The science preparation is especially problematic in New York City, where the shortage of qualified teachers is acute and many schools lack science laboratories.
Janez Potocnik, the current research commissioner, lacked science experience as well, "and he was an excellent commissioner," Gannon says.
That's important in a world dominated by technological or scientific issues, he said, in part because many U.S. embassies lack science counselors.
The White House plan "articulates a guiding vision, is appropriately ambitious, and is broad in scope," says the NRC report, all qualities that the same committee said the draft version of the plan lacked (Science, 7 March 2003, p. 1494).
Though lacking science training, the Terrys participated actively in the laboratory research that would lead to the discovery of the mutation responsible for PXE, and the scientists they worked with agreed to assign rights to the gene patent to the organization.
Alongside a dearth of women (save the foreign minister Julie Bishop), the grouping also lacks a science minister for the first time since 1931 the year the post was created.
It's this human interaction between researchers and the general public that most science lacks, but that crowdsourced science can offer.
Monks and nuns may lack basic science education, but they are highly trained in other disciplines, like philosophy.
At least 31 high schools, with more than 16,000 students, lack a science lab of any kind.
At that time, programming jobs were plentiful even for people like her, who lacked computer science degrees.
