Why geeks should be invited to the policy party

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http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2012/05/why-geeks-should-be-invited-to-the-policy-party.html



In The Geek Manifesto, Mark Henderson pleads for citizens who value science to force it onto the mainstream political agenda and other main walks of life

THE UK House of Commons contains only one member of Parliament who has worked in scientific research. Starting with this statistic in The Geek Manifesto, Mark Henderson unleashes a depressing roll call of institutions and people who have let down science. Former science editor at UK daily The Times, Henderson doesn't shy away from naming names, even rapping his own knuckles for a negative news story he once wrote about the Large Hadron Collider.

But this book is not simply about cataloguing bad science; it is a rallying cry. What the UK needs, he argues, is for those citizens who value science to rise up and force it onto the mainstream political agenda.

His use of the word "we" throughout leaves no doubt that he is appealing to fellow geeks. In a chapter on education, he urges us to take up science teaching in schools. In others, he presses his scientific comrades to critique government policy on crime and nuclear power. To anyone who regularly reads British newspapers, his case studies will sound familiar - the false link between the MMR vaccine and autism, for instance, or environmental concerns over GM crops. But the purpose of this book seems not so much to surprise, as to provide ammunition for those who think that society could use a good deal more of the scientific method.

Researchers who are wary of dirtying their hands with politics should be encouraged by recent successful campaigns on blogs and social networks, he says. In 2010, for example, more than 2000 people rallied in Westminster under the banner "Science is Vital", protesting against proposed 30 per cent cuts to public spending on science. A subsequent petition gained more than 33,000 signatures. It seems to have worked: the UK science budget was frozen for the next four years.

[Fumesucker]

1. Geeky stuff is MEGO inducing to non geeks..

My Eyes Glaze Over, that's what happens any time you try to explain technical concepts to the the non-technical person, you have to start at such a baby level with most people that it's impossible to get to any significant point before their attention wanes..

There's a reason that there are so few technically oriented people in politics, practical everyday politics is almost all about emotion and not about hard facts and logic.

I got into an argument about my particular area of expertise with a non tech person not too long ago, I ended up telling them that I understood the subject in words that they had never even heard, let alone knew the meaning of and then I just walked away and let them find out I was correct the hard and expensive way.