Check out this remarkably pompous assessment by a Berkeley prof – yes, I know; I’m stunned, too – of how “science” hasn’t existed in the White House of late, apparently because certain people haven’t met his approval.

Then notice the clincher:

“It was different under Kennedy,” Muller says. “Glenn Seaborg, the great scientist from Berkeley, and John Kennedy were on a first-name basis. . . . The president really knew what was going on, what was possible in science and engineering. We have to bring that back.”

He’s got a point. Not a whole lot has happened in science since then. Well, government scientists created the computer so they could talk to each other. And the NIH drove innovation on a few pharmaceutical compounds. But other than that, nothing much since JFK. We really ought to do whatever it is they did during those salad days, before the wrong people in the White House meant the Death of Science.