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.

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, but at least we have Chloe Hill on the line to point out what went wrong and how the science advisors could have made a difference.

 

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Don't Look Up (Netflix): https://www.netflix.com/title/81252357 
• EGU blog post: https://blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2022/02/04/geopolicy-dont-look-up-could-better-science-advice-have-saved-the-planet/ 
• JRC report on values and identities: https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/projects-activities/values-identities-policymakers-guide_en 
• Episode on JRC competence framework: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgggHbVuEDA 

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 of Québec has made it his mission to broaden our linguistic outlook. In this joint episode co-published with INGSA, he talks to Toby Wardman of SAPEA about the role of global networks in reaching not only national governments, but also regions, cities, teachers and students across the world.

 

Resources mentioned in this episode

• INGSA: https://ingsa.org/
• Conversation with Leonie Tanczer: https://sapea.info/podcasts/leonie-tanczer-maria-jarquin-natasha-boyd/ 

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!

Resources mentioned in this episode

• From Apes to Warlords: https://www.amazon.com/apes-warlords-Solly-Zuckerman/dp/0060148071
• Monkeys, Men and Missiles: https://www.amazon.com/Monkeys-men-missiles-autobiography-1946-88/dp/0002175010 

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.

 

Resources mentioned in this episode

• A bias radar for responsible policymaking, by Lieve Van Woensel. https://lievevanwoensel.com/
• European Parliament Guidelines for foresight-based policy analysis: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_STU(2021)690031 

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.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• 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?

Resources mentioned in this episode

• 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!

Resources mentioned in this episode

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

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 collecting evidence to inform screening programmes in the EU, Professors Rebecca Fitzgerald and Harry De Koning discuss the role of evidence in cancer screening policy and how it interfaces with clinical judgement and patient choice.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Evidence review report on cancer screening: www.sapea.info/cancer

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/9780691218946/politics-and-expertise
• Arthur Kantrowicz on science courts: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29761595

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 Dr Daniela Vono, debate with Toby Wardman the pros and cons of working in such a contentious area.

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 threats directed at science advisors. In this episode, she outlines what's going on, what causes it, and how we might try to tackle it.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Bianca Nogrady: https://biancanogrady.com/

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, and much more besides.

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, whether it’s wise to step into the transporter, and how to solve the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in one easy step.

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 Strasbourg, hoping to force national governments into dramatic policy changes.

In this episode, Professor Helen Keller — for nine years a judge on the Strasbourg bench — discusses these cases with Toby Wardman, as well as drawing analogies between the challenges faced by science advisors to governments and by expert witnesses in courtrooms.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Analysis of climate change cases by Professor Keller and others: https://academic.oup.com/hrlr/article/22/1/ngab030/6497578
• Litigation by Klimaseniorinnen: https://www.klimaseniorinnen.ch/english/
• Climate change decision by the German constitutional court: https://www.whitecase.com/publications/alert/reshaping-climate-change-law
• Portuguese youth litigation: http://climatecasechart.com/climate-change-litigation/non-us-case/youth-for-climate-justice-v-austria-et-al

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 of IPCC and the secret sauce that keeps the world's best-known scientific advice mechanism firing on all cylinders.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• IPCC working group 2: https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg2/

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 beginning, and Professor Matthew Flinders has something to say about the dangers scientists face — and what practical skills they might need if they want to survive in the shark tank.

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 implications for the science-policy interface, especially in a world grappling with multiple public health and climate crises

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Foundational paper on post-normal science: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001632879390022L 

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?

Resources mentioned in this episode

• 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.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Science, Policy and the Value-Free Ideal: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822960263/
• Blackawton bee study: https://www.wired.com/2010/12/kids-study-bees/ 

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.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• 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.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Centre for Public Impact: https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/
• 'Braiding sweetgrass', by Robin Wall Kimmerer: https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass
• 'Seeing like a state', by James Scott:  https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078152/seeing-state
• The Cynefin framework: https://www.cognitive-edge.com/