Tuesday, January 24, 2012

State of the (Scientific) Union

Pres. Obama presents Peter Stang with Nat. Medal of Science
Source: Getty Images
Did folks tune in to watch President Barack Obama present the 2012 State of the Union tonight?

Out of sheer curiosity, I downloaded the text to both the 2011 SoTU (Winning the Future) and the 2012 speech (An America Built to Last). Now, I’m no political pundit or news analyst - I’m a scientist. So, I thought an interesting game might be to see how certain scientific themes grew or shrunk over the past 365 ¼ days.

Here’s the breakdown I tallied:
(# of mentions per word in the text)

Oil – 2011: 2, 2012: 10
Energy – 2011: 9, 2012: 23
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Biotech / Biomed / Biofuel – 2011: 3, 2012, 0
Tech / technology – 2011: 12, 2012: 9
Science / scientist – 2011: 7, 2012: 2
Engineering – 2011: 3, 2012: 1
Research – 2011: 9, 2012: 4
Development – 2011: 1, 2012: 2
Nuclear – 2011: 5, 2012: 3
College / Universities– 2011: 12, 2012: 15
Chemical – 2011: 0, 2012: 1 (Unfortunately, it was used in a negative connotation)
Math – 2011: 3, 2012: 0
Health – 2011: 8, 2012: 5

Is there a take-home message to counting up words and relating them to the direction of the country? Perhaps not. Thematically, the two speeches were different: 2011 was more forward-looking and focused on education, business, and terrorism; while 2012 dealt with global politics, congressional reform, and taxes. 

But there exists notable declines in most science-related topics from last year’s speech to this one. Except, of course, on topics where economics and science often cross – substantial mentions of oil and energy.

1 comment:

  1. really really excellent post. thanks for doing this "by the numbers" account. I wondered why I was not getting as excited as I'd hope to be about the address.

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