The Role of Science

We don't we really don't like them to know what we are doing and it's especially bad because the deputy Managing Editor of Time is sitting in the audience. So I could be in big trouble you know. But fortunately we now we are now on a different publication schedule from news week so there is no way they can scoop us with this story. Doesn't matter does it? so unless, the president say we are to commute the sentence of the public figure right no, no the truth is that you never know until the very last minute some extremely major news event happens all plans go out the window and we start fresh which is why you should all be in time. Then, today what we are going to be talking about is an issue that has grown in importance in the public consciousness, probably not enough in the public consciousness which is why we are up here. But it is something that has increasingly worried scientists and people who care about issues that face the country and the world that have implications for science and also that have a scientific component to them which turns out to be many - many issues that affect us and the concern is that it was once the case or it's always so we believe we going to actually hear some history from one of our panelists. But when - I believe was Harry Truman who appointed the very first presidential science advisor and the idea was that this advisor would give the president impartial advice about science and about science policy and that decisions about science back then we were talking a lot about nuclear weapons and nuclear power and what to do about those. That those decisions should be made on rational basis based on the facts on what the science actually said and that ideal seems to have eroded significantly especially in the past two years to the point where, but I mean it started it started back at least in the 1980s and probably before where where naturally a president or a congress has to take politics politics into account when making decisions but at least the hope is that these decisions should be based on sound science and then what ever other what ever other political considerations are involved and there is a fear that increasingly these decisions are made and justified not on the basis that no matter what the science says, here is what we are doing and here is why we are doing it. But the science itself is being distorted, you know, in a way it's presented for the public, distorted either by preventing scientists from speaking what they believe to be the scientific truth. That is scientists employed by the government or or forcing them to alter what they say or what they publish or people in press offices spinning science in such a way that it appears to be saying something it's not or by selectively using bits and pieces, I mean the one thing about scientific truth is that while - in many cases we don't know the ultimate answer to some particular question. We at least allow to ourselves to look at the evidence fairly and to look at - at all sides of the issues fairly and the example I I often uses with global warming when I wrote my first cover story for Time about global warming in 1987, I did what journalists traditionally do, I presented the case for global warming and then the scientific uncertainties which were then quite significant. It was not clear that this was going to happen, there was no evidence that it was yet happening and there were reasons to believe that it wouldn't happen and that the predictions might not be right and over the years as we have gone, additional stories, the scientific evidence has changed and so the way we present this issue has changed so what was a pretty much an open scientific question in 1987 is a much, - much stronger were much more much more certain of what is going on and so we have changed the way we present things, but that's not always the case when the government has a particular political angle and there are probably other examples that I am not even mentioning but I am counting on the panelists and that is why at this point I will shut up and and introduce them on my my far right is Peter Gleick and I am reading from this not because I don't know who these people I will show you but I just don't want to get anything anything wrong. Co-founder and President of the Pacific institute in Oakland, California an internationally recognized water expert and that much I I definitely know and won the Macarthur Fellowship which in 2003 Macarthur winners do not like to call at the genius award but journalist love to call at them so he is the winner of the genius award in the in the middle wait a minute we will turn my alphabetical listing here. Dorothy Schwarzenberg lecture in public policy at Harvard, and a founding member in faculty associate of the Belfer center for science and international affairs at the Kennedy School of government and on my right Lawrence Krauss professor of Physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, author of several popular books about Science, he should be on that list okay so it's me, Bryan Green and and Krauss but he is he is somebody who could write about this complex topics in the in a way that all of you can understand and and can be entertained by - and he is also gone outside a step that one step outside his his role as a as a scientist to be popularizor of science and then another step outside that role to be I guess an evangelist for the idea that that scientific truth is important not just among scientist and among journalist but but everywhere in our society that scientific truth is in danger from some of these forces I have talked about, so I am going to ask each of these distinguished speakers to talk a little bit about their own particular expertise and and their view of this of this situation and how we got here and I am going to ask Professor Schwarzenberg to go first because she is going to as I understand it, give us a little bit of history. And why should you be here, I don't know how many of you were here yesterday and I particularly liked it, when the Reverend Calvin Butts took off his watch, put it down and said five minutes, but those of you who know I am a Baptist minister, now what that means and not a Baptist minister and I am giving you fair warning right now because it is a subject, there are so many topics and we could each do a long panel on it and what I thought I would do is try to take off from some of the things I heard this morning and before anybody accuses me of it, to lower the level of the of the conversation, because what I thought was that we use a lot of terms which we assume we all understand because they are all English regular words but they convey quiet a different meanings to different people, so I will begin just by quoting Hillary Clinton, a few weeks ago who said that this government has turned Washington into an evidence free zone and although as Peter pointed out to me that it's not quiet accurate it's what they have done with evidence which has changed the nature of the relationship between the government and the findings of the science in a way that's quiet dangerous and I think my colleagues here will talk about how do we get back on track. But, the way I wanted to change things was to spell out some differences, then talk briefly about where were we, how do we get to where we are and what come we do about? What is the fairly difficult situation? For example I hear science and technology talked about almost this one word or research and development, am I not? Okay, Abott and Costello act here that - science, sorry, when I was a student many many years ago, science and technology had very distinct meanings, it was generally assumed that there was basic science and then 25 years later there would be a product, so that you could make a very neat division between science and technology, and the technology usually related to engineers and the science with basic science, well, that has changed radically, as very often now the idea, is of the product. If you look at what's going on in computer science, if you look at what's going on so much of biotechnology, you don't need 25 years, the product is there as soon as the thoughts are finished, that changes the relationship of two very different aspects of science, the other is R & D, again if you look at the budgets which can be quite reassuring, they stand for research and development, but if you begin to look at the figures more carefully, it's much less research and much more development, then when you begin to look at the development, you say uh- huh, weapons paying for this war, new weapons, more weapons, man spaceships, and the research is getting smaller and smaller, in terms of the very powerful basic research that has led to the revolution which I believe will be in this next century of biology, and that funding on which we are going to be very dependent for intellectual breakthroughs is really getting squeezed, so don't be deceived by R & D figures until you go back and look at what is really for basic research, what is the national institutes of health for bio medical research and what is making more and bigger weapons and paying for this war, So we have got that. To think about on how things have been politicized, let me just go back to where we came from, within the last half century, you know after world war two, Europe and Japan were devastated, we were not, - we were not bombed, our economy began to take off, we have already mentioned our improvement and we also got these brilliant emigrants, from Europe into our scientific establishment, now talking about emigrants just in cases any here you doesn't know Walter Isaacson has written a perfectly brilliant book about Einstein, I am saying this to make sure I get invited back again, who will explain this period of history, in a most readable way? You can imagine, let me put some what dollar circumstances, we got a lot of frustrate scientists, now physics was already and it's way to becoming a major science in this country, but with the inflects of these people we took off in a way that no other countries could, Germany I believe has never fully recovered from it's loss of scientists and the structure of science which is not kept pace with what some Frenchmen said to me once was the shoot from the hip approach of American scientists, to basic science which allowed overwriting hierarchies, we came a great distance and became number one, some how or other, we have always believed that we would remain number one, well we are still pretty good in lots of areas, but not surprisingly other countries knowing just as well as we do is the power of science and technology for fueling economies, keeping their populations healthy, or making new strives, are investing much more than we are in science. If you look at China, if you look at India, if you look now at some European countries, they are going to push much harder than we on seeing that science is really pushed ahead, we have got a lot of problems now with young people, and I spent a lot of time talking to young scientists, and the anxiety is enormous, the anxiety is about funding. Where do you go? I remember many years ago, on his 60th birthday, Jim Watson who is now, going to he will be 80 next year, so it's 20 years ago, gave a wonderful talk about how when he was a student, undergraduate student, if you were approved of the proposal you put in for your research was approved, you were funded. All the alphas were funded and a very high percentage of the batta pluses, he said that was beginning to change, he says 20 years ago. Now we are down to some horrible single digit like seven percent of all the alpha proposals are being funded which means the majority of first rate approved grants are not being funded. This has a ripple effect among the younger scientists who are our future. This is something we have to begin to think through about politicians looking at where the funding should go. A lot of young Americans have turned away from science fortunately was still strong enough that we are attracting the best of the Chinese and the best of the Indians and from many other countries, Taiwan, Canada. But this will not go on indefinitely, so again we have to think of and it is the federal government we must remember that funds science; industries are very small part of it, the donors are a very small part of it. It is the federal government. My five minutes is up here? Oh anyway for those of us who lived in the golden age of science, it's very a difficult time now which we really want to unpack in terms of the power of politics. And on this one point of where we have come from this is also well but I have to tell you, I have never heard Robert Crouch in person before and I have been so amused because every time I have heard of him the past two days, he has introduced the "bar mitzvah" as metaphor and I can think it this is not fascinating because I grew up in a very different era. I had an uncle who was an MD, PhD. He would be a 100 years old if he were alive today. That was very unusual then. And he had gone to Yale, he had all the right scholarships and he was an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin in the biochemistry department. And he came back and he said to the head of the department, Professor Bradley, "I have just been in Chicago, - now this must have been late 30's or early 40s and I have met the most brilliant German refugee scientist, who is working just in the area we are and he would love to come to Wisconsin. And we can get him for less than $3000 a year". And Professor Bradley looked at my uncle and he said, you Jews are all alike, you get one of you and you want to a build a synagogue and they did not hire that man. Now we hear about Einstein and the people who did so well. But I think in terms of seeing where we have come from. The same uncle was offered a job at the Mash General if he would change his name, which he refused to do, which is how he got to Wisconsin, now the Mash General is headed by someone who is Jewish. So we are just seeing this steady progression of a lot of stuff where talent, the Meritocracy is really working, we have got labs at Harvard where only Chinese is spoken, only Japanese is spoken and I think we are going in a good direction, but we have our responsibility now. To keep our eyes on what our politicians doing to keep us strong and to make up for some of the great weaknesses that are developing. Thanks that's something that has been of concern to to this what we did. We did a story in Time on the question of what has happened to the to the funding of basic science and the emphasis of basic science here in the US and the dangers it causes to us economically as well as intellectually. And - part of it has to do with government not funding basic science nearly as much as it once did and also private industry. A company that is worried about what it's going to report to it's share holders in the next quarter is much less likely to invest a lot of money in basic research that may or may not pay off 20 or 30 years deadline, you talk about the difference between between science and technology, or research and development and there is always the example it's always given is of Bell labs owned by AT&T that develops the transistor which was basic research. And then was developed into pretty much every product, every electronic product that you see today and the many other examples. Peter would you like to go next. Sure, thank you, for coming out on a warm day when it gets loud at least may be means the wind is blowing. My background is in the sciences. I am an environmental scientist by training but an interdisciplinary one. I work on global water issues. I have done a lot of work on the issue of climate change and the impacts of climate change on sustainability, had to think about sustainability. But I increasingly have been interested in the issue of the integrity of science. In part, because I work at the intersection of science and policy. I do science for the purpose of influencing policy and the water area or the environment area or the climate area and also because a few years ago I was threatened with a law suit. I was threatened with liable by one of the very few climate skeptics out there. You know, there are lot of climate scientists and there are very slow number of so called skeptics who continue to this day to deny the reality of climate change. But I have made a few comments about this individual to a reporter who published them in his newspaper and I got a letter from a lawyer a couple of days later saying withdraw these comments, I compare them to the flat earth society if you want to know and so that peeks my interest. You know, what is the responsibility of a scientist to talk truth to the media and to the public, eventually to make that long story short. He went away when we wrote him a letter and reminded him about the first amendment and that truth is a perfect defense against liable and in anyway we didn't hear from him again. But partly because of that and partly because of the issues I work on. We started at the Pacific Institute a few years an integrity of science program to look at threats to the integrity of science. It's funded by a couple of foundations by the Open Society Institute by the Packard Foundation in California and we look at misuse and abuse of science. And what I would like to do with my little bit of time is talk a little bit about the broad concept and then talk a little bit about a framework for thinking about abuses of science. I have a section about solutions which I am not going to talk about right now but which I am hoping Michael will make sure the conversation comes back to. Let me start by saying that producing good policy without good science is really difficult. Producing good policy with bad science is a lot harder and so that's the fundamental issue that I want you all to keep in mind but let me also say at the beginning that I believe very strongly that science is only one piece of the puzzle in the policy arena, it is the responsibility I believe of policy makers to take good science, to review good science, to think about good science and then it's perfectly within there rights to ignore it. There are other factors that policy makers have to consider. There is economics, there is equity, there is politics, there are all sorts of things. So I understand and I don't want to leave you with the misimpression that I think science is got to be considered and integrated into every decision. But I do believe at the same time that it is not within the right of a policy maker to misuse science or to seek out bad science to support a predetermined policy conclusion. And I think partly that's what we are worried about up here and partly that's what I think we need to be worried about more broadly. I do believe that that problem, the seeking out of bad science or the misuse of good science is becoming more pervasive than it's ever been. But I would also note that it's not unique to our era and I would just point to Galileo who was one of the best known victims of ideal - of the conflict between science and ideology. When he was committed to house arrest for the last 30 years of his life because the science that he produced, didn't agree with the ideology, in this case religious ideology of the time. So so there is a long history of this. Okay, so let me describe two kinds of problems, the first or what I call logical fallacies, there is a whole set of logical fallacies that we need to worry about and I will describe them and the second is a broader category of misuse and abuse of science. Now biological fallacies, this first category what I mean is patterns of reasoning that are always or commonly wrong, because of law in the structure of the argument and let me give you some examples, there is the argument from ignorance, an argument made just being ignorant of the facts we see this a lot. There are arguments from error, another logical fallacy that is an argument made based on something that turns out to be wrong, you make an argument but but the reason you made it turned out not just - not just to be in error. There are arguments from misinterpretation, okay you think you know what's going up and you are misinterpreting what the evidence tells us. There are arguments from ideology and this is a particularly common one, there lots of categories, sub categories within this, there is arguments from personal belief. I believe something and so this other thing just cannot be right, it's a logical fallacy but often we see arguments from personal belief or arguments from incredulity I just can't possibly believe it, that's right and so I believe this other thing. There is - there are arguments from tradition or culture. My tradition tells me that this must be right, and so it doesn't really matter what the science or the evidence or the facts suggest that you are telling me, my tradition doesn't let me believe it. Those are all arguments from ideology and sometimes they are religious and some times they are not, but they are pretty preface and Galileo example is an argument from ideology the argument against Galileo was an argument from ideology and I would argue we see a lot of that today, in a lot of the things we see. We see it in arguments about sex education or evolution Florence not me, thank goodness will will tackle. Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union in the thirties was a biological argument from ideology and frankly Lysenkoism which - Lysenko is a Soviet biologist who couldn't couldn't wrap his mind around genetics and it set back soviet biology frankly to the stay, and it was an ideological argument. A couple more, there are arguments from consensus there is this incredibly large number of people who believe this things in Soviet must be right. Now some times the consensus is right but but not because there is a consensus if the consensus turns out to be right it's because the science is right not because a large number of people believes some thing. So arguments from consensus can sometimes be a logical fallacy. And there there are others, but that's a broad category. The other one I want to talk about is large set of misuses and abuse of science and they include, appeals to emotion, personal attacks or adhominum attacks against individuals, mischaracterization of an argument, misuse of facts or selective use of facts I am going to come back and give a couple of examples just to peek your interest. A misuse of uncertainty I will come back to inappropriate generalizations falsification actual falsification of evidence. Manipulation of funding and Dorothy mentioned a little bit of funding, pulling of scientists all of these things are abuses or misuse of science and we see examples of them all the time and I raise them as a frame work so that may be you in the audience can can help identify misuses of science when you hear them you say oh yeah that's a misuse of fact or that's an ad hominem attack that's not against the science or the evidence that's against the individual. I will just go back to the logical fallacies well - well no I will come with them right now. Let me talk about ad hominem because we, it's a very common one and Lawrence who has much more experience than I speaking on certain kinds of media I think runs in to the ad hominem attack relatively often. But a classic one is global warming is quote "liberal clap trap" that is a quote from a congress man, a few years ago. Well I don't care what you think about then science he is not arguing the science, he is branding it liberal and for certain audiences that's enough, that's all you need, it's ad hominem it's against its' the argument against the man ad hominem rather than an argument against the science. Here is an other one Al Gore can't be trusted on climate change this is a quote Al Gore can't be trusted on climate change because he lives in energy intensive life style okay , well we all live energy intensive life styles Al Gore certainly may be more energy intensive than many of us although he talks about buying carbon offsets but it's irrelevant to the argument about climate change. Whether or not he lives in energy intensive life style is irrelevant to the argument that Al Gore is making about the science, okay so keep you rear out for the ad hominem attack you will here it, if you think about it and you pay attention you hear it all the time, selective use of data, we see a lot of this at the Pacific Institute, we run an integrity of science program, if we go to integrity of science.org, we post the series of case studies on some of these we posted one pretty recently on the selective use of data by the white house. On February seventh, Tony Snow White House press secretary said the United States is doing better than Europe on reducing green house gases, well that raised a few eyebrows and and in fact it led to later that day for White House posting a justification for that and it turned out they were cherry picking data, they pick the tiny little piece of data during which the US did better than Europe and said "look we are doing better than Europe", well in fact we are not doing better than Europe, we are doing much worst than Europe but they cherry picked the data, falsification making it up. My favorite scientist Ann Coulter said on March seventh on a column -- in March of this year in a column that that she published quote "there are more reputable scientists defending astrology than defending global warming there are more reputable scientist defending astrology than defending global warming and of course well okay, she just made it up that's just. she just made it up it false she makes up doing up well I I try to read any of it but the science when she say something about science, I feel responsible for looking at it, another quote from the same column "windmills can't even produce enough energy to manufacture a windmill" I don't know that may be it's possible it turns out to be completely wrong windmills over their life time produces 20 to 80 times as much energy as the energy required to make a windmill but she just made it up so that's the problem certainty versus uncertainty, the tobacco industry certainly played the uncertainty card in science for decades. The global warming skeptics played the uncertainty code for a long time, they continue to impart and then Michael at the very beginning talked about truth, and fact about science and I a not sure what truth and fact in science is because science is true only until it something comes along with that proves something else is true and that idea was wrong and my my favorite quote about this comes from Steven J Gould who said quote "in science fact can only mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional ascent", I suppose that apples might start rise tomorrow but the possibility does not merit equal time in the class room. Well, I suspect he was talking about evolution but there is this question about truth and fact that that scientist love to talk about uncertainties because they need to, it's part of what how we were trained but it's often misused in the policy arena and there is another large category packing advisory boards which we have seen recently imposing a litmus test on scientists political litmus test, before they will be permitted to serve on us - political political advisory board or scientific review panel altering and suppressing information pulling scientist selective funding and defending are there many example and the more we pay attention to what's going on, the more I think we will be able to categorize some of the abuses and misuse of science and then hopefully move to solutions which again hopefully we will talk about later thank you Thank you just before we go on I want to make sure you understand that we hope and look forward to questions from you yeah now we have plenty of time - but but just be aware that we are we are eager to get questions at the end okay Lawrence Krauss. Okay I it's I will try to brief the talk, I Michael asked me to speak after and just to fill in and I been on many panels of Dorothy so I didn't prepare anything but any way - sorry, so now Dorothy and I have tagged team so many times and I love being on the panel, and let me I want to try to be more provocative, speak louder than Dorothy. The - let me give you an example of how things have changed I put some step up. Things have changed regarding to scientific integrity in in politics and the interface between the politicization of science in many spheres, and I just want to give some examples, and hope fully provoke questions because I really like to get to those personally. Here is a statement made to the National Academy of Scientists by the father of our current President, US president, science like any field of endeavor relies on freedom of enquiry, and one of the home works of that freedom is objectivity, now more than ever on issues ranging from climate change to AIDSs research, to genetic engineering, to food additives this government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance, that is a brilliant statement, that is a perfect statement about the interrelationship between science and government. Now let me read a statement for the current administration, this administration looks at the facts and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people, you get the saddle difference there, see that was right for the American people, then the pick the science that works, okay, that's a problem and that a severe problem and I have to say that that it's a problem that cause a number of us to be very upset and if - but it's interesting to see the impact, so a few years ago, I think it was two years ago, 60 scientists with which I was privileged to be a part, a very high profile group then involved 20 Nobel laureates and 20 national medal science winners four advisors to presidents including republic and an democratic administration, we wrote a letter to the president, complaining about the abuse of well, the attack on scientific integrity in Washington in so many areas, and Peter has mentioned a few, that is in almost every area, you can think of, one has seen censor ship in particular censorship of government scientists, on review panels, removing qualified people, - removing qualified people, putting people who were clearly unqualified, and distorting evidence, lots of it, the global warming where you could look at, - at internal EPA documents when which were edited, the White house and the internal EPA reviews that this no longer reflects the current scientific consensus or the scientific understanding, you know I mention, condom research were in fact that in terms of sex education where studies have shown and this and this is the lives of our children, - studies have shown that abstinence only programs don't work, that they have to be supplemented by other programs and in fact this this studies in various centre for disease control that show that we are removed from the web, we are removed from the web because they said that, because it disagreed with the ideological view of the administration, now when we wrote the letter, we get response from the widest as response to the Presidents science advisor, who said we don't do this but we will watch out, make sure we don't and what we have seen is that, - to a largest level that hasn't changed, in fact just this year, Jim Hanson, at NASA, who is as you probably know have been responsible as any one, among scientist for promoting concerns about climate change has said that never in 30 years, as he has been more muscled that he was in last year when in fact the as you probably know what administration official a young junior person, not only removed refused to allow, scientists to make statements for prior approval, but also said that such things as the big bang should not be talked about with out the word theory and being used and so that hasn't changed, and that's a great concern and that's one of the reasons why group of scientists like the one I was at this last two days in Aspen at a meeting to try and think of how to raise the profile of science in - in the presidential campaign,, because as it has been said amply enough, we depend up on science to - for our future, whenever you know the thing that amazes me is even those people who attack science, whenever it comes down to a problem, recognizes that science is the way out, President Bush may have said, that we should equally teach intelligent design and evolution in schools, so our students know what the debate is all about. He said that is not interestingly stupid thing to say by the way surprisingly, because in fact if there was a debate, it would be useful for our students to know about it, but interestingly when the avian flew epidemic, they are potentially became an epidemic when it first arose, president Bush and his advisors all said we have to find how fast it's mutating. From birds to humans its not one of them who said you know, it's been designed to kill us. Let's just give up. Okay. Now in terms of politics and science there has been of course that has revolved a lot around religion lately, and of course I have been involved in it, so may be I am more sensitive than some. I first got involved in thinking about this in fact in 1996 when I wrote a piece for the New York times, when Patrick Buchanan was running for president of human republican. And he said on ABC this week that he personally was not descended from monkeys and if you had to actually think of anyone who was I would think, anyway he that he didn't think that children should be taught that they are and what amazed is it no one no media person in the print media or in tv questioned that. They questioned everything else he said, they questioned his immigration policies, protectionism, everything. But no one questioned that statement which is just sheer nonsense. Here is another statement. You know, I wrote another piece I got a lot of people upset in well actually it was after 2001. But where I looked it what was happening in the Taliban in when I went back when they were allies in 2001 before September 11th, and then and then statements were happening in the United States affecting science and politics. And you may remember house majority leader Tom DeLay who by the way had a degree in biology, which is amazing to me. He introduced in the congressional record the following statement the Columbine school shootings occurred in part "because our school systems teach that our teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud." So evolution was responsible for the Columbine school shootings. So in the congressional record you can read it. These are problems and these are things we have to face and I just want to raise them to try and hopefully provoke some of your some response, but finally in response to to you know, what's her name Dorothy, but what she self talked about basic research. I want to point out that that this is another aspect of science and politics, and too often when sciences speak I usually don't like to talk about funding, because the sense is that scientists are speaking because we want more money. And I think we are being provoker and I think we would often go to Washington to lobby for funds, that's what they think. But it is worth pointing out that there is a weird concern about the funding of basic research versus applied research. And we are seeing more and more that a lot of that used to be done in industrial labs like Bell labs but with the removal of that monopoly in particular, there is less free funding to support long term basic research and many the examples of the problem if at Bell labs they had been assigned to do applied research to develop a better computer at the time. They would you would have found that they would have developed computers with quicker cranks and wheels because those were the computers at that time. Instead because they were free to what - they invented the transistor which has of course changed the world. Not because they were told to develop a transistor or not because they were told to develop better computers but because they were free to do curiosity driven research and our standard of living now in this country relies on the curiosity driven research of more than a generation ago, and I have severe concerns about how our standard of living in this country will be in 25 years if we don't support the kind of basic research we need to do, curiosity driven research because we don't know where it's going to lead. And I think in aligned with the quote from Robert Wilson, I don't think we use it this morning but it's important. He was he was the first director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. And he was asked when that was being built at a congressional meeting. When he testified before congress he said, "will this improve the defense of the nation." And he said "no, it will just help keep the nation worth defending." I think we have to remember that. That science has a cultural activity is a vital part of what makes our civilization worth defending. Okay that's all.