On Tuesday President Barack Obama issued an executive order formally establishing the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team while also directing federal agencies to examine how they can use behavioral science to improve outcomes for citizens across the United States.
Public reaction to the news that the White House was in the process of setting up its own “Nudge Unit” was a mix between hopeful anticipation on the one hand and big-government alarmism on the other.
With the singular, ambitious goal of understanding exactly how the brain works, the BRAIN Initiative was announced as one of Obama’s “Grand Challenges,” meant to be on par in scale and impact with the Human Genome Project.
