Science Is About ‘Hope,’ Biden Says

“We know that science is discovery, it’s not fiction. It’s also about hope, and that’s America. It’s in the DNA of this country, hope. We’re on the cusp of some of the most remarkable breakthroughs that will fundamentally change the way of life for all life on this planet. We can make more progress in the next 10 years, I predict, than we’ve made in the last 50 years.” “Today, I’m proud to announce a team of some of the country’s most brilliant and accomplished scientists to lead the way.” “The opportunities we have and the challenges we face are greater than ever before. The president-elect knows that science and technology will be crucial in meeting this moment. And he has tasked us in this letter, and I don’t mean, just his scientific advisers, I mean, the whole scientific community and the American public with answering important questions about how science and technology can best be used to advance our health, our economic welfare, and our national security.” “Perhaps never before in living memory have the connections between our scientific world and our social world been quite so stark as they are today. The Covid-19 crisis has inflicted extraordinary suffering. But it has also held up a mirror to our society, reflecting in its deadly wake, resource gaps and medical disparities, the inequality we’ve allowed to calcify. Science at its core is a social phenomenon. It is a reflection of people, of our relationships and of our institutions. When we provide inputs to the algorithm, when we program the device, when we design, test and research, we are making human choices, choices that bring our social world to bear in a new and powerful way. It matters who makes these choices.” “The science behind climate change is not a hoax. The science behind the virus is not partisan. The same laws apply. The same evidence holds true regardless of whether or not you accept them. And President-elect Biden and I will not only listen to science, we will invest in it.”