TAM 4: Things are tough all over: Murry Gell-Man
January 27, 2006
The Amazing Meeting: Day 2.
10:45 AM
Murray Gell-Man has been around.
Nobel prize in physics, the year I was born (1969.) Manhattan Project. Presidential Science Advisory Committee. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Lesser. His name is a word in the dictionary. I'm doubt I'm going to have the same number of wacky adventures as he had -- or end my life as a word. Maybe a perv. Or eating a bird. Okay, I'll stop now.
Gell-Mann's stories from all the administrations he worked with were real world examples of politics and science clashing. On some occasions it was minor -- his time with Ike -- others it was far more pronounced -- under Reagan, clashing with Edward Teller over SDI/Star Wars -- and once, it was even down right cordial: the Clinton presidency.
He pointed out though that no matter the agency or the president, science always runs second place to whatever major program or initiative is currently in favor with whatever agency he worked with. He gave the example of the mid seventies switch at NASA from the Atlas rockets and their successful history to the over-promised but now top priority shuttle. The line at NASA was that the shuttle was the Best Thing. Everything else must be secondary to it. The agency became the biggest critic of its former success, a way of diverting attention (and budget) from its own past toward the new It of the future.
He held out his harshest words for the Bush II administration. He said he'd never seen such a glaring example of a decisions being made ahead of time and science -- facts, as he iterated over and over again -- being bent to support the decision.
Also, it bothered him greatly that the current evolution exhibit at the New York Museum of Natural History wasn't able to draw any corporate funding and that a recent school administrator's rejection of allowing ID to infect his districts' science classes was regarded as a "courageous act" "in favor of Darwin" and not as truth denying lies a place at the table.
Note: It bothers me too.
Posted by Jody at January 27, 2006 11:35 PM
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