Obama: ” It is time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and work to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.”
Science bloggers are thrilled, the Science Debate team is giddy, a few folks are cautiously optimistic.
I’m very pleased. In general, Obama’s appointments signal a new era in science policy–transparency and inclusiveness being high on the list. Traditional reservations about Democrats over-investing in a too-broad-a-range of basic research are tempered simply because there’s not much money to go around these days. Most of Obama’s appointments were early supporters of the Science Debate (see below) and ardent advocates of engaging the public in science and science policy discussions.  
Here’s Obama, making the announcements:

Remarks from Shawn Otto, CEO of Science Debate 2008:
In addition to Steven ChuJohn Holdren, and Jane Lubchenco, we would like to congratulate Science Debate 2008 supporters Harold Varmus and Eric Lander on being named co-chars of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  A 1989 Nobel laureate in medicine, Dr Varmus is former director of NIH and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and has been one of our closest and strongest advocates throughout the last year – we are very pleased and proud of his appointment.  Also an early supporter of Science debate 2008, Dr Lander is the Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; the first author of the Human Genome Project, and one of TIME’s 100 most influential people of our time (2004).
America was founded by scientist-statesmen like Jefferson and Franklin. It has always been an important part of our identity and success as a nation. We are hopeful that with these appointments, the American destiny with science can be reengaged to tackle our most pressing challenges as a nation, nearly all of which revolve around questions of science and technology. Now, the next step for the new administration will be successfully communicating this agenda to the American public, and reengaging the American media on these questions which are so critical to our ongoing success as a nation.
Thank you, as always, for supporting our shared effort to encourage this kind of leadership in the American political process. You are are critical part of…
-The team at ScienceDebate2008.com

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