couldn’t agree more! We never know what basic science will be useful, or how and when it’ll be needed. Thank you for being such a good sport and doing this interview, especially when you’re such a busy robot. Also, please convey my personal thanks to NASA, Peter Smith, Keri Bean, Patricia Wroblewski and the entire Phoenix team.

After exchanging some messages with Phoenix we decided it would be great fun for both of us if Phoenix did an interview for Neural Gourmet. We spent the next few weeks, when Phoenix got to take a break from her work on Mars, talking about herself, working on Mars, and the important science she is doing. This is the first half of our exclusive interview with Phoenix. You can find the second half of this interview here.

Neural Gourmet: First of all, let me say just how excited I am to be interviewing you. You’re the first robotic lander I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to. Phoenix Mars Lander is a little bit unwieldy though, so do you mind if I call you Phoenix, or do you have a nickname that everybody on the team calls you?

Phoenix: If you really wanna get into shortcuts, you can call me PHX, but I prefer Phoenix.

Neural Gourmet: Hah! PHX might be great for robots and NASA mission controllers, but I think I’ll stick with Phoenix then.

Neural Gourmet: Speaking of talking, how is it we’re communicating right now? How do you talk to everybody on Earth, and who helps you use Facebook and Twittr? And do you talk to any of the other landers and orbiters on Mars?

Phoenix: I make every effort to talk to as many people back on Earth as possible! I love meeting people from all over the world. Since there’s about a 15 minute delay between Mars and Earth, I have a few helpers. My Twitter is run by Veronica McGregor at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. My Facebook is maintained by two undergraduate students. Keri Bean’s a meterology major at Texas A&M University, and Patricia Wroblewski is a physics/astronomy major at the University of Arizona. They’re really good people and they do a great job. I do chat with Spirit & Opportunity a lot on Facebook, and in fact, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and its moon impactor companion, the Solar Dynamics observatory, the Mars rovers, and I have started a lunch club called the SLC - Spacecraft Lunch Club! To talk with Earth, I first talk to the Mars Reconniassance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, or Mars Express, and they relay my information back home. I owe them so much for doing that for me!

Neural Gourmet: We’ve heard in the news about some of the exciting things you’ve done recently but we don’t hear a whole lot about just what kind of robot Phoenix is. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What are your interests? Do you have any hobbies?

Phoenix: I really like everything space! Not only is the work being done on Mars cool, but the other spacecraft, everyone from Voyager to Hubble, is doing something awesome. I also have on me the first library on Mars stored in a DVD, so sometimes I’ll read some books. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m at the beach and play around in the sand.

Neural Gourmet: That’s right! I remember reading about the DVD the Planetary Society placed on you in the news last year. Among the signatures, slideshows narrated by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan, and other goodies, there’s a science fiction library of stories about Mars. Do you have a favorite?

Phoenix: Well there’s so many awesome things on board, it’s hard to pick a favorite. The War of the Worlds may possibly be my favorite though. However, I would like to state I don’t think any Martians will be attacking anytime soon.

Neural Gourmet: Of all the science fiction stories on your DVD, the one I liked the best was Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars (the middle book of his Mars trilogy). The reason his Mars trilogy so much is because he paid so much attention to the science that I felt like I knew what it was really like to live on Mars. Have you had a chance to read that novel and if so, how much did he get right? What did he get wrong?

Phoenix: I’m afraid I haven’t read it yet, so maybe one of these evenings when I don’t have much to do, I’ll read it.

Neural Gourmet: I understand that you’re an avid baker and you’ve brought along a sort of Easy-Bake Oven. What kinds of things will you be baking on Mars?

Phoenix: I brought an oven with me because even Martians need an Easy Bake Oven! Although the stuff I bake isn’t exactly tasty. I get to scoop up layers of the Martian soil and stick it into my oven named TEGA, or the Thermal Evolved Gas Analyzer. When I bake the stuff, I do it in steps. I do “temperature ramps” where I’ll quickly reach a certain temperature and see what happens. I can get my oven up to 1000 degrees Celcius! once I bake the soil, I look at what gases come out and by monitoring the gases, I can tell what is in the soil.

Neural Gourmet: What else would you like people to know about yourself?

Phoenix: A lot of people ask why scientists are so pessimistic about me coming back once winter is over, since the rovers Spirit & Opportunity did so. Well, once winter sets in, I’m going to be covered in dry ice, or carbon dioxide ice. That stress will probably snap wires and possibly make my solar panels snap off. If that happens, I will definitely not be able to come back to life. However, if I do survive, my software is programmed to wake me up.

Neural Gourmet: That’s terrible! Are you sad about the prospect of dying (not being able to wake up after the winter because of damage caused by freezing/thawing)? Could humans still repair you if they ever make it to Mars?

Phoenix: I won’t be too sad to die because I’ll have given the scientists back on Earth really important information, and since I’ve found water ice, we know that life could possibly survive there.

Neural Gourmet: Humans would have to wear space suits on Mars to protect them against the cold and make sure they have enough air to breathe. How did the engineers make sure you would survive on Mars long enough to do all the things you want to do?

Phoenix: I participated in several tests. During something called a TVAC test, or thermal vacuum test, my instruments are put in vacuum chambers that had less than four percent of Earth’s pressure, and I was cooled and heated well beyond my expected temperature ranges and was in there for at least three times my expected lifetime. My engineers wanted to make sure I could face any challenge!

Neural Gourmet: Can you tell me about some of the humans on your team? What are they like to work with? Are they real slave drivers or do they give you a chance to just sit back and take in the view?

Phoenix: The people back at the Science Operations Center in Tucson, Arizona, Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California are really nice! My daddy, Peter Smith, is really funny. He reminds me of Santa Claus because of how nice he is and he’s always jolly! how appropriate I’m near the north pole. All the scientists and engineers on my team take care of me and make sure I’m not sick and I have enough power to keep me going. While most of the time they are very serious, they can be quite funny and open! A lot of people think scientists are reclusive nerds who do nothing but program computers and watch scifi, but my mommies and daddies are really friendly! They recently celebrated the alignment of solstices by talking to scientists on Earth’s south pole and I took an image during my summer solstice to dedicate to them.

Suppose, I asked myself, that the deniers are right and the CO2 thing is a mistake? What will happen if the world takes the CO2 thing seriously, adopting common sense measures to counter anthropogenic warming and there never was any warming in the first place? 1) there will more nonrenewable resources to leave to our progeny; 2) we will breath cleaner air and see the stars again, the way we saw them half a century ago; 3) we could stop paving over the planet, and 4) cut down on the number of billionaires. If we’re wrong we could have a party. We could have a party either way.

He’s right, you know. Either way, we win.

“The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.”

The APS is the second largest organization of scientists in the world and one of the most prestigious. It publishes over a dozen scientific journals with Physical Review and Physical Review Letters among them, as well as organizing over twenty scientific meetings a year. So if the APS issues a statement that it doesn’t think anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, then the world has good cause to sit up and take notice. “Deathly news for the religion of Global Warming,” as one right wing pundit put it.

Except that’s not what happened.

Asher’s blog post was updated with the following message:

“After publication of this story, the APS responded with a statement that its Physics and Society Forum is merely one unit within the APS, and its views do not reflect those of the Society at large.”

And the APS posted this notice on their front page:

“The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that “Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.” This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.”

Well now, that’s hardly the APS reversing itself on AGW. Additionally, Asher did some selective quoting of Jeffrey Marque’s Editor’s Comments in the APS’s Physics and Society Forum newsletter (Asher misattributes this as the APS’s forum too, but we’ll let that slide). Reading Marque’s actual comments we find that the APC’s Physics and Society Forum invited several people to contribute papers arguing either for or against the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) conclusions. Christopher Monckton supplied the anti-AGW argument while David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo provided a paper supporting the IPCC’s conclusions.

I think it also bears mentioning who exactly Christopher Monckton is. He is a former journalist and an arch Conservative British politician, having been a policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Monckton is a member of many private-public Conservative think tanks including The Heartland Institute which aggressively campaigns against global warming science (and for “smokers’ rights”, receiving large donations from Phillip-Morris). He had a successful business consultancy and invented the Eternity Puzzle, a popular puzzle toy that carried a £1,000,000 prize for its solution.

Monckton is also something of a notorious crank. He is an Euroskeptic; opposed to European integration. In a 2007 interview with The Independent he is quoted as saying that he would (bolding mine),

“… leave the European Union, close down 90 per cent of government services and shift power away from the atheistic, humanistic government and into the hands of families and individuals.”

Monckton maintains similarly eclectic views on HIV/AIDS as well. In a 1987 article for The American Spectator he argued that the only way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS was to blood test every single person once a month and forcibly quarantine anyone found to have or be carrying the disease.

Monckton has also been known to employ creative expansion of the facts to suit his needs. For instance, he claimed that he had to sell his house pay the Eternity Puzzle prize but later admitted that wasn’t true. In a letter to Senators Snowe and Rockefeller he claimed to be a member of the Upper House of the UK legislature when, in fact, he is not a member of the House of Lords.

All of that being so, perhaps the most important thing that has been left unsaid is what Mockton is not. For the plain and simple fact is that Christopher Monckton is not a scientist.

Now you might accuse me, and rightfully so, of arguing ad hominem. However, I think Monckton’s history and character are important for assessing his credibleness, especially if one isn’t a climate scientist their self. After all, if a person holds several views contrary to experts in their respective fields and has a history of being less than forthright then perhaps we should view any claims that person makes as suspect.

Still, Monckton’s history of credulousness doesn’t necessarily make him wrong. Nor does the fact that he isn’t a scientist rule out the possibility that he has something to contribute to science. Sadly though, Monckton walks a well-worn path he has trod many times before. For instance, his claim that cosmic rays are behind warming trends in recent decades has been thoroughly refuted and George Monbiot handily debunked many of Monckton’s other claims. Finally, Tim Lambert dispenses with Monckton’s claims of the IPCC’s overstatement of climate sensitivity, again noting Monckton’s spurious reasoning.

“Did you spot what he just did? If you assume that there is no delay in warming (which is wrong) and McKitrick is right (which is also wrong), then you get a low value of sensitivity. If you also assume that the IPCC values for ΔF_2x and f are correct, then their value of κ must be too high — Monckton comes up with a number 20% less. But in the previous section Monckton argued that the IPCC value of ΔF_2x was too high by a factor of three. If instead you use Monckton’s number, the IPCC value of κ is too low.

What Monckton is doing is double counting his (dubious) evidence that sensitivity is lower than the IPCC number. If he had two pieces of evidence that sensitivity is half the IPCC number he would multiply them together to claim that sensitivity is one quarter the IPCC number. This is not correct.

Too put it another way, in this case, by making some unrealistic assumptions he came up with a sensitivity estimate 20% less than the IPCC number i.e. 2.4K. Logically he should have stopped there — he has an estimate of sensitivity. Instead he uses this estimate of sensitivity in a chain of reasoning that leads him to conclude that sensitivity is 0.58K.”

What it all comes down to is that Monckton is simply wrong; wrong about it all. And the vast majority of respectable scientists across the many fields comprising climate science still think that humans are responsible for global warming.

The whole affair appears as an almost textbook exercise in critical thinking. Taken at face value Monckton’s claims even pass the sniff test with lots of scientific looking language, charts and graphs. On the other hand we have sensationalized and less-than-honestly reported claims from a crackpot fringe politico stumping for his pet cause with, seemingly, religious and political motivations. Contrasted with Monckton’s claims are those of thousands of scientists doing real work in the field of climatology whose work is subject to the scrutiny of their peers. Who would you believe?

Note: This post was originally written for Freethought Fort Wayne.

Such is the case with this recent article profiling space science researcher Mian Abbas who is studying moondust literally one speck at at time. Working with samples returned by the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972 and the Russian Luna-24 robotic probe in 1976, Dr. Abbas has found that the moondust has some really interesting properties.

The 12 men who walked on the surface of the moon between 1969 and 1972 quickly discovered that moondust was extraordinarly sticky. It got on everything. It fouled tools and spacesuits and moondust coated equipment absorbed sunlight causing it to overheat. It got tracked by the astronauts back into the lander where it was inhaled after they took off their helmets. Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt said of the moondust, “When you go weightless again, it shook up from the floorboards. It smelled like spent gunpowder.”

Dr. Abbas and his colleagues in the “Dusty Plasma Laboratory” at the National Space Science and Technology Center in Hunstville, Alabama are looking into what makes the moondust so sticky. Injecting a single grain of lunar dust into a chamber, Dr. Abbas suspends it in mid-air using electric fields and then pumps the air out of the chamber to simulate the lunar vacuum. After the grain of dust is properly suspended in the chamber, the light from an ultraviolet laser is directed onto the grain. The UV laser imparts an electrical charge to the grain of moondust causing it to move. Dr. Abbas must carefully adjust the chamber’s electric fields to keep the grain centered so that it’s changing electrical charge can be measured.

What Dr. Abbas and his colleagues have found is that the UV light charges the moondust 10 times more than would be predicted and that bigger grains charge up more than smaller grains, the opposite of what theory would predict. But that’s only the first half of Dr. Abbas’ experiment and only helps tell us what happens to the moondust in the lunar day. In early 2006 Dr. Abbas hopes to explore what happens to the moondust’s electrical charge when the sun sets by replacing the UV laser with an electron gun to test the theory that the dust becomes negatively charged at night by free electrons carried by the solar wind.

Dr. Abbas’ work is important because when astronauts finally return to the moon in 2018 (almost 50 years after Neal Armstrong first set foot on the moon) they will need to understand the moondust to effectively deal with it. Unlike the Apollo astronauts who were only on the surface of the moon for a brief time and then only in daylight, the next generation of lunar explorers will be living on the moon for extended lengths of time. They will need effective strategies for dealing with the moondust, both mechanically and biologically. As Russell Kerschmann, life sciences chief at NASA’s Ames Research Center says, “How much of a problem this is, we don’t know. And that’s a problem.”

Beyond that though, Dr. Abbas’ research into the electrical properties of moondust is solid basic science — the kind of basic science with no immediate applicable technological benefits that has been so under attack in the George W. Bush administration. And what the hey, it’s an easy cut for most lawmakers to make. Basic research is hard to communicate to the public. It’s not necessarily that they’re stupid, but rather so much of foundational research requires complex, specialized knowledge or higher mathematics to even begin to understand what the scientists are talking about.

When it comes down to it, often scientists don’t even know where their research is taking them or where it’ll take us down the road. They work on a problem because it’s interesting and helps them understand a tiny part of the bigger picture. Perhaps a decent analogy would be of a person encountering a jig saw puzzle for the first time. They have no idea what a jig saw puzzle is and must examine each and every piece first, trying this piece with that until they eventually come to understand that all the pieces somehow fit together to form a picture. So much of science is studying the jigsaw pieces without understanding the bigger picture into which they fit.

So when push comes to shove, it’s really simple to say, with all the problems faced by our nation today, with all the hardships endured by so many, if any particular piece of scientific research will not result in noticeable benefits in the short term then we would be foolish to throw away money on it. This I think is at the heart of a certain elemental disrespect for science in our country. Lacking the knowledge or math skills necessary for understanding it all comes down to “Yes, but what have you done for me lately.”

That’s a problem. There’s no way of knowing what most scientific research will lead to tomorrow, what problems it might solve, what problems it may create. When Newton first set out to explain why apples fall to earth, he simply couldn’t have envisioned that his work would one day lead to the physics that allowed men to visit the moon and return with the dust for Dr. Abbas’s research, or put the sattelites in orbit that us to view and communicate with the other side of the world in near real time. When we pick and choose which science to support, when we decide on “good science” vs. “bad science” we don’t know what we’re throwing away and we can’t even be sure that the science we have invested in will pay off.

And who knows… maybe that “good science” will create problems for us down the road that could have been solved or avoided by the “bad science” we decided we didn’t have money for.

Of course, we can’t just fund all scientific research. The money isn’t there, and that’s especially true in a time when we’ve decided that war is a better investment in the future than science. It’s not easy, and somewhere, somehow, someone must decide which science to fund. Should that be the politicians though? Most members of Congress are lawyers. I don’t think there’s a single professional scientist in all of the House and Senate. If we, as ordinary citizens, can’t understand the research then why should we expect Congress to do so? To complicate matters, Congress closed the Office of Technology Assessment in 1995 which had been formed in 1972 to do precisely that job — advise Congress on matters of science and technology.

Where does that leave us? We live in a world that is impossible to understand without complex specialized knowledge with a public and a government that is fundamentally apathetic at best, and often antagonistic toward science. Congresspeople routinely make laws concerning issues related to the same complex specialized knowledge that they themselves are unable to understand. Those same Congresspeople disbanded the very office meant to help them understand those issues. The result is funding for basic science research is curtailed in favor of partisan objectives often based on flawed or manipulated scientific findings.

Admittedly, it’s a tough problem and although the current Republican leadership has raised it to whole new levels, the blame also rests on the left. This is what I would like to see in my fantasy world:

• Reformation of the Office of Technology Assessment as the Office of Science and Technology Assessment* with the principle duty of informing members of Congress on science and technology issues related to legislation in a nonpartisan objective manner.
• Formation of an Office of Science Education with a mission similar to that of the the National Endowment for the Arts to encourage science education in the schools and the public.
• Federal block grant funding of scientific research allowing individual states, universities and companies to decide how and on what research the money should be spent. I know that last part is anathema to most liberals but the fact of the matter is that large companies in other countries often do basic science research and as long as the results are publically published then they should be encouraged to do so.

I’m not a scientist and the above proposals may be naive, but I think they’d be a good start to addressing three fundamental problems in this country that seem to me to be interconnected; that of decreasing funding for basic scientific research, a lack of understanding of science and how it relates to our workaday world and public attitudes toward science. Too, for the most part, these are problems we don’t even know we have. And, paraphrasing Russell Kerschmann, when you don’t know you have a problem, that’s a problem.

This post which appeared on the original Neural Gourmet on November 27, 2005 is one of my favorite science posts. The work of Mian Abbas illustrates perfectly to me how science should not be bound up by politics. Hopefully when Obama is President we will see a reversal of the anti-science policy of the Bush administration.