CASE recently worked on the ‘Science is Vital’ campaign leading up to the spending review, the general election last year, and the devolved elections this year. Part of this entailed getting policy commitments from the politicians and ensuring people knew what these commitments were. CASE was also instrumental in securing the maintenance of visa provisions for non-EU scientists. CASE advocates high quality scientific advice to be available to government and have consistently asked for a chief scientific advisor in every department. Possible ways one can work with policy-makers include working with CASE or other organisations, directly inputting in to government processes or working through political parties. Politicians are constantly drawing upon personal examples and it can be very salient and useful for them to have individual input. Leevers concluded her presentation by requesting science communicators think about including messages about the importance of science policy. For example, in press releases mention how public funding was so important and how beneficial it will be in the long run. Chris Tyler discussed science and policy from the perspective of someone sitting between the two. When communicating science to a politician it is important to remember that they have loyalties to their political party and their constituencies to consider. Furthermore, policy-makers are inherently risk adverse because negative outcomes of policy decisions are highly detrimental to the career of a civil servant. From the outside, academia can appear rather haphazard, and it is not easy for policy-makers to determine where to go to for the best evidence. What bodies like the Cambridge Centre for Sense, Science and Policy and the Royal Society do is endeavour to bridge some of these gaps. The real take home message was that there needs to be an onus on scientists on getting out there and communicating with policy-makers.
Tyler listed eight points to help scientists’ engagement:
1. Advise on science and evidence, but don’t leap straight into policy headfirst 2. Keep caveats to a minimum 3. Don’t be all doom and gloom 4. Be brief. Policy-makers are always short of time and if you cannot get your point across in 10 minutes you are not being brief enough 5. Avoid jargon 6. Face-to-face meetings are the best. It is important to communicate in a way that makes sense to policy-makers. Send a very short briefing prior to the meeting and follow up with an email outlining future opportunities 7. Narrative is important, so try to frame things in the context of a story for maximum impact 8. Don’t assume that policy-makers don’t know anything. For example, a policy-maker who is working on energy will have read diligently in that field.
During the discussion a question was raised regarding the purpose and value of a chief scientific adviser. If the job entails ensuring the best evidence and expertise is being drawn upon, then why does this position need to be held by a scientist rather than an economist, or is science a particular voice that should be privileged above others? In response it was pointed out that as a discipline, science, compared to law, economics, and other professions, is not well represented. Therefore science is underrepresented in the decision-making arena, yet the treasury is ultimately making decisions about science funding. Another question concerned how science could be better involved in government. To the final question “is the future bright for science policy?” all guest speakers agreed in one way or another that yes the future was bright for science policy.