New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg discussed the disconnect between science and society in the opening address on Wednesday morning at a novel event, the inaugural World Science Festival.
The four-day conclave — involving panels, dance performances, juggling acts and other presentations dealing with science — was conceived by a team led by Brian Greene, the physicist and science popularizer, as a way to celebrate science. But it is clearly also aimed at restoring science to a position of respect and prominence in society.*
After an opening quip about his scene in “Sex and the City” ending up on the cutting-room floor, Mr. Bloomberg framed his speech around “the tragic lag between what we know and what we do.”
He focused on smoking, reviewing how the tobacco industry spent decades sprinkling doubt into discussions of science showing links between smoking (and secondhand smoke) and cancer and other illness. While many wealthy countries have moved to constrain and tax smoking, the world, Mr. Bloomberg said, is still on a path toward a billion smoking-related deaths in this century.
He then shifted to climate and energy, describing how science has been distorted not only by industries and anti-regulatory groups, but also political operatives working within government agencies. The latest example, Mr. Bloomberg said, was the ongoing politics-driven push to subsidize ethanol from corn.
He said he learned a dictum in early jobs on Wall Street that can apply far beyond the realm of finance: “In God we trust. Everyone else, bring data.”
Then the first panel began, comfortably far from the realm of policy relevance, with a discussion among leading scientists of dark energy, the nature of consciousness, and the fate of the universe, led by Alan Alda.
[* Full disclosure: I’m running a panel (pro bono) on Saturday night about providing adequate energy to a growing human population on a finite planet.]

dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com


Tags: , ,