New OTA site

The archived reports of the OTA are on a new site hosted by the Federation of American Scientists.

You may remember that we’re big fans of the OTA as we feel that scientific assessment of government policy and guidance of legislation is key to having an efficacious, informed congress. In our initial post on the OTA we said:

It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific reports relevant to policy discussions. It was a critical office, one that through thorough and complete analysis of the scientific literature gave politicians common facts from which to decide policy debates. In 1994, with the new Republican congress, the office was eliminated for the sake of budget cuts, but the cost in terms of damage to the quality of scientific debate on policy has been incalculable. Chris Mooney described it as Congress engaging in “a stunning act of self-lobotomy” in his book the Republican War on Science (RWOS at Amazon).

The fact of the matter is that our government is currently operating without any real scientific analysis of policy. Any member can introduce whatever set of facts they want, by employing some crank think tank to cherry-pick the scientific literature to suit any ideological agenda. This is truly should be a non-partisan issue. Everybody should want the government to be operating from one set of facts, ideally facts investigated by an independent body within the congress that is fiercely non-partisan, to set the bounds of legitimate debate. Everybody should want policy and policy debates to be based upon sound scientific ground. Everybody should want evidence-based government.

One of the leading advocates of restoring the OTA, Rush Holt, has a video up explaining why he thinks the OTA is important:

I’m glad to see that within the government there are those who still think this is an important issue, and the possibility of bringing science back within the halls of government is still a very real possibility.

It Is Time For A Presidential Debate On Science

We must adapt to the fact that over the last few decades it has become critical that our politicians and policymakers understand science and implement policy that is consistent with scientific facts. And it is past time that we made science enough of a priority to merit a presidential debate on science. The need is clear, these days policymakers must be able to respond in an informed fashion to new technologies, new scientific findings, and potential disasters (such as climate change). Despite the need for a scientifically-literate political leadership, we have a president who says the jury is still out on evolution, who promotes failed abstinence-only sex education programs, and refuses to make any substantive changes to address global warming.

We must do a better job vetting our politicians for scientific literacy and competence.

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum at the Intersection have been working on a solution to this problem. They’ve gathered a coalition of luminaries to support a presidential debate on science in 2008. The mission statement reads:

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy.

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I agree wholeheartedly, the citizens of the United States deserve to know whether or not their political leaders are scientifically-informed, or actively hostile to science. Science has become too important to just be an afterthought in political elections, we must put it front-and-center. This is a brilliant idea and I’m thankful for Chris and Sheril’s leadership in putting this together.

I know what question I’d ask at such a debate. Which candidates would encourage congress and provide funding to bring back the OTA. After all, having a scientifically-literate leader is nice, but laying the foundation for long-term scientific policymaking is better.

You can support the scientific debate too. Let’s make this a reality.

Missile defense is a boondoggle

This is why we need the Office of Technology Assessment (and listen to it), Bush is trying to bring back SDI, big time.

President Bush said yesterday that a missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to guard against a possible attack on U.S. allies by Iran, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that the United States could delay activating such a system until there is “definitive proof” of such a threat.

The seemingly contrasting messages came as the Bush administration grappled with continuing Russian protests over Washington’s plan to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The Kremlin considers the program a potential threat to its own nuclear deterrent and has sought to play down any threat from Iran.

Both Bush and Gates affirmed that they want to proceed with deployment of the system, including 10 antimissile interceptors in Poland and a radar-tracking facility in the Czech Republic projected for completion in 2012. Bush cited Iran’s development of ballistic missiles that could strike Israel and Turkey, and said Tehran is also developing missiles that could strike NATO countries.

This cold-war boondoggle was shown to be worthless and fundamentally flawed as a political concept and as a feasible technology over 20 years ago (PDF) by the OTA, and I think their basic findings remain unchallenged. These systems have failed every test so far except for what, one? The last test I remember cost 87 million dollars and the missile didn’t even leave the silo! In general missile defense, even Patriot Missile defense against the relatively unsophisticated Scud missile, has been shown to only be an effective psychological weapon and physically ineffective in actually destroying missiles. In fact, even in the first Iraq War the Patriot countermeasures against Scud missiles, when retrospectively analyzed showed success in only a tiny minority of intercepts (possibly zero) – not to mention all the friendly-fire incidents and planes they shot down (not surprising since the system was designed to attack planes).

Missile defense is flawed as a concept too, as it could be overwhelmed easily by simultaneous launch of dummy missiles, other decoys deployed in flight, and other countermeasures to prevent the rather rare event of two bullets successfully colliding in midair. It is politically treacherous, as it angers the Russians, and merely escalates arms races. If the enemy knows and is prepared for their deployment, clearly other methods such as bombers, smuggling of bombs into enemy territory, or short range technology would be used to attack easier targets.

Finally, I am unimpressed that a nuclear Iran actually represents such an extreme threat to America or our allies. Even with ICBM technology Iran would never have the capability to challenge real nuclear powers such as Israel, or the US without certain annihilation. MAD worked as a strategy against a far more powerful and threatening enemy for 50 years, and while not ideal, was effective. Missile defense has only shown itself to be tremendously expensive, politically unfeasible, and, after 25 years of R&D completely unproven as a defensive technology. It’s all in the OTA report, maybe after all this time and money we should consider listening to what the science says about this endeavor, and abandon it. If we’d done that in the first place the savings would have been in the hundreds of billions.

Hillary Clinton will restore the OTA

Good news from the political front. Hillary Clinton plans to re-establish the OTA if elected.

Fifth, we’re going to stop substituting ideology for science and evidence, and we’re going to start giving the American people again the facts on the issues that matter to them and their families. Over the past six years, this Administration has tried to turn Washington into an evidence-free zone. Whether it’s stem cell research or Plan B Contraception or pollution or global warming or the safety of our food or the quality of our air — all too often, ideology has replaced facts, and truth has been the first casualty.

The American people deserve better than that. Way back in the 1990s, the White House had an Office of Technology Assessment that was charged with just one task: telling us the truth about science. Sorting out the competing claims and to the best of the scientists’ abilities, telling us what to believe. For decades, they cut through the myths and the spin on everything from Star Wars to AIDS prevention to solar technology. It’s time we put this office back in business, because our citizens should have the information they need about the issues that affect them.

And from her website (since she accidentally conflated the White House office with the congressional one:

The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) should be restored to provide authoritative and objective analysis of complex scientific and technical issues for the federal government. From 1974 to 1995, the OTA had been a small department in the federal government providing numerous, accurate reports for policymakers. As President, Hillary would work to restore the OTA and ensure that we restore the role of evidence and facts, not partisanship and ideology, to decision making.

This is excellent news. Even if you don’t support Hillary, to have this as a goal of a leading candidate will increase its visibility, and bring a discussion of science in policy-making into the debates in the next election.

So cheers for Hillary for recognizing that this is an important issue and lets hope the other candidates pick up on it and support it as well.

Also, I have put a diary up at Kos to help expand awareness of the OTA. Please visit and recommend it up if you’re a Kossack.

Bring Back the OTA III – A history of the OTA

Chris Mooney has been nice enough to help promote our effort, and points us to some more helpful information about the Office of Technology Assessment. Now would be a good time to go over what the OTA did, how it was set up, and why I think it would be rather easy to set it up again as a non-partisan scientific body. To help people understand why this office was important, let’s go through a history of the body, much of which I’ve culled from Bruce Bimber’s “The Politics of Expertise in Congress”.

Founding and Mission of the OTA
The OTA was founded in 1972 to counter more political bodies of expertise, like the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) which explicitly serve to advance the executive’s policy goals and lack objectivity or rather political neutrality. While in its early years it was not politically pure, it was remarkable among Congressional agencies in that it became less politicized over time. From Bimber:

Even the most naive observer of politics expects advisors to presidents, senators, and agency heads to be “biased” in favor of their bosses. But the simplicity of this theory is also its downfall–it merely predicts that degree of politicization increases with time, and cannot speak to cases where expert organizations might grow less politicized over time, or where agencies might exhibit different degrees of politicization. The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), created explicitly as an analogue to PSAC for Congress, was highly politicized in its first half-dozen years of operation. It was widely viewed as dedicated to a narrow set of political interests, and its technical credibility suffered as a result. But OTA evolved over time to be less politicized; it became less partisan, less parochial, and more credible as a neutral provider of expertise. The agency exhibited an unmistakable trend from high toward lower politicization. (p20)

The Technology Assessment Act of 1972 initially defined a more limited role for the agency. It “assigned the agency a mission of providing neutral, competent assessments about the probable beneficial and harmful effects of new technologies.” (Bimber p26) The goal of the agency was to help craft policy to mitigate the negative effects of new technology while maximizing benefit from new science and knowledge.

The governing structure of the OTA was unique for a Congressional office. It was designed to minimize partisan input, and restrict the OTA from developing its own policy goals.

Continue reading “Bring Back the OTA III – A history of the OTA”

OTA Thread II

Let’s keep this ball rolling. On Friday we started talking about the importance of the OTA

It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific reports relevant to policy discussions. It was a critical office, one that through thorough and complete analysis of the scientific literature gave politicians common facts from which to decide policy debates. In 1994, with the new Republican congress, the office was eliminated for the sake of budget cuts, but the cost in terms of damage to the quality of scientific debate on policy has been incalculable. Chris Mooney described it as Congress engaging in “a stunning act of self-lobotomy” in his book the Republican War on Science (RWOS at Amazon).

The fact of the matter is that our government is currently operating without any real scientific analysis of policy. Any member can introduce whatever set of facts they want, by employing some crank think tank to cherry-pick the scientific literature to suit any ideological agenda. This is truly should be a non-partisan issue. Everybody should want the government to be operating from one set of facts, ideally facts investigated by an independent body within the congress that is fiercely non-partisan, to set the bounds of legitimate debate. Everybody should want policy and policy debates to be based upon sound scientific ground. Everybody should want evidence-based government.

We’ve gotten some nice linkage so far:

Links so far:
PZ at Pharyngula
John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts
Major Geek’s LiveJournal
Ordinary Girl at Tales of an Ordinary Girl
John Pieret at Thoughts in a Haystack
Dave Bruggeman at Prometheus writing a month ago
Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
Alex at the Yorkshire Ranter
Measured Against Reality
One Good Move
La Pobre Habladora at Second Innocence
Dan at Migrations
Mike Dunford at Questionable Authority – with links to presidential campaigns!
Jeremy Elton Jacquot at TreeHugger
Epicanis at the Big Room
Blue Sky Mining
Brian Thomas at Carbon-Based
Bora at Blog Around the Clock
suddenly south at the Cucking Stool
Geoff Davis at PhDs.org Engineering and Science Blog
Amanda at Enviroblog
Kate at Anterior Commissure
Soberish
Chris Mooney at the Intersection
Paul Hutchinson at Paul Hutchinson’s Blog
Kent at Uncommon Ground
DOF at Decrepit Old Fool

As before we ask if you have a blog link this post, spread the word, and contact your senator or congressman about having this office re-established.

We believe that we can make this a political issue in the coming election. If candidates for office support science and reason period, they should support the idea that government and policy should be studied scientifically in a non-partisan and independent fashion. I also believe this can go a long way to undoing the influence of money in politics. While it’s probably impossible to truly expect congress to do away with lobbying or stop listening to crank think tanks, having independent and non-partisan scientific information presented routinely to congress can go a long way to balance out the ideologically-motivated nonsense that currently passes for science on Capitol hill.

Bring Back the OTA – Bring Back Evidence Based Government

So I was thinking. It isn’t really enough to merely react constantly to anti-scientific behavior which seems to permeate the media, the interwebs, and policy discussions on Capitol Hill these days.

It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific reports relevant to policy discussions. It was a critical office, one that through thorough and complete analysis of the scientific literature gave politicians common facts from which to decide policy debates. In 1994, with the new Republican congress, the office was eliminated for the sake of budget cuts, but the cost in terms of damage to the quality of scientific debate on policy has been incalculable. Chris Mooney described it as Congress engaging in “a stunning act of self-lobotomy” in his book the Republican War on Science (RWOS at Amazon).

The fact of the matter is that our government is currently operating without any real scientific analysis of policy. Any member can introduce whatever set of facts they want, by employing some crank think tank to cherry-pick the scientific literature to suit any ideological agenda. This is truly should be a non-partisan issue. Everybody should want the government to be operating from one set of facts, ideally facts investigated by an independent body within the congress that is fiercely non-partisan, to set the bounds of legitimate debate. Everybody should want policy and policy debates to be based upon sound scientific ground. Everybody should want evidence-based government.

For another good article on the OTA, and why it should be brought back I can recommend this one.

In the meantime, what can you do? Well, if you’re a Kossack, go write a diary or three on the topic. If you’re a LGFer, write comments about it there. If you have a blog, write a post about it. Here is a list of emails for senators and congressmen, write yours and suggest that the OTA be re-funded and allowed to scientifically investigate sound policy once more. Link back here so that I can see who is interested in pursuing this, and whether or not this is a popular idea.

It’s not enough to bitch about anti-science when it happens, the root of our problems stems from a government which no longer has a sound, non-partisan scientific body to guide debate. Let’s ask congress to re-insert their brain, and refund the OTA.

Continue reading “Bring Back the OTA – Bring Back Evidence Based Government”