I have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post on science advisory committees.

“The current debate over these panels reinforces the old myth that we can somehow cleanly separate science from politics and then ensure that the science is somehow untainted by the “impurities” of the rest of society. Yet paradoxically, we also want science to be relevant to policy. A better approach would be to focus our attention on developing transparent, accountable and effective processes to manage politics in science — not to pretend that it doesn’t exist.”

Read the whole thing here.