What is the rightful place of science?  Isn't science a tool for exploring the world around us?  A system of inquiry and curiosity about the natural world?  In which case, has science been displaced from this role?  Isn't this the very role it fills?

If the rightful place of science is, as the address intimates, problem-solving and providing new solutions to old problems, isn't this something that it already does?  Doesn't science perform these functions already?  Considerable research continues to be done on a plethora of topics.  While the findings of science may not always be adopted, this hardly would seem to mean that science is not fulfilling it's role, does it?  

Obama links the reinstatement of science foremost with the medical arena, raising healthcare "quality" while reducing costs.  I wonder how he envisions science doing this in ways that are not already engaged in?  I would be tempted to infer that this is particularly pointing towards removing limitations on stem-cell research and associated funding, allowing science to move ahead with the destruction of human life, in the hopes that we can conveniently benefit from the deaths of others too weak to defend themselves.  

Of course, I don't think President Obama would describe things in quite those words.  But then again, he's already stated that these sorts of issues are well beyond his pay grade.  Perhaps science is supposed to make the call on these sorts of things, and this is the place that science should rightfully occupy?