A better scientific understanding will bring better policy decisions

Monday, March 16, 2009

Getting understandable science information to policy makers remains a great challenge, says Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and special adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the latest edition of Public Service Review: Science and Technology. He details five things that can be done to improve the link between science and policy

The effective flow of information from the scientific community to the public and to policy-makers, and the systematic application of that information in policy-making remains a great and growing challenge.

The Bush administration exemplified a government that ignored, distorted, and even disdained scientific information, to the enormous cost to the US and the world. The linkages of experts and the public must occur at several stages, and must be informed by democratic inputs, as well as scientific inputs.

The problems of combining scientific knowledge with policy-making pervade the entire 'value chain' of policy-making. First, the general public must broadly understand scientific issues such as climate change in order to be able to call for and endorse sound public action. Yet the scientific issues are inherently complex, and the public arena is filled with misinformation (by innocent error) and disinformation (by calculated misdirection) by vested interests. To overcome the confusion, it is vital to establish processes such as the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that inform the public of the boundaries of real knowledge and consensus, especially based on the peer reviewed literature. Other venerable scientific institutions and societies (such as the Royal Society or the National Academy of Sciences) can also play this role.

Second, the public must be informed of the consensus in an intelligible manner. Many scientists notoriously neglect to be intelligible, usually not in order to be intentionally obscure, but rather to avoid the imprecision of non-scientific, day to day language. This is why science journalists (with proper scientific training), the media, and scientist-statesmen are needed to play an important role in translation.

Third, policy-makers need detailed and systematic inputs beyond the broad public debate. The US President Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a vital institution in that regard, the kind of advisory body at the apex political level that should exist in each country. President Barack Obama has immediately revitalised it by appointing world class scientific leaders (each with a track record of public statesmanship as well). The US Congress and other parliamentary institutions need their own counterpart scientific advisory support.

Fourth, science needs to inform public policy systematically, not only through advising the executive and legislative branches (and indeed, often, the judicial branch), but also through a seat at the table in rule-making and public decision-making. Government bodies such as environmental agencies, national laboratories, and standard setting bodies (eg. in programmes on energy-efficiency supervised by the US Department of Energy, or in the Food and Drug Administration) need not only their own internal experts, but also panels of independent (non-governmental) scientific experts, free from conflict of interest, and beyond the reach of politics or governmental bureaucratic control.

Fifth, while expertise is vital – indeed, life saving for the planet at this stage in world history – it is not enough. We can't leave ultimate decisions to the scientists, though we want the scientists very close to the ultimate decisions, and to express their views strongly and publicly. Ultimate decisions depend on democratic processes and consensus building around the scientific evidence that are needed to combine scientific knowledge with ethical guidelines, public values, and a sense of justice, fairness and social cohesion.

This meshing of science knowledge and ultimate democratic decision-making is a never ending challenge. At the most general level, it requires an open society and educational system that promotes open inquiry, scepticism, and technical scientific training. At the most specific level, it requires that citizen representatives sit alongside scientists in public decision-making bodies, as witnesses, interlocutors, and sometimes as ultimate decision-makers alongside government officials. Since many decisions are made not by the Congress or parliaments but by independent agencies, these agencies should have citizen representatives and citizen witnesses on a systematic basis. There will be no single institutional means to accomplish this subtle balancing act of technical expertise, citizen participation, and executive, since circumstances differ by topic, urgency, public understanding, time horizon involved, and much else. Yet the general commitment to the combination of scientific rigour, public consensus and democratic accountability should be a guidepost for action and institutional design.