Science has played an instrumental role in U.S. politics since the inception of the nation.  In 1780, Founding Fathers John Adams and John Hancock, as well as James Bowdoin, who would become Massachusetts’s second governor, founded the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences during the American Revolution.  They sought to “cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”  These words, contained within the Academy’s charter, reflect the spirit of the colonies’ Declaration of Independence.
When one considers the scientific achievements of polymath Benjamin Franklin or the empowering words of Thomas Paine, author of the stirring “Common Sense” and “Age of Reason,” it should come as no surprise that our government was engineered as a constitutional democracy.  Contemporary author Timothy Ferris argues in his book “The Science of Liberty” that “the new government, like a scientific laboratory, was designed to accommodate an ongoing series of experiments, extending indefinitely into the future.” In particular, John Locke’s notion that all people should be treated equally under the law was an untested political belief. Today, we thank this seventeenth century philosopher for serving as an inspiration to the Founders. Throughout the American Industrial Revolution, Americans benefited from the “Patent Clause,” which reads as follows: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” 
The fostering of innovation catapulted the U.S. and the world toward an increasingly industrialized state as well as heralding a future full of social and economic change: Eli Whitney’s cotton gin (1794), Cyrus McCormick’s reaping machine (1834), Tyler Henry’s repeating rifle (1860), Nikola Tesla’s electrical power transmission by alternating current (1888) and Charles Duryea’s Motor Wagon (1895), to name a few.
During this time, three major scientific organizations were founded.  First, the Smithsonian Institution in 1846, dedicated to the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Second, the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1848.  Lastly, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law an act to incorporate The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on March 3, 1863 with the express purpose to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science” at the behest of any department of the government. 
The National Academies publishes hundreds of books each year on a variety of pertinent subjects such as agriculture, education, health and medicine, environmental studies and energy supply and demand.  Also, studies conducted by the National Academies have served as an integral part of many pieces of legislation passed over the intervening decades.  However, the government does not always heed the advice of the National Academies.
In 1804, Thomas Jefferson commented on the maturing nation, “no experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth.” 
In spite of this, Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, became the victim of political ideology after thousands of e-mails and other documents were hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.  Although the journal “Science” published a letter from NAS signed by 255 of its members in May 2010 supporting Mann and the science and although NAS published four comprehensive reports on Climate Change in 2010 affirming the science and urging action, damaging disinformation continues to be promulgated by the media, think tanks and politicians. I wonder: what would the Founding Fathers have to say about such efforts to paralyze the scientific process?  
Christopher Ramos is a graduate student in the Department of Physics and  Astronomy. He can be contacted at
[email protected].