"I'm not a scientist."

How many times have you heard that lately from politicians who are trying to duck questions about important scientific topics like climate change and vaccines? So many times that it's even become a Wikipedia entry.

But what does that phrase even mean? I'm not a cardiologist. So I go to one to have my heart checked. I'm not an electrician, so I hire one to rewire my house. I trust people who have training in those fields to give me advice on important things. You're right, Mr. or Ms. Presidential Candidate, you are not a scientist. So, why won't you listen to the men and women who are? I grew up in an age where children were crippled and died from diseases like polio and measles, and now we have Donald Trump irresponsibly repeating long-discredited links between vaccines and autism. It's an offense to reason. Equally, so was the reaction of the two doctors on stage, Rand Paul and Ben Carson.

Sure, if you read their words, they support vaccines, yet raise questions about the timing of giving vaccines that is without scientific merit. Moreover, their tone is apologetic and equivocal. About vaccines! These are medical advances that have done more to alleviate human suffering than anything ever conjured by the ingenuity of the human mind.

And make no mistake, this isn't just a Republican problem. Many of the anti-vaccine hotspots are in ZIP codes that vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

The danger isn't the issue, it's the anti-science spirit

The stated position of almost every Republican candidate flies in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. The only "debate" over climate change in essentially the entire world occurs in the United States. I can hear some Democrats I know thinking this anti-science farce is a Republican problem. But when I talk to scientists about this frightening trend, they don't just mention climate change. They bring up things like Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs); most of the anti-GMO heat comes from the political left.

If you excoriate climate change deniers along the lines that there is overwhelming scientific evidence for manmade climate change, you can't ignore the fact that that same scientific consensus exists on the safety of GMOs. You can argue that GMOs aren't as important a problem as climate change. And that may be true. But the anti-science spirit remains the same, and that is dangerous. This isn't to say we can't have a debate about how we use GMOs or how we respond to climate change. We just can’t ignore the science. Vaccines, climate change, GMOs. If you are a Republican reading this you are likely to criticize me for at least one of these issues; if you are a Democrat, maybe another.

Why has science become political? Many intelligent people have written about this issue and surely there are many factors — loss of faith in authority, suspicion of big corporations, a general political balkanization. I am in no position to judge the relative influence of these components. But let me add another on which I feel qualified to weigh in on: my own profession, the press.

By and large the press does not cover science well

It's not just that we don't understand the facts, or that we hype certain "advances" that are more PR than science, or that we shy away from covering important stories because they're "too complicated." It's that we don't even do a good job explaining how scientific research works. We don't understand how data should be analyzed or what a scientific consensus actually means. And with cuts to newsrooms and "specialized beats," it's only getting worse. There are some science news outlets and individual reporters at media companies big and small that do a great job. If I were to generously grade the "mainstream media" on science coverage, I would give us a C -. In many ways, television news has been the worst offender, and I don't exempt myself from this criticism. Scientific issues are often complex and don't lend themselves to simple soundbites. And then there is the danger of false equivalency. Not every issue has two sides, or certainly two equal sides.

Yet when you put two people on screen to tell both “sides” of the story, in the viewer's mind it immediately connotes 50:50, even if you say it doesn't. Giving someone equal time to explain their side doesn’t mean there is equal data, research and science behind their view. Often times, the “other side” of the story has very little data to support its very big exceptions to the rules. John Oliver cleverly demonstrated this on his HBO show.

In a TV news story over science, what if the charlatan in the video is more charismatic and camera-friendly than the person backed by the preponderance of science? That was the case in the infamous 60 Minutes piece about a link between vaccines and autism, which featured a now thoroughly discredited British doctor with a smooth accent.

It is often easier to be charismatic when you are not hemmed by the boundaries of scientific truth. Journalists can sometimes be predisposed to stories that champion the underdog against entrenched interests and conventional wisdoms, but in reporting science, this can be risky. The "conventional wisdom" is often synonymous with the scientific consensus of real research.

We need to ask more candidates about science

Since we are in the political season, I want to pay specific attention to the political press. It's a good start asking questions about science. And more journalists are doing that. But you have to keep pressing.

For example, journalists should ask Bernie Sanders about his criticism of GMOs. And how one of the Republican candidates answers a series of tough questions on climate change will tell you a lot about his or her values and approaches on a wide range of policies. I want to know from a future potential president how he or she deals with facts that may conflict with their ideology. Presidents are called upon to react to a reality that suddenly emerges. You can't will away those facts. Both politicians and the members of the press like to champion American exceptionalism. And yet there are few endeavors over the last 50 years in which the United States has proven to be more exceptional than its global leadership (by a mile) in scientific research. This research has powered our economy and improved our lives immeasurably.

Think about how many issues facing the next president will deal with science. Take the Iran deal: It will be up to scientists to weigh its verifiability. Our energy policy depends on science, or at least it should. There are decisions about how we use our land or build our infrastructure, or make sure our food is safe, or invest in medical research. Being a president these days isn't being a scientist-in-chief, but it is certainly being a science-policy-maker-in-chief. What I would like to see is press outlets meet with a panel of leading American scientists and academics to draw up a detailed series of tough and specific questions surrounding science and science policy. I would like to see this list of questions distributed to every single campaign and political leader for written answers.

This is not to say that every science policy question has an easy or correct answer. There is a lot to weigh in how we should employ science and what we should fund. But it is not a debate we can afford to shy away from. I think that any politician who doesn't take those questions seriously is not fit to lead our country in the 21st century. Science can't be a Republican issue. It can't be a Democratic issue. And it certainly can't be a niche issue. The future security and prosperity of our beloved nation — and Earth itself — depends on it.