Eugene Robinson blasts speech - attacking Dr Chu being the lead on fixing the problem

karynnj

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Thu Jun-17-10 09:06 AM
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Eugene Robinson blasts speech - attacking Dr Chu being the lead on fixing the problem

Edited on Thu Jun-17-10 09:19 AM by karynnj

Less than a minute into President Obama�s Oval Office address, my heart sank. For the umpteenth time since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill began, an anxious nation was informed that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has a Nobel Prize. Obama�s speech pretty much went down hill from there.

For weeks, administration officials have been trumpeting Chu�s distinction at every opportunity. Earlier in the day, White House environmental guru Carol Browner cited the Nobel in a television interview. Presidential adviser David Axelrod talks about the Nobel all the time, as does Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. If there�s an official list of administration talking points about the response to the oil spill, �Chu�s Nobel� has to be at the top.

We can all applaud Chu�s accomplishment. But here�s the thing: Chu is a physicist, not an engineer or a biologist. His Nobel was awarded for the work he did in trapping individual atoms with lasers. He�s absurdly smart. But there�s nothing in his background to suggest he knows any more about capping an out-of-control deep-sea well, or containing a gargantuan oil spill, than, say, columnist Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel in economics. Or novelist Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel in literature.

It is absolutely bizarre to compare Chu's knowledge here to that of Toni Morrison or Paul Krugman, both of whom I respect. There is no connection between figuring out how to gain control of the well and writing wonderful novels or being an insightful economist. There is a connection between physics and what to do. What discipline other than physics looks at the underlying forces and helps gain some understanding of what is happening?

Something tells me Robinson did not like his high school physics class. It is strange that he would have been less unhappy had Obama put a career bureaucrat with a MBA in charge. I think it is good to tell America that we have pulled in top minds from academia and business and they are led by a top scientist, with managerial experience.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/06/obama_disappoints_from_the_beg.html

I wrote this as a comment

I strongly disagree with Robinson's entire article. Dr Chu's Nobel resulted from his ability to use ideas from one research area in another area.

Here is a link to a video where Chu speaks of his ideas and his past. He speaks of how at Bell Labs, scientists were encouraged to work with each other across fields - ie chemists working with physicists - sometimes leading both to ideas that they otherwise would not get to on their own. He spoke of how he tried to foster the same intellectual creative freedom in his later role at a university. He spoke of wanting to bring that excitement to research as Secretary of Energy. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-7gWsoXtUw )

Robinson also apparently has no problem writing this article where he speaks as knowing the type of person who should take the lead here - a biologist or an engineer. I would argue that a research scientist, good enough to get a Nobel prize, with management experience in both business (Bell Labs) and academia, might be the exactly who you want leading an effort where THERE ARE NO KNOWN SOLUTIONS.

The part he is heading is dealing with sealing the leak and the efforts to contain the oil. Why would a biologist be better here. As to an engineer, there are many engineers working on this. Robinson might be interested to know that within Bell Labs, many groups consisted of both physicists and engineers - often doing similar things. Would Dr Chu have been more capable or creative had his degree been in one of the engineering fields?

Years ago, I heard Dr Penzias, also a Bell Labs Nobel Prize winner, explain to kids at the Labs for take your daughter to work day, that physics was the study of how things work. In the Gulf, our technology has created a problem where the solution is not clear. Understanding the underlying physics and proposing and evaluating alternative solutions seem to me to be the key to fixing the problem. As no discipline has all the answers here, having a creative physicist in the lead sounds great to me - better than a career bureaucrat.

My question is did Robinson hate his high school physics class? Is that coloring this opinion piece?