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By Roger Pielke, Jr. in The Guardian on July 24, 2014
A coalition of environmental NGOs is calling for the post of Europe’s chief scientist to be axed. Roger Pielke Jr explains why this is a misguided and shortsighted proposal.
On Tuesday, a group of European health and environmental NGOs sent a letter to the president-elect of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, urging him to “scrap” the position of chief scientific adviser to the president of the Commission, a role currently held by Professor Anne Glover. On seeing this demand, my thoughts immediately turned to Richard Nixon.
More than 40 years ago, US president Richard Nixon abolished the president’s council of advisers on science and technology. He also transferred the role of presidential science adviser to the National Science Foundation, far away from the White House. Nixon took these actions because he was unhappy that many of his science advisers opposed the Vietnam War, anti-ballistic missile defence and supersonic transport.
The European NGOs calling for the abolishment of the chief scientific adviser, which include Greenpeace, are taking a page right out of Nixon’s playbook. Don’t like the science advice you are getting? Then fire your science adviser. Or better yet, abolish the position altogether so that you’ll never need to hear unwelcome advice in the future.
Who do the NGOs think should be advising the commission’s president? Themselves of course. As their letter says: “We hope that you as the incoming commission president will decide not to nominate a chief scientific adviser and that instead the commission will take its advice from a variety of independent, multi-disciplinary sources, with a focus on the public interest.” Read more…
