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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – In a dig into the outgoing Trump administration, President-elect Joe Biden on Saturday presented his list of science advisers with the promise that they would summon ‘science and truth’ to fight the coronavirus pandemic , the climate crisis and other challenges.
“This is the most exciting announcement I’ve been able to make,” Biden said after weeks in office and other appointments and appointments. “This is a team that will help you restore your faith in America’s place on the frontier of science and discovery.”
Biden is elevating the position of science adviser to Cabinet level, a White House first, and has said that Eric Lander, a pioneer in human genome mapping who is expected to be director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, is ” one of the brightest guys i know.
President-elect, Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, Lander and other top science advisers never mentioned Trump’s name, but presented the inauguration on Wednesday as a clean break with a president who played down the threat of COVID-19 and declared the science behind the climate. change to be a hoax.
“The science behind climate change is not a hoax. The science behind the virus is not partisan, ”Harris said. “The same laws apply, the same evidence is valid whether you accept it or not.”
Biden highlighted how scientific research is leading to practical advancements and a better quality of life, from COVID-19 vaccines and new cancer treatments to the expansion of clean energies that reduce carbon emissions.
“Science is a discovery. It’s not fiction, ”Biden said. “It’s also a question of hope.”
And, again without naming Trump, the president-elect said one of the tasks of his team would be to build public confidence in science and its usefulness.
Lander added that Biden instructed his advisers and “the entire scientific community and the American public” to “stand up at this time.”
Biden and Harris have also deviated from their prepared texts to present scientists as examples to the children of the country.
“Superheroes aren’t just a matter of the imagination,” Harris said. “They are walking among us. They are teachers, doctors and scientists, they are vaccine researchers … and you can grow up to be like them too.
Lander is the founding director of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard and was the lead author of the first article announcing the details of the human genome. He would be the first scientist in life to hold this post at the White House. His predecessor is a meteorologist.
The president-elect retains the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr Francis Collins, who worked with Lander on the human genome project. Biden also appointed two leading women scientists to co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Frances Arnold, a chemical engineer from the California Institute of Technology which won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and MIT’s vice president for research and geophysics, Maria Zuber, will lead the external scientific advisory board. Lander held this position during the Obama administration.
Biden has selected Princeton’s Alondra Nelson, a social scientist who studies science, technology and social inequalities, as deputy director of science policy.
The president-elect noted the diversity of the team and reiterated his promise that his administration’s science policy and investments would target historically disadvantaged and underserved communities.
Nelson celebrated this commitment.
“As a black researcher, I am acutely aware of those who are missing from these pieces,” she said. “I believe we have a responsibility to work together to make sure that our science and technology reflect us… who we really are together.”
Scientific organizations quickly praised the Lander and the promotion of the scientific position at the Cabinet level. The post of director of science and technology policy must be confirmed by the Senate.
The elevation of the position “clearly signals the administration’s intention to involve scientific expertise in every policy discussion,” said Sudip Parikh, executive director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest general scientific society in the world.
Lander, also a mathematician, is a professor of biology at both Harvard and MIT, and his work has been cited nearly half a million times in scientific literature, one of the most among scientists. He has won numerous science awards, including a MacArthur “genius” scholarship and a breakthrough award, and is one of Pope Francis’ scientific advisers.
“As a child growing up in Brooklyn, I saw America go to the moon,” Lander said, adding that “no nation is better equipped than America to lead the search for solutions” that “Advance our health, our economic well-being and our nation’s security.”
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Borenstein reported from Kensington, Maryland.
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