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Interesting: A Scientist for President? (Mexico). [View all]
In the current issue of Science:
A SCIENTIST FOR PRESIDENT
Subtitle:
If elected, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo would bring an extensive background in science and engineering to Mexico’s presidency. But many researchers are anxious about how she would govern
MEXICO CITY—Earlier this year, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo stood before thousands of people gathered here in the Zócalo, one of the world’s largest city squares, to kick off her campaign for Mexico’s presidency. “We will make Mexico a scientific and innovation power,” she vowed during her 1 March address. “To do this, we will support the basic, natural, social sciences, and the humanities. And we will link them with priority areas and sectors of the country.”
Sheinbaum Pardo, a 61-year-old environmental engineer who has served as Mexico City’s mayor and its environment secretary, has a hefty polling lead over her two opponents ahead of the 2 June elections (see sidebar, below). If she wins, she’ll become the first woman and the first researcher to lead the Latin American country of 128 million people. “I’m very excited,” she recently told Science during a wide-ranging interview.
Many in Mexico’s scientific community, however, are uncertain whether Sheinbaum Pardo, who is backed by a coalition of populist, left-of-center parties, will deliver what it wants. She is a protégée of the current populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has pursued policies deeply unpopular with many scientists here, including cuts to research spending, a controversial restructuring of Mexico’s main science agency, and environmentally destructive development projects. And despite Sheinbaum Pardo’s efforts to reassure researchers that she will consult with them in forging science policy, many of them fear that she will continue her mentor’s legacy in a bid to retain the support of his legions of followers...
Sheinbaum Pardo, a 61-year-old environmental engineer who has served as Mexico City’s mayor and its environment secretary, has a hefty polling lead over her two opponents ahead of the 2 June elections (see sidebar, below). If she wins, she’ll become the first woman and the first researcher to lead the Latin American country of 128 million people. “I’m very excited,” she recently told Science during a wide-ranging interview.
Many in Mexico’s scientific community, however, are uncertain whether Sheinbaum Pardo, who is backed by a coalition of populist, left-of-center parties, will deliver what it wants. She is a protégée of the current populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has pursued policies deeply unpopular with many scientists here, including cuts to research spending, a controversial restructuring of Mexico’s main science agency, and environmentally destructive development projects. And despite Sheinbaum Pardo’s efforts to reassure researchers that she will consult with them in forging science policy, many of them fear that she will continue her mentor’s legacy in a bid to retain the support of his legions of followers...
Some of her scientific background:
AS A CHILD, Sheinbaum Pardo was steeped in the world of science. Her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, is a biochemist at UNAM who still studies the molecular mechanisms of fibrosis, a form of wound healing. Her father, Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, was a chemical engineer and entrepreneur in the leather tanning industry. (He died in 2013.) Her older brother, Julio Sheinbaum Pardo, is an ocean modeling researcher at Mexico’s Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education at Ensenada. It was Julio who persuaded his sister to study physics and not engineering as an undergraduate at UNAM. “Study physics because that way you will be well-trained as a scientist,” Claudia recalls Julio telling her. “Then, you can do whatever you want.”
For her 1988 undergraduate thesis, Sheinbaum Pardo spent a year studying wood-burning stoves in the P’urhépecha community of Cheranatzícurin in the state of Michoacán, developing a thermodynamic model of the stoves in an effort to improve their efficiency. “I always had the intention to help people,” she says. She also started to polish her political skills, joining a student group that successfully protested a plan by UNAM, which has traditionally been nearly free, to start charging tuition...
For her 1988 undergraduate thesis, Sheinbaum Pardo spent a year studying wood-burning stoves in the P’urhépecha community of Cheranatzícurin in the state of Michoacán, developing a thermodynamic model of the stoves in an effort to improve their efficiency. “I always had the intention to help people,” she says. She also started to polish her political skills, joining a student group that successfully protested a plan by UNAM, which has traditionally been nearly free, to start charging tuition...
Regrettably I am unaware of the political situation in Mexico, but perhaps I should make an effort to learn more, since my son seems to be falling in love with a woman who is employed by the Mexican government in a diplomatic position.
The United States, I like to claim, was invented by it's first great scientist - an autodidact - Benjamin Franklin, but our political attitudes about science have been a mixed bag. There was an interesting lecture today on CSPAN about how being an "early adopter of new technology," in this case the telegraph, contributed greatly to Lincoln becoming the greatest American President; he was a man greatly interested in science, again, an autodidact.
On the other hand, we've Baron von Shitzhispants, George W. Bush, and the like, men whose contempt for science knew no bounds.
I don't know anything at all Dr. Pardo, but there seems to be some controversy as to whether having a scientist as President will, in fact, be good for Science.
The only other national leader of whom I'm aware with a scientific background was the former Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, who was a physical chemist. I'm personally not impressed with what she did with her scientific background as Chancellor, since she helped engineer, for political reasons, the German decision to phase out nuclear energy and replace it with coal, a decision in contempt of all humanity and dangerous to the health not only of Germans, but all Europeans and in fact, the health of the planet as a whole.
I do not know enough about Dr. Pardo however to offer any opinion of what she might do as President of Mexico. It seems she has an excellent chance of becoming Mexico's first woman President and its first President to be a scientist.
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