@donaldball What I find, over & over, is that the groups who take the time & have the resources to make the rounds to congressional offices have more influence for all sorts of reasons.

And yes, there are certainly very visible attacks on science by some, but there are 535 members & thousands of staff. We tend to focus on the most outrageous & extreme, but they're not representative of everyone. Plus, a staffer's party affiliation doesn't always reflect that of their office.

@jkbecker if only it were that simple. Staff are super busy juggling a lot of policy issues at once while being bombarded with multiple meetings on the same issue each day by all sorts of groups. If the science community - especially scientists already engaged in & focused on policy - hope to have greater influence, we need to learn more about the culture of the Hill.

I write this as a scientist & former Senate staffer who studies where staffers get scientific information.

@jkbecker this in an interesting conversation but very strange to think that staffers are somehow busier than scientists, and the latter should accommodate. How about the issue of "the other party's offices"? If staffers don't want to feel ignored, they could simply join the same space as the other party to hear from scientists of interest, so scientists don't need to repeat everything twice.

* New friends on Mastodon - The link above is to Unelected Representative, a newsletter solely focused on my current research/dissertation about scientific decision making in the U.S. Congress.

I started writing on substack last December & so far it’s been quite helpful & interesting to explore & unpack ideas there. Thanks to those reading along! /2

so disappointing - but maybe not surprising - to hear some of the excuses scientists gave for not engaging with congressional offices opposite their own political affiliation

There was an informational hearing on Gain of Function research in the previous congress that the Democrats did not even attend. I was actually stunned--what kind of a message does that send? Anyway, it just allowed the Republicans to write the entire narrative, which seems like a bad outcome for Democrats?