Specker Retires from SDSU: Epidemiologist for Governor?

In a sign that another of my Top Ten Stories of 2021 (see #10, the undercard) may be headed toward fruition, epidemiologist Dr. Bonny Specker of Brookings has retired from her position at South Dakota State University as director of the Ethel Austin Martin Program in Human Nutrition.

“Dr. Specker’s work in nutritional epidemiology is known nationally and internationally,” said Daniel Scholl, vice president of research and economic development. “In addition to serving on various national committees with the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Specker has been an invited speaker to about 50 national and international meetings since 1997 and has reviewed grants and programs for international organizations including the United Kingdom Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust in London, the Medical Council of Scotland and the World Health Organization. We wish her the best as she enters the next chapter of her life.”Specker, who has written various editorials on public health and provided information to the Brookings’ city council and administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been the principal investigator on federal and state grants of close to $18 million. She also has been co-investigator on an additional $2.4 million in grants [SDSU, press release, 2021.01.25].

Dr. Specker will now have more time to provide those coronavirus updates to the City of Brookings and to the general public through her covid-19 blog. She tells KELO-TV that she plans to turn to more creative means of teaching us all about science:

“I am really surprised how little people understand basic public health principles, or why public health is needed,” Specker said. “I think that science in general needs to be explained better to the public, so that they understand the scientific process and how to interpret data and how to find reliable data.”

…“What are people listening to or getting their information from, and I would recommend that you don’t get it from Facebook and you don’t get it from Twitter, but you get it from respected news sources and from places like the CDC or news sources that actually provide the references that end up going to something like CDC or a reliable source,” Specker said.

She has new plans to write historical fiction that teaches people about public health.

“I have it in my mind,” Specker said. “I want to try doing more creative writing, but in a way that you can educate the general public, rather than just showing graphs” [Carter Schmidt, “Long-Time Epidemiologist Retires After 24 Years at SDSU,” KELO-TV, updated 2021.01.25].

Leaving her state job to avoid statutory and Regental conflicts, planning to write a book, talking about continuing efforts to engage the public… yup! That sounds like a good public servant turning to a run for Governor! If you think Kristi Noem has demonstrated less aptitude for and commitment to her job than you think South Dakota deserves, who better to replace the Snow/Fox Queen than a scientist with a long record of in-the-trenches public service?