The United States will elect a new president in November, and the differences between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, including their approaches to science, engineering, and technology, are quite distinct. (See the Washington News column in the October issue of JOM's News & Update section for some details.) Which candidate do you think would better advance the cause of the materials science and technology profession if elected president?

This is a great poll question. And here's a fascinating web site on the topic: Science Debate 2008, which is "A concerned citizens initiative now cosponsored by the AAAS, the Council on Competitiveness, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and signed by over 175 leading American universities and other organizations, representing over 125 million Americans." It features 14 science questions for the candidates and presents their thoughtful answers. Kudos to both candidates for participating. Four stars; check it out.

Alas, I must encourage you to disregard the results of this poll--our numbers have clearly been cooked. For insight on how this was done, check out ScienceBlogs.com. It is interesting to read and see the conjectures made about TMS members.

As to why this was done, we at TMS sent out a press release about the attention this poll was attracting--185 votes, which was a lot for one of our polls. Obama was leading McCain 61% to 37% at the time. Our press release was picked up by a number of news services (Example News Story). Unfortunately, this set the data-cookers into action, and more than 12,000 additional votes were received almost overnight; the vast majority going to Obama.

Long story short, this poll is much more interesting from the perspective of the social scientist rather than the physical scientist.