Science for Policy

Marie Skłowdowska-Curie Fellowships, administered by the European Union, are some of the world's most prestigious academic fellowships, supporting researchers from all disciplines and at all stages of their careers. But alongside the core programmes are a growing number of activities designed to help researchers to interact with policymakers, from both the MSCA programme and the Alumni Association...

When a giant comet is hurtling towards Earth... when US president Orlean is more concerned about her approval ratings than preventing the extermination of all life... when the policy advice of America's greatest scientific minds is falling on deaf ears... when there is panic on the streets and the world's best response is capitalist greed...   Who you gonna call?   The world may be 99.7% doomed, b...

The emergence of English as the dominant international language of science has some significant downsides. One is the impact this has on science advice, where non-English-speaking countries risk finding themselves behind the curve in terms of both scholarship and practical applications.   As part of his presidency of the International Network for Governmental Science Advice, Professor Rémi Quirion...

From Brussels to Warsaw, Professor Janusz Bujnicki is helping to shape the future of scientific advice. In this episode, he compares his experiences advising the European Commission with current efforts to develop more high-level science advice mechanisms in his home country of Poland. With Toby Wardman of SAPEA, he discusses the value of transparency versus discretion, the distinction between pol...

Solly Zuckerman was the first chief scientific advisor to the UK government, a post he himself defined, and arguably one of the first to hold such a post in the world. His views, experiences and anecdotes from both the Second World War and the Cold War -- as described in a thousand or so pages of autobiography -- are so valuable that Mark Ferguson, today's guest, wishes he'd read them before he be...

Politicians don't really have a great understanding of the citizens they serve, according to Michael Bang Petersen. In place of evidence from decades of psychological research, they tend to substitute their own instincts and common sense, together with more or less apposite fragments of behavioural science and economics. Nowhere was this more evident than during the early days of the Covid-19 pand...

Foresight methodology helps science advisors check their blindspots, recognise their biases, and figure out the second- and third-order ripple effects of even the most innocuous of policy interventions. And Dr Lieve Van Woensel of the European Parliament, who talks to SAPEA's Toby Wardman in this episode, quite literally wrote the book on foresight.   Resources mentioned in this episode A bias rad...

In a very wide-ranging discussion, Dr Scott Bremer brings Toby Wardman up to speed on topics such as the inadequacy of the supply/demand dichotomy, the challenges of fitting the square peg of science into the round holes of real-world policy decisions, the relationship between scientific knowledge and other forms of knowing, and why he moonlights as a gardening therapist by the Norwegian fjords. R...

While the natural sciences try to quantify and describe the natural world, the role of the social sciences is to understand people — including their many different attitudes, values and worldviews. This perspective is complex, but it is vital for policymakers, since policy directly engages with people. And, as Professors Peter Jackson and Marta Rivera Ferre argue, the way you frame a question can...

We know that being a science advisor for policymaking requires a set of skills, knowledge and attitudes that are often very different from those that come with being a researcher. And the same is true for policymakers, who also need to adopt new ways of working and thinking to integrate the evidence base into their work. Wouldn't it be nice if some kindhearted individuals took it upon themselves t...

Nowhere is the tension between society-wide policy and individual choice as stark as in the field of public health. Can a committee of experts, informed by scientific evidence and in consultation with stakeholders, realistically make health decisions for a whole population? How might those decisions compare to the choices of individual patients and their physicians?   Fresh from their work collect...

Could the implications of science advice, and the policies that follow from it, be decided by a citizen jury following a courtroom battle between scientific adversaries? Dr Zeynep Pamuk thinks so, and in this episode she tells Toby Wardman why. Resources mentioned in this episode Politics and expertise: How to use science in a democratic society: https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/97806912189...

Some of our discussions on this podcast can veer towards the abstract and philosophical. Not today! Migration policy is an area where high-minded principles drive headlong into authentic realpolitik — an area where science has lots to offer, but how much of it is actually listened to, never mind implemented, is a whole different question. Two experts on migration policy, Professor Jakub Bijak and...

We should be careful what we wish for. The Covid-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of public prominence for science advice, and the emergence of a new breed of 'celebrity' advisor whose face was recognisable from our TVs, newspapers and bedspreads. But in the modern world, public prominence has a dark side too.   Science journalist Bianca Nogrady has researched the increasing issue of abuse and thr...

Professor Ortwin Renn is one of Europe's leading academic authorities on scientific advice, complexity and risk. In this wide-ranging conversation on the multiple roles played by science advisors, he discusses the limits of science as a source of knowledge, the challenge of complexity and wicked problems, why scoping is so hard, science as a catalyst, tangled values, good and bad faith motivations...

What joint challenges are faced by policy advisors and TV advisors? Why would a committed scientist make the switch from basic research to the entertainment industry? How serious is Star Trek about 'getting the science right'? In this reissue of an episode from 2020, Dr Erin Macdonald discusses these questions with Toby Wardman of SAPEA. We also discuss the nature of gene transfer in tardigrades,...

Just as politicians and policymakers need scientific advice to inform their decisions, so too do judges. But in the adversarial context of a courtroom, science and evidence can be even more hotly contested than in the public policy sphere. And in recent years, campaigners from several European countries have tried to bring the science of climate change before the European Court of Human Rights in...

On the same day this episode went live, the world-renowned IPCC published its comprehensive report on climate change impact and adaptation. Taking time out of a hectic 24-hour calendar of scientific meetings and reviews, Professor Diana Ürge-Vorsatz — one of the coordinating lead authors — sat down a week earlier with Toby Wardman of SAPEA to provide a fascinating insider insight into the workings...

Combative debate, accusations and blame are often seen as legitimate tools in the toolbox of partisan political debate. Now, in the new world of high-profile science advisors stepping (or being dragged) into the political limelight, should they be held to the same standards of accountability as their political colleagues? Two years on from the start of the pandemic, an era of public enquiries is b...

Professor Silvio Funtowicz is one of the originators of the concept of post-normal science, which urges us — both scientists and policymakers — to widen the sources of evidence we draw on, the kinds of knowledge we recognise, and the communities who evaluate our success. In this wide-ranging conversation, Professor Funtowicz lays out the history of post-normal science and delves deeply into its im...

The International Council for the Exploration of the Seas is a century-old science advice mechanism. Throughout its long and storied history, it has gained, lost and repaired the trust of national governments and international institutions on many occasions. In this episode, a social scientist from the Australian National University and the chair of the ICES advisory committee discuss strategies f...

Policymakers, like the rest of us, construct narratives to understand how the world works and to justify decisions based on that. At their best, these are shaped by scientific evidence. But even the best-informed narratives must by definition leave something out — and when what is left out would challenge or undermine the narrative, this is 'uncomfortable knowledge'. Our guests today, Mario Giampi...

The practice of science is impossible without importing its values from society, and it's time to leave behind the notion of the independent science advisor who speaks truth to power. So argues Professor Heather Douglas, author of the influential book 'Science, Policy and the Value-Free Ideal'. In this episode, Toby Wardman talks to Professor Douglas about how we can make sense of a scientific com...

The global pandemic which began in 2020 has brought unprecedented exposure and pressure for science advisors. A recent book, The Science and Politics of Covid-19, surveys the political and scientific response to the crisis. This episode features a wide-ranging conversation with the author, Dr Michel Claessens, on what went right, what went wrong, and what this might mean for the future of science...

We all know that scientific evidence is just one of many inputs into policymaking. But what if the notion of evidence itself is too narrow? Are there reliable sources of knowledge other than 'evidence', and if so, how can they be integrated into the policymaking process alongside the theories and data offered by science? At the Centre for Public Impact, Adrian Brown and Thea Snow work to broaden p...