Science for Policy

Mikel Landabaso, Director for Fair and Sustainable Economy in the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, knows a fair few things about the role of science and technology innovation in informing regional development policy and promoting regeneration. In this episode, he talks to Toby Wardman about how it works, how his advice has been taken, and the strategies to adopt when policymakers or stakeholders aren't able to appreciate it on its own terms.

The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters has been active in the science-for-policy space in Finland for decades, including in recent years playing a leading role in setting up an important science advice mechanism for the Finnish government. Now it has also published a comprehensive handbook for researchers, with advice and practical exercises to help guide them in their first steps in policy engagement.

In this episode, Linda Lammensalo talks to Toby Wardman about what's in the handbook and why.

What does our most advanced AI, trained on the sum total of all human knowledge, have to say about the challenges of the science-policy interface? And can it tell a good joke? (Hint: The answer to that one is no.)

• SRI Congress 2024: https://sricongress.org/home/about-sri2024/

• DemocracyNext: https://www.demnext.org/ 

In recent months, there's been a small explosion of guidelines and handbooks on how to do science advice. In today's episode, Toby Wardman takes a deep dive into Science Europe's recent guidance for research-funding and research-performing organisations, in conversation with their author, Nicola Dotti.

This is probably the last podcast in the world to get round to talking about how AI is changing the world -- but we wanted to wait until we had the right people in the room to talk specifically about AI in relation to science, policy, and science-for-policy. If you like this conversation with Professor Andrea Rizzoli and Manuel Kugler -- and you will like it! -- stay tuned in the coming months, because we've got more AI-themed episodes up our sleeves.

It's sometimes easy to forget that even the most well-designed science advice institution, and even the most persuasive advisor, are still operating as part of a broad ecosystem in which both policymakers and the general public are exposed to vast quantities of ostensibly factual information of varying quality, much of it mediated through algorithms. In this episode, Caitlin Chin-Rothmann from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC talks us through this broader context and how science advisors can adapt to it.

Why does evidence sometimes land and sometimes not? Why do some policies fail even though the evidence suggests they should succeed?  And what can we do about it? Saying "it's all about the context" is easy, but what does this actually mean? And more importantly, how can we make that into a useful insight in advance, rather than just a post-hoc justification for things not working out?

Vanesa Weyrauch and Leandro Echt have looked into this question in some detail, and their organisation, Purpose & Ideas, created a framework to tackle exactly these questions. In this episode, they discuss with Toby Wardman of the SAM not just why context matters, but what that actually means and what we can do about it.

• Context Matters framework: https://www.purposeandideas.org/post/context-matters-but-are-we-prepared-to-build-on-this