Our Scientific Overlords

Headline, from Nature magazine this week:

Money quote: “Politicians who are not trained in science should not meddle in our day-to-day business, or tell scientists what’s right or wrong.”

This is exactly how we got Fauci funding “gain of function” research in China, and (apparently) experimenting in a gruesome fashion on dogs.

Reminder, from President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address:

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another reminder, from (socialist) Harold Laski:

Government by experts would, however ardent their original zeal for the public welfare, mean after a time government in the interest of experts. Of that the outcome would be either stagnation, on the one hand, or social antagonism, upon the other.

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