WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s presence at meetings of the Obama administration’s scientific advisory council sometimes tested his staff’s patience.
It wasn’t that the vice president was unwelcome, of course. It was that Biden’s tendency to linger long after the meetings ended invariably caused scheduling hiccups. From his seat across the table from Eric Lander, then the council’s co-chair, Biden would pepper the group with questions about cancer research, climate change, and everything in between. On several occasions, Biden stayed until his scheduler was “almost tearing her hair out,” recalled John Holdren, Lander’s council co-chair and President Obama’s science adviser.
Now President Biden has brought Lander back in a far more influential role: White House science adviser. The selection, and Biden’s decision to instantly elevate the role to Cabinet status, comes at a pivotal moment for the future of American science, and underscores the new administration’s pledge to place science at the center of government. Biden has set lofty expectations, introducing Lander as a researcher whose work “has changed the course of human history” and pledging that his science staff “will help restore your faith in America’s place on the frontier of science and discovery and hope.”
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