Science in Obama's inaugural address

It was a nice surprise that President Obama included a mention of Science prominently in his inaugural address by promising that "We will restore science to its rightful place".

But what exactly is that rightful place?

New Scientist has a good overview of the speech itself, and I'm heading up to DCU later today (Thursday, 22 January) for their symposium on 'Negotiating New Sciences in Society' where this is bound to be discussed.

There's a wide variety of topics being covered at the DCU symposium. All of them are very relevant to the increasingly important area of "Science in Society" which researchers, funding agencies, politicians and even tax payers are paying more and more attention to.