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Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

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Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#71

Post by Maro »

gcp wrote: post #58
patio11 wrote: post #43

Who is a scientist? If you scope this to PhDs who have done serious research in academia, you pretty much just said "no ex-university career before the age of 40." That is going to make it very hard to develop the networks you'll need to advance up the ranks of either party. You'll also likely require substantial external support for initial campaigns because relative to the lawyers, doctors, businessmen, undertakers…

Among the 435 members of the House, for example, there are one physicist, one chemist, one microbiologist, six engineers and nearly two dozen representatives with medical training....This showing is sparse even with the inclusion of the doctors, but it shouldn’t be too surprising. The article clearly considers engineers and doctors to be scientists. As it should - they are all well-versed in the scientific method by…

My wife is a medical doctor doing a Phd right now. By her own admission, doctors are _not_ well-versed in the scientific method _by education_. The others in her lab are all biologists, and she spent the first year playing catch-up in terms of being able to do science, and says she still feels like she'll always be behind compared to the biologists in the lab who got a regular scientist training in their 5 years at the University. She's certainly being pessimistic though, her lab is headed by a medical doctor...

Anyways, my point is, doctors are not trained to be scientists.

Disclaimer: This is Hungary. I have four doctors in my close family. I'm a physicist.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#72

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #68

While I'd definitely want to see more people with science/engineering background managing countries, I keep wondering, whether this wouldn't be solving a wrong problem. How much problems are there because western politicians supposedly are morons who can't handle the complexities of this world, and how much problems are caused by Upton Sinclair's "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary…

[deleted]

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#73

Post by vidarh »

whatusername wrote: post #53
runningdogx wrote: post #29

One aspect I've never thought about before is the selection of representatives for parliament/legislature. In the U.S., they're pre-selected in primary elections per party, but the national elections are single-winner per seat, so the candidates are out pandering to the voters constantly. I don't know percentages, but many other countries use multi-winner to select their national multi-seat bodies, and my understandi…

What do you see as the problem with IRV?

It's still single seat. It has most of the same problems as straight plurality single seat elections.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#74

Post by Erunno »

gaius wrote: post #56
Erunno wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a lot of career politicians here as well who only worked in their respective parties usually starting in the youth organizations and then working their way up the ranks. I'm curious though what you consider a to be "real" job.

I don't think it's too unreasonable to expect the minister for health, say, to have had a successful career working as a doctor in a hospital before entering politics, for the chancellor to have succeeded in business, for the defence minister to be a decorated soldier, etc etc.

There are numerous examples of politicians who have the matching formal education but make horrible politics irregardless. Here in Germany the minister of health was a physician and despite that he mostly was a lobbyist for the pharma industry (among other wrongdoings) and many of his decisions actually worsened the situation of regular patients. We also had lawyers in the ministry of justice who without blinking an eye issued laws which later were proven illegal by the high court. From a politician I expect a clear political vision and use expert knowledge to find the best way to achieve these goals. The necessary expertise can be acquired by, uh, experts which has to be done most often anyway as the minister himself does not usually have the time or specialization to deal with specific complex issues. What I expect from a minister though is to make a wise selection of experts he draws knowledge from and still make the final call whether he will follow the recommendations.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#75

Post by arethuza »

yardie wrote: post #67
uuilly wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fantastic book. He also talks a lot about how being good at one thing doesn't make you good at another. Sowell's notion of effective intelligence is rooted more in experience than in aptitude. So a scientist with no political experience is less likely to be good at politics than someone of lesser intellect with that experience.

One example is president Jimmy Carter. Brilliant thinker, scientist and business man. Mediocre skills in leadership and absolutely dismal in working through beauracracy. He had the one-two punch of having an oil crisis and recession, unlike Obama he just couldn't get it turned around in time for the next election.

I could remember that Carter was in the US Navy - turns out he had a pretty interesting career there - including being in charge of a team disassembling an onshore experimental reactor after a meltdown!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter#Naval_career

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#76

Post by ekianjo »

bjnortier_hn wrote: post #70
ekianjo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all scientists are government-employed. It may be a majority in some countries, but I would not disregard the amount of scientists employed in the private industries as well. They may not be involved in fundamental research, rather "applied sciences", but they are scientists nonetheless. Anyone who produces data through experimentation, analyses it, uses critical judgment and appropriate tools to make evidence-ba…

'Anyone who [...] uses critical judgment and appropriate tools to make evidence-based decisions' Except for the experimentation part, that could describe a lawyer. Which begs the question, Where does it go wrong? Why do people from an evidence-based career become embroiled in the kind of back[stabbing/scratching] politics that seems to be the norm today? And how can it be fixed?

Experimentation is mandatory to conduct Science. You need to be able to form theories or hypotheses from data or observation, and then conduct a controlled experiment to validate your point. There can be no science without validation and repeatability.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#77

Post by Erunno »

kolinko wrote: post #44
prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

Anti-intellectuality aside. Understanding science is important, but a good scientist ≠ good manager. A scientist is usually someone with narrow, but deep knowledge/experience, as a politician I want someone with a broader set of experiences & knowledge. I mean, MSc president - sure. PhD president - probably no, thank you :)

There's also the fallacy that scientists will only make pure objective decisions but scientists are in the end only humans and have their own believes, failings and political agendas. The whole system of peer reviewing and the acknowledgement that every scientific theory can be falsified is a testament to this realization. Unfortunately I have the impression that in politics too often individual experts are only heard and thus the whole system of checks and balances in science is circumvented and particular scientific opinions might get more weight than justified.

Still, I believe that the scientific methodology (not necessarily individual scientists) is still our best hope to actually achieve improvements as shown by our rapidly expanding knowledge since it was more formally defined. It just has to be tempered with clear political goals.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#78

Post by ekianjo »

A short comment on why scientists are usually not interested in politics. Scientists are in pursuit of the Truth, not power. Politics is too narrow field to play on. Carl Sagan used the picture of the Earth from Space to show that great leaders are basically men whose reach is limited to borders and time, while astronomers were above all those considerations. That was a powerful way to describe this.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#79

Post by polymatter »

MrKurtHaeusler wrote: post #47

That is an easy one. Scientists are good at objective truth, facts, etc. Most political decisions are however highly subjective, and based on values, principles and opinions. Scientists are great for advising politicians on things that are obviously and provably correct or false, but once it gets beyond that, their biases tends to get in the way. Asking a scientist if NASA should get more or less funding is about as…

And non-scientists take a more rational, balanced view that is more free from bias?

I think bias is intrinsic to being human, and unavoidable (all we can do is mitigate its damage). But someone who can admit they are wrong when faced with evidence (aka a scientist) is probably better equipped than one who is adamant that if they keep saying "no", eventually the universe will shut up and behave (most politicians).

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#80

Post by eftpotrm »

vidarh wrote: post #73
whatusername wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you see as the problem with IRV?

It's still single seat. It has most of the same problems as straight plurality single seat elections.

Exactly; so many of the problems of under-representation are due to minority groups having disparate, rather than concentrated, power bases and so failing to achieve the threshold for election in any single seat in spite of having more than enough supporters more widely.

STV (IRV with multi-member constituencies) or regional top-up lists can both mitigate this. Neither is perfect, but they certainly help.

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