It's values folks .... values all the way

Dr. John Marburger, former science advisor to the Bush Administration, was often castigated by the science community for Bush administration policies on things like stem cell research. He passed away at the age of 70 yesterday, and in his obit in the Washington Post there was this quote:

“No one doubts stem cells are valuable to research and hold tremendous promise — on that, there’s no scientific controversy,” he said in 2001. But he added that the matter “is not going to be decided by science.”

This echos the theme I've written about before, that values matter, and we scientists need to get used to that fact.

I'm writing from the National Conference on Ecological Restoration in Baltimore, MD. Plenty of evidence that values matter, and equally much evidence that scientists don't understand that fact.