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Science 20 March 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5921, p. 1538
DOI: 10.1126/science.1173563
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Editorial

The Enlightenment Returns

Kurt Gottfried1 and Harold Varmus2

The authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were children of the Enlightenment. They understood the power that flows from combining human reason with empirical knowledge, and they assumed that the political system they were creating would thrive only in a culture that upheld the values of the Enlightenment. And thrive it did, in large part because our people and government upheld those values throughout most of U.S. history. Recently, however, the precepts of the Enlightenment were ignored and even disdained with respect to the manner in which science was used in the nation's governance. Dogma took precedence over evidence, and opinion over facts. Happily, as was made clear by two policy announcements by President Barack Obama on 9 March 2009, the break in the traditionally harmonious relationship between science and government is now ending.

1Kurt Gottfried is a cofounder of the Union of Concerned Scientists and chair of its board of directors. He is professor of physics emeritus at Cornell University.

2Harold Varmus is president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a cochair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and a former director of the National Institutes of Health.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)