The Science vote: on the surface, the presidential contenders appear to take similar stances and technology. But probe a bit, and differences emerge. Because Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have never formally debated S&T issues, and don't intend to, Science News runs down what these candidates and their campaigns have been saying.

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The Political Climate

Linking energy to greenhouse risks

Science and technology have not played out as major presidential campaign issues this year. And following Sen. John McCain's unexpected announcement that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would be his running mate, even foreign policy and major energy issues have been relegated to the back seat as the media feverishly probe the views, background and administrative history of Palin--a newcomer on the national scene.

But B.P.--before Palin--a diverse body of video clips, Internet-posted position statements and campaign remarks by McCain and Sen. Barack Obama had already emerged, and some did touch on S&T issues. Most focused on energy or the climate and shared common themes.

For instance, both candidates have described an urgent need to wean Americans from fossil fuels. An escalating risk of catastrophic climate change is one reason, but hardly the only one, the candidates give for their concern.

"Climate change is real," McCain said at the Clean Cities Congress in Phoenix as early as May 2006. "While there are still a few skeptics of climate change, the evidence supporting the causes of rising global temperatures as human-induced is overwhelming." Acknowledging that skeptics remain, he argued that "almost any credible organization will tell you that the evidence is growing and becoming clearer every day, despite the reluctance of the [Bush] administration to do anything meaningful about climate change."

Obama also contends on his website that the nation faces major challenges from global climate change and from a dependence on foreign oil, "both of which stem from our current dependence on fossil fuels for energy." As such, "we have a moral, environmental, economic and security imperative to address our dependence on foreign oil and tackle climate change in a serious, sustainable manner."

It's how each candidate would manage these problems that differs.

Both claim they would lower the nation's carbon footprint by shrinking reliance on oil. Explained McCain: "We face the reality that oil supplies will fall in this century.... Growing demand [for oil] and limited supplies mean one thing: higher prices. And that's particularly so for oil, which accounts for about half of gasoline's price at the pump." Last year, he said that "the answer to high gas prices cannot be to produce more oil.... Gas prices are nothing less than a call to action to wean ourselves off of oil."

As those prices bumped up dramatically this year, McCain modified his stance. He now enthusiastically backs new drilling at offshore U.S. sites, especially in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

Obama's energy strategy also calls for cutting oil use within the next decade. In his case, it would be by an amount that exceeds what the United States now imports from the Middle East and Venezuela--some 3.7 million barrels per day.

Although he has not been much of a proponent of oil drilling as a route to energy independence, Obama applauded an August 1 proposal floated by a bipartisan coalition of Senate colleagues, the "Gang of 10." That group wants to dramatically increase oil drilling off U.S. coasts (see the August 2 Science & the Public blog at www.sciencenews.org), he noted, and "would repeal tax breaks for oil companies so that we can invest billions in fuel-efficient cars, help our automakers retool and make a genuine commitment to renewable sources of energy like wind power, solar power and the next generation of clean, affordable biofuels."

No amount of drilling will sate America's escalating appetite for electricity. McCain would end what has essentially been a roughly 30-year moratorium on utilities' purchases of new nuclear plants. "Nuclear power is a key technology for addressing climate change," he said at the Clean Cities Congress. "We simply cannot ignore this emissions-free technology."

Obama's proposed energy policy, unveiled in an August 4 speech, similarly argues that "it is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option." However, he argues, before pushing for greater reliance on this source, "key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage and proliferation." He has already introduced legislation proposing new guidelines to track, control and account for used fuel from commercial power plants. And if he had his way, Obama would scrap longstanding plans to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain the nation's storage depot for high-level nuclear-waste.

In addition, Obama would invest in advanced automotive vehicles--and push for deployment, during the next eight years, of a million plug-in hybrids that get more than 150 miles per gallon in short-haul driving. Half of Uncle Sam's auto purchases by 2012 would have to be plug-in hybrids or fully electric vehicles. And as a carrot to consumers, Obama's administration would propose a tax credit of $7,000 for purchasing such advanced-tech vehicles.

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Within four years, under his plan, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal should grow to power 10 percent of U.S. electricity--up from roughly 4.1 percent today. Obama would also instruct the Department of Energy to enter into public-private partnerships for the development of five "first-of-a-kind" commercial-scale, coal-fired power plants that pioneer new technologies for carbon capture and sequestration, and mandate that all new vehicles by 2012 be able to flexibly switch between gasoline and blends containing biofuels.

Finally, Obama said during his energy speech that he would increase automotive fuel efficiency standards 4 percent annually. This alone, the Obama campaign says, "would save nearly a half trillion gallons of gasoline and 6 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases." McCain, by contrast, has argued against mandatory increases in automotive fuel-efficiency standards.

At an April 11 briefing in Washington, D.C., McCain adviser R. James Woolsey noted that his candidate is considering a carbon dioxide reduction package that would also focus on developing plug-in hybrids, mandating flex-fueled vehicles and helping automakers retool their vehicles to weigh less and guzzle fewer gallons per mile.

Woolsey, CIA director under President Bill Clinton, noted that his candidate's energy policy remains a bit vague on details because McCain wants the government "to have a general direction- such as away from carbon, which he strongly promoted, or away from old wasteful subsidies--but not get into the business of picking winners." That is, not specifying which technologies to back.

Research and Education

Spending priorities differ

Federal funding for academic research--a major engine of innovation--has experienced an "unprecedented" two-year decline, the National Science Foundation reported in late August. Between fiscal years 2005 and 2007, Uncle Sam's share of academic research funding fell from 64 percent to 62 percent. To take up the slack, universities turned to industry backers and others. Universities have also "tapped into their own endowment and gift funds," according to a report in the Aug. 25 Inside Higher Ed.

"If we don't fund basic research at a high enough level, over time it will catch up with us," diminishing research payoffs in terms of ideas, products and spin-off technologies, says Samuel M. Rankin III. Associate executive director of the American Mathematical Society, in Washington, D.C., he's also a spokesman for the Coalition for National Science Funding.

Obama told the Science Debate 2008 committee (a group that unsuccessfully called for the major presidential candidates to debate on S&T issues) that he would double federal funding for basic research--pioneering studies for which applications may not yet be apparent. He would also "put basic defense research on a path to double."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a McCain adviser, agrees with charges that President George W. Bush's policies have amounted to a war on science. "This is a sad era in that regard," he said in August in a National Public Radio interview. He added, however, that McCain believes that Obama's call for doubling basic research investments is unreasonable because it "doesn't reflect a balancing of relative priorities" in this era of "scarce taxpayer dollars."

Stacie M. Propst of Research!America, a biomedical advocacy group based in Alexandria, Va., points to similar variances in responses to policy questions her group sent to the candidates.

Take the National Institutes of Health. She says inflation has eroded the buying power of its research budgets. McCain told her group that he strongly supported funding for NIH--and for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. However, McCain's campaign did not check a box saying he would increase funding for any of these agencies.

In contrast, Obama checked boxes to increase funding for all three agencies. He added that the FDA is badly underfunded, urgently needs better experts to inspect food and other regulated products, and must abolish "pressures to silence internal drug-safety critics" or attempts to protect drug companies from product liability.

In general, Propst says, there are many "commonalities" in the candidates' attitudes toward biomedical re search, including the favoring of an expansion in federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. However, McCain's answers do suggest "a pretty big distinction, in our minds," from the aggressive support for research evinced by Obama's responses, she says.

Interpretative differences also emerge in the candidates' attitudes toward evolution. Although both profess to believing in it, they differ on the appropriateness of teaching creationism--sometimes portrayed as "intelligent design"--in public schools. Obama told the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania that "there's a difference between science and faith.... And I think it's a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don't hold up to scientific inquiry."

In contrast, McCain's campaign told the Christian Broadcasting Network last year that "McCain believes evolution is supported by science, but that we shouldn't be afraid to expose students to other theories." Two years earlier, McCain said much the same thing in a videotaped meeting with staffers from the Arizona Daily Star. When asked whether children should learn about intelligent design in science classrooms, McCain responded that plenty of scientists think so--and "all points of view should be presented."

Both candidates strongly support the space program and value domestic development of innovative technologies, and both would continue aggressive wetlands preservation. However, Obama's campaign has released far more data on its candidate's S&T views and education proposals than has McCain's.

For instance, Obama told the Science Debate 2008 group that he would "guarantee" students have access to strong science curricula at all ages "so they graduate knowing how science works using hands-on, IT-enhanced education." He also vowed to launch a scholarship program to subsidize the education of teachers who commit to teaching in "a high-need school." Priority would go to those who would teach math and science. And new Teacher Residency Academies would place 30,000 educators at high-need schools, Obama said, "training thousands of science and math teachers."

McCain countered a week later with his S&T teacher proposal. He would reallocate federal Title II funding by earmarking more of it to reward high-performing teachers, principals and schools. Priority, he told Science Debate 2008, would go to teachers working in the "most challenging educational settings and who teach science or math." He would also set up a $250 million competitive grant program for states that commit to expanding online education opportunities.

Obama has posted a detailed technology agenda. Among its goals: making broadband Internet access universally available; increasing the "transparency" of federal decision making by posting almost all documents and broadcasting most meetings online; and appointing the nation's first Chief Technology Officer, who would ensure that all federal agencies seamlessly communicate their data internally and with the public. That's a tall order, but points to Obama's recognition of how integral Internet access and data-searching have become for most Americans.

McCain, in contrast, boasts about his low-tech lifestyle. In a brief interview posted on YouTube, Mike Allen of Yahoo! News asked McCain whether he used a PC or Mac computer. His answer: "Neither. I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that I can get." Many tech pundits and bloggers latched onto this professed discomfort with the cyberworld as a likely reason for McCain's sketchily detailed tech policy.

Albert H. Teich, Science & Policy Programs director at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Washington, D.C., has expressed concerns over the degree of McCain's comfort with technology and over his misunderstanding of science and its value.

For instance, Teich notes, the candidate has repeatedly lambasted a federal study for analyzing DNA in grizzly bear fur. Researchers outside the project have generally argued that the study's data could prove extremely useful to conservation of this animal--an elusive species threatened with extinction. Its population may total only 1,500 individuals throughout the lower 48 states. Yet McCain jokes that these studies must have been for paternity tests. Calling the work frivolous, McCain's TV ads argue that the research should be abolished.

Such assertions haven't gotten a lot of attention, Teich says, "but for me they're bright lines" calling into question McCain's science literacy. Then again, with the notable exception of British chemist Margaret Thatcher, most world leaders don't consider science one of their strengths. Indeed, that's why most surround themselves with legions of expert advisers.

Obama

Nuclear Energy

Although "it is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option ... key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage and proliferation."

Science Education

"There's a difference between science and faith.... And I think it's a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don't hold up to scientific inquiry."

Biomedical Funding

Obama pledged to increase funding for NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He also volunteered that the FDA is badly underfunded.

McCain

Nuclear Energy

"Nuclear power is a key technology for addressing climate change. We simply cannot ignore this emissions-free technology."

Science Education

When the Arizona Daily Star in 2005 asked McCain whether children should learn about intelligent design in science classrooms, McCain responded that plenty of scientists think so--and that "all points of view should be presented."

Biomedical Funding

When asked about biomedical agencies, McCain said he strongly supports funding for NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Explore more

* www.sciencenews.org/TheScienceVote Visit this site to read a list of both candidates' answers to Science Debate 2008, along with their answers on biomedical research, analyses of the role of science issues in the campaign and the Science News blogs "McCain is bullish on research" and "Obama likes research."