Thread by @mariliacout

@SenWarren @RepPressley 1 / I'd like to comment by putting the question in context. The report below was addressed to Pres. Roosevelt in 1945 and was the first organized attempt at creating a national science policy plan:

nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/v…

@SenWarren @RepPressley 2 / It's called "Science The Endless Frontier - A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945". The USA did not have scientific superiority until after WWII. The question addressed in the report was how =>

@SenWarren @RepPressley 3 / to ensure a threat like that wouldn't happen again. The answer to build long-term and effective *local* (national) science and technology capability. The idea was that a mass higher education would lead to a large screening pool =>

@SenWarren @RepPressley 4 / => for science talent. Sufficient funding and science "protection" from pressure would ensure unrestricted scientific development. It would inevitably trickle down into technological development. That idea was very right and very naive at the same time right and wrong.

@SenWarren @RepPressley 5 / Without a plan, basic science doesn't just "trickle down" into the desired technology. It does, but more effective ways emerged in time. Mass higher education, however, was what made the big difference and gave the USA scientific leadership (which it did NOT have before).

@SenWarren @RepPressley 6 / The naive trickle down model was subsequently corrected until solid science policy plans were designed. Higher education has also shown to have greater impact on society when aided by plans. Finally, none of that is really effective without solid science literacy plans.

@SenWarren @RepPressley 7 / A progressive, slowly self-corrective 74-year-old science and higher education policy that the USA pioneered is being gutted now. By undermining mass higher education, the USA is and will continue to rely more and more on brain drain from other countries.

@SenWarren @RepPressley 8 / That is exactly what Vannevar Bush addressed 74 years ago: if it weren't for the WWII brain drain from Europe, in which the USA benefitted from the persecution of elite European scientists, the results of the war could have been very different.

@SenWarren @RepPressley 9 / Having mass higher education, support for basic and applied science and granting priority to science on technical matters was the model's foundation. Unpayable student loans, radicalizing white uneducated adults against science and not promoting it at all levels =>

@SenWarren @RepPressley 10 / => may be the beginning of a downward spiral, destroying what thousands of scientists, policy-makers, educators and communicators have built for almost a century. It is far more dangerous than most people think.

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