What are the most important things the next U.S. president needs to do for science? To cut through the jargon and find an answer, we bring you the DISCOVER Science Policy Project, in which we give a group of the country’s most celebrated scientists and thinkers the chance to respond to the following question:

What are the three most important things the next president can do to positively impact scientific research in the United States?

In the November issue of DISCOVER, we compile and analyze the results. In the meantime, we will be posting each response in its entirety here on Reality Base. Today’s entry is by celebrated astronomer—and fellow DISCOVER blogger—Phil Plait. Feel free to offer your own ideas and analysis in the comments section. All past responses can be found here.

PHIL PLAIT
Astronomer, author, popular blogger

• Stop standing on its throat.

The current administration has spun, folded, and mutilated science and scientific research since practically day one, letting ideology trump reality. If the next president does nothing but let science do its thing unfettered, then the situation will be dramatically improved.

• Work with Congress on actually funding it.

Seems simple and obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s hardly ever that way to politicians. Look at NASA: mandated to retire the Space Shuttle in 2010, but with no ability to build a new man-rated rocket until—at best—2014. It’s too late to throw money at that problem now, but had it been thought through better just five years ago, things would be a lot better for the space agency. Still, if NASA had better funding now and in the immediate future, the impact on space science would be profound. Instead of having to choose one amazing mission over another, both could fly. Just so’s you know, right now NASA gets much less than 1 percent of the national budget.

Where would this money come from? Well, we’re spending $20 million per hour in Iraq. That’s a good place to start looking.

• Encourage young scientists.

And by young, I mean *young*. Elementary school, middle school, high school. We need to make sure we have enough scientists going into the profession, of course. But I also mean this in a more general sense. Our world is ruled by science right now. Medical science, computer science, military science… If people don’t understand the basics of science, how can they be educated voters? And it’s clear a lot of people don’t make good decisions about science. They don’t vaccinate their children, they turn their backs on well understood and rock solid basics of reality (I’m talking evolution here), and more. An educated populace will be one better fit to make important decisions later in life.

Science is cool, it’s fun, it’s awe-inspiring. With a real pro-science president, a lot more people would be able to understand that.

The New York Times has a report this week on the hoops teachers are jumping through to teach evolution in public schools. Specifically, it follows the efforts of David Campbell, a Florida biology teacher who does an astonishing job of compromising, tip-toeing, and cajoling, all to get his students to accept—and maybe even learn—the process of evolution.

Overall, the piece paints a bleak picture for teachers, made all the worse by the lack of a clear nationwide mandate for teaching the subject. Despite all the scientific evidence we have, some states are still stacking obstacles in the path of instructors who want to devote class time to human evolution. This summer, Louisiana passed a law protecting the right of local schools to teach “alternative” (i.e., non-scientific) theories for the origin of species, while the Florida Department of Education didn’t explicitly require its public schools to teach evolution—or, as the legislature calls it, “the organizing principle of life science”—until February of 2008.

Even if teachers manage to dodge sketchy state restrictions, there’s still the matter of parents. Campbell, who helped write Florida’s standards on teaching evolution, found himself barraged with complaints from angry parents when he taught the subject, and was even undermined by his colleague and fellow bio teacher, who offered a competing lesson plan she called “Evolution or NOT.” (Her backup plan for what to tell particularly curious students? “I think God did it.”)

The U.S. is teetering on the edge of losing its place as the world’s premiere harbor for science research. With experts already foretelling our demise as a science superpower—and, with China already set to surpass the U.S. in published physics papers by 2012, there’s been nothing to suggest the predictions are wrong—we’re not doing ourselves any favors by undermining basic science education with religious dogma. It’s tragic to think that tomorrow’s preeminent biochemists or geneticists could be sidelined by high school lessons questioning whether there’s Biblical evidence for the origin of human life.