Skeptic Check: Science and the Election

Big Picture Science

This year’s election is divisive, but one subject enjoys some consensus: science and technology policies are important. So why aren’t the candidates discussing these issues? The answers might surprise you.

The organizer of Science Debate, who wants a live debate devoted to science and technology, describes one obstacle to meaningful discussion. He also shares how the candidates responded to probing questions about science.

Communication expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson looks back to the televised debate of Kennedy and Nixon to discern trends that have made productive discussion about science nearly impossible today (it didn’t start out that way!)

And, the unique situation in which the man at the top of one political ticket is flat out wrong about science: a physicist describes how Donald Trump’s anti-science position affects the election.

Guests:

• Shawn Otto - co-founder of sciencedebate.org, and the author of “The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It"
• Lawrence Krauss - Professor of theoretical physics at Arizona State University, director of its Origins Project, and a member of sciencedebate.org
• Kathleen Hall Jamieson - Professor of communication, University of Pennsylvania, director of the university’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. Author of more than a dozen books on politics and the media, and co-founder of factcheck.org that has a separate page for science: scifact.org

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