As Biden and Harris introduce their science team in Wilmington on Saturday afternoon, it pays to remember that Trump had no use for scientific advice.
Mr. Trump left the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology idle for 33 months. When he reconstituted it in 2019, only one of his appointees was an academic scientist, with representatives of private industry filling out the council.
Biden chose Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, as his director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and added the position to his cabinet. Lander is known for his pioneering work on the Human Genome Project. Biden also selected Frances H. Arnold, winner of a 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and Maria Zuber, the first woman to manage a NASA space mission, to serve as co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
We’ve seen where ignoring scientists in favor of industry leaders gets us. Now we’re going to get back to normal and put our future in the hands of people who know what they’re talking about.
I’m excited about it.