Nature endorses Barack Obama
M. Mitchell Waldrop
Wednesday, 29 October 2008 19:47 UTC
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that Nature has made any endorsement in a US election.
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From the Editorial:
“On a range of topics, science included, Obama has surrounded himself with a wider and more able cadre of advisers than McCain. This is not a panacea. Some of the policies Obama supports — continued subsidies for corn ethanol, for example — seem misguided. The advice of experts is all the more valuable when it is diverse: ‘groupthink’ is a problem in any job. Obama seems to understands this. He tends to seek a range of opinions and analyses to ensure that his own opinion, when reached, has been well considered and exposed to alternatives. He also exhibits pragmatism — for example in his proposals for health-care reform — that suggests a keen sense for the tests reality can bring to bear on policy.”“This journal does not have a vote, and does not claim any particular standing from which to instruct those who do. But if it did, it would cast its vote for Barack Obama.”
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John Battelle,‘king of search’ and Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly media have both come out for Barack Obama. Their reasonings are in the posts I’ve linked here.
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I thought it was a fairly fair and balanced approach. I was very surprised at the closing comment though…because that’s an endorsement isn’t it. To be honest, Palin is the (main) reason I wouldn’t vote Republican (if I could vote, of course…I think I shall throw some teabags in the Mississippi in protest).
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Our friends at Seed/ScienceBlogs also endorse Obama.
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Good choice, his plan to invest $15 billion a year in renewable energy is a real winner; it will finanly prove that the american government takes the issue of global warming seriously. It will also create jobs and given the economic crisis, that’ll be todays equivalent of the new deal!
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The Economist has come out for Obama this week, too.
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According to the Times today (results day!), 291 “major publications” endorsed Obama, and 132 McCain.
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I’m a huge supporter of the Obama/Biden ticket, but… I didn’t think this or a certain number of other endorsements was very appropriate. I know Nature can take editorial stances, but that’s not why I read it. I would want McCain/Palin supporters to feel comfortable consulting the collective scientific authority represented in this journal, and taking a blatantly partisan stance when its main concern is non-partisan science did not seem necessary to me.
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What about Ralph Nader? (Come to think of it, Wwhat about Ralph Nader?)
And given Boris Johnson’s support for science in London (possibly), why not an endorsement for him, too? Barack Obama might be the president of the United States, but BoJo will be seen as the greatest stateman of this or any other era, and by rights should be Grand Mekon of the Galaxy and Imperial Panjandrum of All Living Things. So there.
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its main concern is non-partisan science
Nature has a two-part mission, to report science and to communicate its resuts to the public. Whoever is president of the United States is highly relevant to how much science gets done and what type of science, and I think an editorial weighing up the candidates in this regard is well within _Nature_’s core remit. (But I would think that, wouldn’t I? However, I had nothing to do with the Editorial and had no idea which way it would go until I read it.)
I don’t know if you read the whole thing, Heather, but it is very measured and credits McCain for some things, and criticises Obama for others. The Editorials Editor of Nature (Mitch) is a very experienced US science journalist and commentator, and I think he did a good job with this one.
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