Thursday, June 25, 1987

Science’s progress thwarted.

Many years of allowing an anti-science bias in Alaska’s public educational system has created a permanent lobbying effort against the intent of the U.S. Constitution to promote the progress of science. These efforts have been directed primarily toward military and infrastructural government contracts, two of our nation’s traditional sources of scientific and engineering achievement.

Under these hostile conditions the Alaska Legislature, in a brief encounter with reality, created the Alaska Research Policy Act and the Science and Engineering Advisory Commission. Could they have finally realized that the rate of increase in the application of advanced industrial technology is one of the driving forces behind economic growth and expanding employment opportunity?

If Alaska’s leadership will continue its constitutional mandate “to promote the progress of science and useful arts,” this legislation could evolve into something similar to the highly successful Industrial Structure Council of the Ministry for International Trade and Industry in Japan or the U.S. Executive Branch mission assignment system used for the Apollo space program.

The choice is clear: Citizens can either protect their Constitution or the science haters will have us living in poverty.

Charles E. Duncan