Advice When It Suits
Advice When It Suits
An interview with New Zealand's first-ever chief science advisor, and what we lose when science isn't allowed in the room.
_-_The_Guru_Giving_Advice_-_69.423_-_Detroit_Institute_of_Arts.jpg)
Happy New Year! Thanks for reading. Tell your friends, mash that like button, and sign up if you haven’t yet.
When a massive storm was threatening parts of the United States, and Donald Trump said something about it hitting Alabama even though it was not going to hit Alabama, and then he brought out a beSharpie’d version of the storm’s projected path and NOAA was forced to walk back its correction of the president even though NOAA does what it does so people either do or do not evacuate or otherwise prepare for dangerous events—when all that was happening, all I could think about was:
Isn’t the president’s science advisor an expert on extreme weather?
It’s true, he really is. In all that absurd kerfuffle, perhaps it would have been nice to ask a couple questions of Kelvin Droegemeier, the guy who [checks notes] co-founded the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms and then directed it for twelve years? Is it possible that the guy with a PhD in atmospheric science who spent 33 years as a professor of meteorology might have a few insights into where the big storm is heading?
I thought about this again in December when I spoke over Skype with Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, New Zealand’s first-ever science advisor to the Prime Minister.
“You need to have that person in the room in emergencies with the ability to interpret data, make sure the politicians understand what’s going on, and also to identify the questions that they might miss,” he told me. Gluckman, who served under three different Prime Ministers between 2009 and 2018, including Jacinda Ardern toward the end of his tenure, says one of his biggest accomplishments in the role was to establish the science advisor as part of the government’s primary crisis management team.
.jpg)
“I had earthquakes, I had shipwrecks, I had aquifer poisonings, I had the 1080 scare. I had my share of them,” he said. “More than once I had to step in and say, ‘Wait on, you don’t understand what the science is saying.’” We were speaking just days after the Whakaari/White Island eruption, which killed 19 people; Gluckman said that his successor, Juliet Gerrard, was heavily involved with the ongoing recovery efforts at the time.
In the U.S., the position of science advisor to the president has something of a fraught history. It has on various occasions since the 1950s been sidelined, ignored, and once, outright extinguished; those in the role have been behind-the-scenes maneuverers or out-front administration cheerleaders (Hi, George Keyworth! How did the Star Wars missile defense system turn out?). And it seems clear that once again today, after an eight-year run where Obama advisor John Holdren maintained a sizable influence over his boss’s thinking and on policy itself, the advisor and his particular brand of expertise aren’t exactly welcome in the Situation Room.
“I’ve only met Kelvin once,” Gluckman told me. “He’s a nice guy, obviously. I don’t envy the role he’s in. It’s a hard role.”
Gluckman says that internal diplomacy is a key part of advising the government executive. “There is an absolute art of science advice. Just because I find that A causes B doesn’t mean that a politician or a policy maker has to then do something.”
A good first step, though, is at least having a seat at the table. In New Zealand, Gluckman found that most in government were welcoming of his role, and he made headway in establishing departmental science advisors, putting out major reports on topics like transitions to adolescence and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. More generally, he set the precedent that the science advisor—and the evidence that he or she essentially represents—will be in on the ground floor when it comes to making policy.
“The chief science advisor is [now] most likely to be in the room when the early framing of policy options and priorities occurs,” he said. “That’s a unique opportunity, particularly if there is a very trusted relationship between the Prime Minister, the chief of staff of the Prime Minister, and the chief science advisor—that person will have a lot of informal influence.”
The “informal” bit is actually an important distinction between the U.S. and New Zealand—the science advisor in the U.S. is officially the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which, theoretically, plays a major role in shaping a wide variety of executive branch-driven policies. In New Zealand, Gluckman had no official role in policy-making; he was purely an advisor, there to guide the Prime Minister in the best use of evidence. There is a Ministry of Science and Innovation (technically part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation, & Employment) that actually shapes relevant policy.
(As a quick aside, in the 1950s and 1960s there was an ongoing debate in the U.S. about whether the government should create a Department of Science. The argument against it was that science should be used across agencies and departments, and that having a dedicated department would be akin to having a “Department of Typewriters.” No such department was ever created.)
I am not convinced, though, that Kelvin Droegemeier is doing much of either role these days.
In 2012, John Holdren and the 130-person-strong OSTP helped guide the response to Hurricane Sandy. 2019’s Hurricane Dorian still has not struck Alabama. In 2014, OSTP’s experts on Ebola and disease outbreaks in West Africa helped bring the massive epidemic under control. There’s an ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; heard anything from the White House on that particular story? As for policy-making, every new Trump administration story that remotely involves science tends to read something like “EPA to Require At Least Thrice the Arsenic in Baby Food.”
This is not the first time the president’s science advisor hasn’t been rolling in influence. Richard Nixon had two advisors resign before he simply eliminated the position; both said essentially that a wall was built around the president and none of their advice on things like the supersonic plane project and Vietnam-related issues was welcome. George W. Bush’s OSTP director John Marburger (who, like Droegemeier today, was not actually given the official “assistant to the president” title that, in more normal times, dictated the degree of access) toiled in the background while the administration ignored climate change warnings and stem cell science.
.jpg)
“You’re not going to be listened to in every case,” Gluckman told me. He said that importantly, he managed to get the science advisory apparatus included in the budgetary process in New Zealand—but it didn’t always get the attention it deserved. “I would sit there with the senior budget official from the treasury, and he would say ‘Well that one’s going to be funded come what may because it’s a political promise, this one’s not going to be funded whatever you think because it’s just not in their interest.’”
Still, on some issues, he was listened to. “I can remember going to Cabinets and saying, this does not make sense scientifically, it is not the thing to do. And Cabinet killing the proposal on that basis,” he said. “The fact that they listen on any is progress on them listening on none.”
John Holdren once told me something similar, when I interviewed him at the White House for WIRED: essentially, that the goal is to make sure science and scientific evidence represent one input into a decision-making process. That won’t be the only input, but it still needs to be there.
“Let’s not be naive,” Gluckman said. “We live in a democracy—well, we live, can’t talk about you at the moment [ed. note: that’s tough but fair]—we live in a democracy, and in a democracy the system is that the politicians have the last say, and are only accountable to the voter. And therefore the politicians have every right to override the evidence—I don’t think they should, but we have created a system that allows them to.”
Another difference between the U.S. and New Zealand is what kind of scientists end up in the role. Starting back in the 1950s, almost every presidential science advisor has been a physicist, and often a nuclear physicist. This made sense, to a point—the idea of science advice at the highest levels arose from the increasing complexity of wars both hot and Cold, and a good chunk of what the advisor did in those early days related to nuclear weapons, missile defense possibilities, and so on. These things aren’t exactly an issue in an island nation filled with 40 million sheep but only enough people to fill four out of five New York City boroughs.
,_Air_Chief_Marshal_Sir_Charles_Portal_and_Admiral_of_the_Fleet_Sir_Dudley_Pound,_watching_a_display_of_anti-aircraft_gunnery,_June_1941_H10306.jpg)
“When I look at my successes, they were largely in the social domain,” said Gluckman, who is by training a pediatrician and researcher in developmental endocrinology and neuroscience. “When you’re trying to determine, say, what are your options for dealing with greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, or what are your options in dealing with how you clean up a water supply, or how do you deal with the rapid rise of mental problems in adolescents—these are very different issues from deciding whether you’re going to build a bigger nuclear bomb or not.”
Obviously, no science advisor can be an expert on everything—but they can be experts on how to find the appropriate expert. Gluckman joked that he became quite an authority on seismology, given New Zealand’s propensity for earthquakes and eruptions. “Of course I’m not an expert in seismology, but I could make sure that the people on the other side understood what the seismologists were really saying in terms of absolute risk, relative risk, and so forth,” he said. “In an emergency you’re often getting new scientists in the room who are not used to talking to a policy maker. To have someone in that room who can make sure that everybody is comfortable is a very important role.”
Of course, when the emergency in question happens to mesh perfectly with your advisor’s area of expertise—like, I don’t know, extreme weather—one would think that sort of cuts out a few steps on the way to an appropriate response.
Outside of emergencies, the role in the U.S. and the U.K. has also moved away from the military and toward environmental and social issues. If you glance through a list of accomplishments John Holdren’s OSTP put out as the Obama administration came to an end, it is littered with things like encouraging STEM teaching initiatives, launching climate action plans (great, but about that), and improving mental health care. Again, though, all it takes is an executive who thinks “clean coal” means a type of coal that somehow comes out of the ground in a cleaner form than others and suddenly your OSTP has one-third the staff and a director who probably doesn’t know what the inside of the Oval Office looks like.
At its root, the idea of a science advisor to government is that using available scientific evidence will improve the policies put forth by that government. It turns out there is a remarkable appetite around the world for that concept. Gluckman is the chair of the International Network for Government Science Advice, or INGSA, which is working to spread best practices and “enhance the global science-policy interface.” It started only a few years ago and has now grown to include over 5,000 people across 100 countries.
Why the quick growth? “I think [it’s] the realization that the world is complex, decision making is complex, and irrespective of what domain of policy making, evidence can help make better policy,” Gluckman said. INGSA conducts workshops, conferences, and other events to, essentially, spread the word on how to get good science advice into leaders’ ears.
This is, obviously, somewhat timely, given the ongoing collapse of global ecosystems and a livable climate, among other pressing issues, but it’s also particularly relevant considering the sundering of truth and reality from widespread public and political perception. An antidote to a “post-truth” world probably comes both from the ground up—improved scientific and general literacy, and so on—but also from the top down, which means both reining in off-the-leash social media companies and also developing a political reality where maybe a few less politicians are willing to vote to require a non-existent ectopic pregnancy procedure.
“We struggled here,” he said. “The 1080 business, the fluouride, the vaccine thing—there are people who just don’t want to hear what we know. So it’s difficult. You live in the most difficult country of all in that regard at the present time.”
[waves “we’re number 1!” flag proudly]
He added that cultivating trusted sources, both to the public and to government officials, is among the best ways to combat misinformation and the spread of anti-science batshittery.
“In public, you don’t want to create an enemy of anybody, you’re trying to be the trusted honest broker,” he said. “In private if you have the trust of [the prime minister], you can have a very frank conversation. And I’m not afraid of those frank conversations.”
Of course, a prerequisite to a trusting relationship with your boss is that your boss has to know you exist. If he’s more likely to ask a Sharpie for help with a hurricane than you, well, watch out, Alabama.
random bits
Australia continues to be on fire.
The Chinese scientist who used CRISPR to genetically edit babies gets three years in jail for, uh, genetically editing babies.
Researchers announced the first ever example of chip-to-chip “teleportation” of information using quantum entanglement. This is very cool, with the caveat that quantum computing has been just around the corner for like three decades now.
If you’re curious, the photos in this post are all of U.S. presidential science advisors. From top (well, not the “guru giving advice” painting) to bottom:
Jerome Wiesner, far right, with Kennedy
Lee A. DuBridge, first Nixon advisor
Vannevar Bush, never an official science advisor but an unofficial FDR and Truman advisor and sort-of founder of the entire concept of a science advisor to the president
Curveball! Next one is Fred Lindemann (far left), otherwise known as 1st Viscount Cherwell, who was Winston Churchill’s science advisor
Isadore Rabi (middle), advisor to Eisenhower, sitting with Werner Heisenberg (right), of Uncertainty Principle and quantum mechanics fame
Carter advisor Frank Press, staring at a thing.
Happy 2020 everyone. Let’s do the decade right.
Find me: