Do any Congress members have a scientist on their staff? Or is there one on either party staff?

[bobbieinok]

In the 80s science profs at at least one mid-western university got sabbaticals to be the science advisor for a state Representative or Senator.

[Igel]

1. Probably a vanishingly small number.

However, "scientist" by itself is a pointless term here. A "scientist" can be pro or con any number of ideas. They can diverge on how to interpret data. Once they get past the data and start trying to figure out what to do with the science, advocacy sometimes trumps science.

Fortunately, except for some areas that shouldn't be discussed, we treat scientists and their biases and agendas the same way we treat the military and their biases and agendas: We have independent control, presumably because we're a democracy and even if we dictate that pi = 3.000000 it's up to us to make that decision ... Until things run badly and start to fall apart. But the freedom to choose is also the freedom to choose foolishly.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Bill Foster (Democrat - of course) has a PhD in Physics and worked at Fermilab

After completing his Ph.D., Foster moved to the Fox Valley with his family to pursue a career in high-energy (particle) physics at Fermilab, a Department of Energy National Laboratory. During Foster's 22 years at Fermilab he participated in several projects, including the design of equipment and data analysis software for the CDF Detector, which were used in the discovery of the top quark, and the management of the design and construction of a 3 km Anti-Proton Recycler Ring for the Main Injector.[3][4]

He has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, was on the team receiving the 1989 Bruno Rossi Prize for cosmic ray physics for the discovery of the neutrino burst from the supernova SN 1987A, received the Particle Accelerator Technology Prize from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and was awarded an Energy Conservation award from the United States Department of Energy for his application of permanent magnets for Fermilab's accelerators.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Foster_%28politician%29

From the list of those currently in Congress with PhDs, it looks like the other who I think might be called a 'scientist', though 'engineer' might be better, is Jerry McNerney:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_politicians_with_doctorates#Current_Representatives

he enrolled at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he received bachelor's and master's degrees and, in 1981, a Ph.D. in Mathematics, with a doctoral dissertation in differential geometry focusing on a generalization of the Laplace–Beltrami operator.[4]

McNerney served several years as a contractor to Sandia National Laboratories at Kirtland Air Force Base on national security programs. In 1985, he accepted a senior engineering position with U.S. Windpower (Kenetech). In 1994, he began working as an energy consultant for PG&E, FloWind, The Electric Power Research Institute, and other utility companies. Before being elected to Congress, Jerry served as the CEO of a 2004 start-up company manufacturing wind turbines, named HAWT Power (Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine Power). A 1992 article that he co-authored in an IEEE journal is a good example of his writings during this period.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_McNerney