Science for Policy

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 for building and maintaining trust at the science-policy interface — and what goes wrong when scientists become a little bit too trusted.

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 Giampietro and Roger Strand, argue that failure to confront uncomfortable knowledge in a variety of important areas is leading to existential problems for our democratic institutions. But is it possible to escape the death spiral — and what can science advisors try to do about it?

• Keeling curve: https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

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 community imbued with a diverse mixture of ethical values, and which ideals should replace independence for those who give scientific advice to policymakers.

Heather Douglas works at Michigan State University and is a board member of the Peritia project on trust in science.

• Science, Policy and the Value-Free Ideal: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822960263/

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 advice.

• The Science and Politics of Covid-19: https://www.bookspot.be/engelse-boeken/the-science-and-politics-of-covid-19-9783030778637

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 policymakers' understanding of the kinds of knowledge that governments can work with. In this episode, they talk to Toby Wardman about how the world of science advice can adapt to this broader understanding too.

• Centre for Public Impact: https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/

Politicians and lobbyists alike dream of the silver bullet: a single killer piece of scientific evidence that will change all our minds about future policymaking. But could any simple piece of evidence have the power to beat big ideas in public debate? And can evidence garner political attention even when the politicians don't go looking for it?

Dr Leire Rincón García's field research on the policy of Universal Basic Income seems to suggest that the answer is 'no'. In this episode, Dr Rincón and Toby Wardman together debate why parliamentarians were more likely to ignore emails that cited evidence, what could be done about it, and whether there is a defensible role for the 'activist scientist' in policy advice.

• The reverse silver bullet: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/ep/2021/00000017/00000003/art00003;jsessionid=50s51rbqg6uec.x-ic-live-01

One in three people in the world suffers from malnutrition of one form or another. The world's most prominent intergovernmental body for addressing this challenge, the UN Committee on World Food Security, has its own science advice service made up of experts from around the world.

In this episode, Professor Jennifer Clapp gives Toby Wardman a whirlwind tour of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, the challenges of making policy in such a complex topic as global food systems, and what it's like to give high-profile science advice at a global level.

• Committee on World Food Security High-Level Panel of Experts: http://www.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe 

In this special episode, twelve scholars of science advice discuss the challenges of incorporating a radically diverse range of perspectives into a science advice process. This conversation was recorded as part of the INGSA 2021 conference on global science advice, and is moderated by Estelle Balian.

• Jacopo Torriti, Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, School of the Built Environment, University of Reading

• Original recording: www.sapea.info/epistemic-diversity

The original recording also includes remarks from Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Tom van Ierland, Sebastien Renaud and David Mair.

When it comes to science advice infrastructure, Europe is far from a unified whole. That's why the European Commission's science service, the Joint Research Centre, set out to map the entire landscape, looking not only at European and national level but also digging into the way science influences policy within regions and even individual cities.

In this episode, Toby Wardman talks to Kristian Krieger and Stijn Verleyen, two of the JRC's project leaders in mapping and evaluating the science-for-policy landscape in Europe.

• Science for policymaking workshops:

https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/evidence-informed-policy-making_en

How can policymakers really understand the nitty-gritty of a complex system and how their decisions can influence it? How can scientists get a handle on the many competing variables that policymakers must take into account alongside the scientific evidence? One idea is to throw both of them into a live simulation of the system they want to understand, and let them sink or swim.

In this episode, game designer Piotr Magnuszewski and science-policy expert Nicole Arbour chat with Toby Wardman of SAPEA to explore whether, and in what circumstances, games can be a useful form of science advice.

• Dennis Meadows's Fish Banks game: https://systemdynamics.org/products/fish-banks-game/