ABSTRACT
Sound science is critical to good policy. Policy makers in the United States, including the President, Congress, state governors, and agency heads at all levels, must consider a variety of priorities, pressures, and inputs when making a decision or establishing a policy. No important issue can be distilled into a single societal discipline. Virtually all policies have economic, scientific and technical, legal, social, regulatory, moral, and political aspects, and the weight given to each aspect depends on the specific characteristics of the policy agenda and the policy makers. As global society becomes increasingly technically sophisticated, science is clearly one of the inputs needed to make good decisions in this technical policy milieu. Issues of energy, agriculture, space, medicine, telecommunications, national security, and climate are becoming more complex. For example, both medical and agricultural policies must now consider the science of genomics and all of the possibilities and potential liabilities associated with the ability of scientists to manipulate the genomic material of humans and other organisms. Likewise, policies related to disaster mitigation, preparedness, recovery, and resilience must increasingly consider aspects of climate change and the human and natural biological processes of adaptation. Drought policy lies at the nexus of disaster policy, agricultural policy, climate change policy, and water policy, and has become a ‘wicked problem’ in the United States.
