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 that has grown up around it.

In this episode, Marija Mitic and Jaishree Subrahmaniam discuss their science-for-policy work and the challenges faced by early-career researchers.

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 policy-for-science and science-for-policy, and how to make mistakes gracefully as part of the learning process.

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 became chief scientific advisor to the Irish government.

Don't make the same mistake as Mark and leave your study of Zuckerman until your retirement. Listen to this episode today!

• From Apes to Warlords: https://www.amazon.com/apes-warlords-Solly-Zuckerman/dp/0060148071

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 pandemic, when opportunities to build trust and communicate science were squandered. Tune in and settle down for an intriguing tour of how things ought to be done.

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.

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.

• Sarewitz, D. (2004). How science makes environmental controversies worse.  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1462901104000620

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 lead to radically different answers — even though different framings are equally valid. How does science advice help to meet these challenges?

• Evidence Review Report and Scientific Opinion on a sustainable food system: https://www.sapea.info/food 

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 to comb through the literature to identify, list and organise all these essential competences, and then shared them with the community in an easily accessible format?

Oh look! Here come Lene Topp and Florian Schwendinger of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre!

• Competence frameworks: https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/projects-activities/competence-frameworks-policymakers-researchers_en