More scientists in Congress next time?

[cos]

Almost ten years ago I posted about scientists in Congress - at the time, there were four. I posted again four years ago, when Rush Holt was running for US Senate. His leaving Congress brought the number of scientists down to just one the following year.

Originally starting from just curiosity, I was dismayed by how few there were! I knew there weren't enough, since it was already showing quite obviously by 2007 that Congress did not have enough scientific perspective, but I though out of the 535 there would be, maybe, 15-20 scientists. In fact I don't think we've had more than 5 at the same time in decades. Maybe the next Congress will change that?

Donald Trump's War on Scientists Has Had One Big Side Effect: More than a dozen Democratic candidates with scientific backgrounds are running for Congress.

This article conflates "scientists" with a broader range of STEM fields. We actually already have a few engineers in Congress, and this article includes engineers, as well as doctors (of which we have even more - but many of them clearly don't have a scientific outlook). But even if you discount those, there are more people with a science background running than anytime I'm aware of, at least in decades. Let's keep an eye on this and see how it turns out in 2018.

P.S. The only scientist I'm aware of in Congress currently is Bill Foster, the same one who was first running for the office when I posted ten years ago. Are there any others you know of?

Comments

[wotw]

George Stigler always maintained that the reason there are so many lawyers in Congress is that it facilitates corruption --- if you're a lawyer/Congressman and I want to bribe you, it's generally pretty easy to justify making a large payment to your firm for "services" that nobody can check were ever performed. That's much harder if you're a doctor or a scientist, hence there's much less incentive for a doctor or a scientist to run for Congress.

[cos]

This brings up the tangential question of, how many of the people in Congress with a law background are also members of a private law firm? Unrelated to scientists in Congress, but I'm still curious if anyone has done that research.