I will be supporting this debate, and I hope all the candidates go. I don't think it's bad that we're having this before a general election, and I do believe that the answers should be more substantive than what we've seen.

However, I don't necessarily buy the idea that a science policy debate wouldn't have "winnowed the field". If these questions are important enough to have an entire debate about them (and I believe they are,) then I think they would have been important earlier as well. I know that there are other issues that rest more prominently on the public mind, but I don't think that means that watching a candidate trying to address science policy wouldn't have been influential. In a race where silly things like commercials, rumors and crying seem to be able to sway the public mind substantially, their answers to meatier topics would definitely have had an impact. Everyone likes science (right?) and everyone wants to see it succeed.

If there had been a preliminary debate in which a brave moderator had asked about their views of the current Mars exploration timeline, or about ocean ecology policies, etc, wouldn't there have been some intrigued discussion around the water cooler the next day?

Here's a hypothetical quesiton: what if we get to this debate and all these characters flub it? Would scientific americans, not to mention the people who subscribe to Scientific American, feel short-changed about their choice?

What I'm saying is that I think we underrate the influence these questions would have had, especially in such turbulent fields.

In the candidates. We are at a point where all three major candidates have something to lose - who is going to answer honestly? McCain will not want to alienate the evangelicals any more than he already has. Barack and Hillary appear so similar policy-wise that voters have to decide on personality - and for them it is a double edged sword... If they answer too differently it might be _the_ blunder.

There is too much at stake to get honest answers right now, even if they truly wanted to give them and honestly tried to - their self interest would bias any responses you got. Could you trust data under those conditions from an average person? How about a person who job it is to spin information and distort perception to their favor?

Eric

Well, Renaisauce, I hope you will still encourage a candidate to take part, even if you would have preferred it earlier.

As for me, I like the idea of a small number of participants. Science-policy issues would not have played much role in winnowing the field.

This way, the remaining candidates are all viable, and each will have much more time to address the various topics. We will be spared moments like "Raise your hand if you believe in Evolution."

Each of these candidates is capable of making substantive comments on the issues rather than being limited to a few sound bites. I'm sure science budgets in all areas of government will be one of the topics.

I'd like to hear not only where they stand on the issues but also how they came to their positions. There will be enough time for each of them to demonstrate that.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

I fully support and like the idea of a science debate. But shouldn't we have had one of these a long time ago? I think this is one of those topics that would have been even more interesting when there were ten candidates apiece. In fact, my personal feeling is that the guys who would have done the best with these questions, on both sides, have already dropped out. I would have loved to see some other opinions on these issues (I would include the NASA and NIH budgets, as well as the commercialization of space, to name a few.)

Alas, the spent arrow, the spoken word, and the non-science -related debate.