WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – In a criticism of Trump’s outgoing government, President-elect Joe Biden presented his list of scientific advisers on Saturday with the promise that they would call on “science and truth” to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis and other challenges.
“This is the most exciting announcement I have been able to make,” said Biden after weeks of office and other nominations and appointments. “This is a team that will help restore your faith in America’s place on the frontier of science and discovery.”
Biden is elevating the position of scientific adviser at cabinet level, first to the White House, and said that Eric Lander, a pioneer in mapping the human genome who is about to be director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, is “one of the brightest guys I know. “
President-elect, Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, Lander and other leading scientific advisers never mentioned Trump’s name, but they framed the inauguration on Wednesday as a break with a president who downplayed the COVID-19 threat and declared the science behind the climate changes to be a scam.
“The science behind climate change is not a scam. The science behind the virus is not partisan, ”said Harris. “The same laws apply, the same evidence is true, whether you accept it or not.”
Biden emphasized how scientific research leads to practical progress and better quality of life, from COVID-19 vaccines and new cancer treatments to the expansion of clean energy that reduces carbon emissions.
“Science is discovered. It’s not fiction, ”said Biden. “It is also a matter of hope.”
And again without naming Trump, the president-elect said that one of his team’s tasks will be to stick to the public’s faith in science and its usefulness.
Lander added that Biden instructed his advisers and “the entire scientific community and the American public” to “get to this point”.
Biden and Harris also changed their texts to present scientists as role models for children across the country.
“Superheroes are not just about our imagination,” said Harris. “They are walking among us. They are teachers, doctors and scientists, they are vaccine researchers … and you can grow and be like them too ”.
Lander is the founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and was the lead author of the first article announcing the details of the human genome. He would be the first life scientist to get that job at the White House. His predecessor is a meteorologist.
The president-elect is hiring the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, who worked with Lander on the human genome project. Biden also appointed two prominent female scientists to co-chair the President’s Council of Science and Technology Consultants.
Frances Arnold, a chemical engineer at the California Institute of Technology who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and MIT vice president of research and professor of geophysics, Maria Zuber, will lead the external science advisory board. Lander held that position during the Obama administration.
Biden chose Alondra Nelson of Princeton, a social scientist who studies science, technology and social inequality, as deputy head of scientific policy.
The president-elect noted the team’s diversity and repeated his promise that his government’s policy and scientific investments would target historically disadvantaged and underserved communities.
Nelson celebrated that commitment.
“As a black researcher, I am fully aware of the people who are missing from these rooms,” she said. “I believe we have a responsibility to work together to ensure that our science and technology reflects us … who we really are together.”
Scientific organizations were quick to praise Lander and promote the science post at the cabinet level. The position of director of scientific and technological policy requires confirmation by the Senate.
Elevating the position “clearly signals the government’s intention to involve scientific expertise in all political discussions,” said Sudip Parikh, executive director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.
Lander, also a mathematician, is a professor of biology at Harvard and MIT and his work has been cited almost half a million times in scientific literature, one of the most cited among scientists. He has won several scientific awards, including a MacArthur “genius” grant and a Revelation Award, and is one of Pope Francis’ scientific advisers.
“As a child growing up in Brooklyn, I saw America reach the moon,” said Lander, adding that “no nation is better equipped than America to lead the search for solutions” that “improve our health, our well-being economic and our country security. ”
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Borenstein reported from Kensington, Maryland.