John Holdren at AGU: "No President Has Ever Talked as Much About Science, Technology, and Innovation as This President Has”

I just attended the president's science adviser's science and policy keynote here at AGU in San Francisco. So did several hundred other people. Interestingly, some news was made--sort of. Holdren announced that with regard to the long awaited scientific integrity guidelines his office was tasked to produce in early 2009...guidelines he's been criticized for not yet releasing....he's almost there and they should be out this month. To quote Holdren, producing the guidelines--to cover scientific integrity practices across agencies of the U.S. government--"has been a more challenging task than expected, it has taken much longer than it was supposed to." Holdren continued by stating that he had hoped to announce the guidelines in his AGU talk but "didn't quite make it--but we are very close.” How close? Holdren's powerpoint put up the date "12-10" for their release--e.g., this month. I'm sure that will be a relief to many. Besides this nugget, Holdren's talk was basically a vast compendium of all of the things the administration is doing to promote science and its relation to policy. And it really is quite a set of accomplishments (the integrity guidelines problem notwithstanding). Listening to it all inspired me to write a longer post comparing Obama-Holdren with Bush-Marburger, so stand by for that. For now I'll leave you with what was arguably Holdren's most striking quote about Obama and science: "No president has ever talked as much about science, technology, and innovation as this president has." Or as Holdren closed his talk, the "lynchpin" to having science positively impact the country is "a committed president. And fortunately, we have one." I'll have more on Holdren's talk soon.