In this chapter, I describe the science-policy ecosystem. I first explain some of the aims and forms of scientific advising. Second, I explain some advising practices, including some of the good practices that well-known advisers have published. Next, I consider the roles that scientific advisers can play. I then zoom out from the scientific advice process in the simplest science-policy interface to a systems analysis of the more complicated science-policy ecosystem. Finally, I consider some possible distracting influences in the ecosystem of which scientific advisers should be aware.
1.1 Issues for Which Policy-Makers Need Advice
Governmental and parliamentary policy-makers usually need scientific advice on a specific development, problem or trend, for example:
- What are criteria of trustworthiness for a certain algorithm?
- How might a new technology impact the labour market?
- How can food waste be cut?
- How can we mitigate, and reverse, plastic pollution?
- How can the effects of fake news (and other forms of disinformation) be minimized?
- What are the possible global threats of artificial intelligence, and how can they be countered?
- What are the technological options for exploring and exploiting the deep seabed?
But they must also make strategic policy decisions to anticipate a more general challenge, threat or trend. Examples requiring scientific advice are:
- How can we ensure food resilience?
- How can we prepare for a rise in the sea level?
- How can we anticipate and manage immigration crises so that they do not overwhelm social resources?
- Which ethical implications may require limitations to human enhancement by gene editing technologies?
So, the range of issues for which policy-makers need scientific advice includes technological, behavioural and ethical matters arising across the spectrum of political competences: energy, transportation, the environment, public health, the digital revolution, employment, agriculture and climate change. This bookās approach to policy advising applies to all of these subjects.
1.2 Scientific Advising: Criteria, Organizations and Practices
In this sub-section, I first consider some of the organizational criteria for scientific policy advising that are described in some prominent reviews of the broad literature on the subject, and I explain some actual advising structures. Next, I survey some of the good practices of some well-known advisers. Appendix B lists references for further reading.
1.2.1 Organizational Criteria for Effective, Trustworthy and High-Quality Advising
In its report Scientific Advice for Policy Making: The Role and Responsibility of Expert Bodies and Individual Scientists , the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2015) analyses the organization of scientific policy advising and recommends three criteria for effective and trustworthy advising:
- 1.Have a clear remit, with defined roles and responsibilities for the various actors;
- 2.Involve scientists, policy-makers and other stakeholders in the process only when their input is relevant;
- 3.Provide advice that is sound, unbiased and legitimate.
In The Politics of Scientific Advice: Institutional Design for Quality Assurance, Justus Lentsch and Peter Weingart (2011) also explore the institutional design of advisory organisations and how it affects their ability to meet the challenges of policy advising. They derive four organizational guidelines for ensuring the quality of advice:
- 1.Maintain distance between advisers and advised to safeguard the formerās independence;
- 2.Involve different disciplines in the advisory process to ensure a plurality of perspectives;
- 3.Establish trust by maintaining transparent procedures;
- 4.Ensure public access to all relevant information.
1.2.2 How Scientific Advising Is Organized
National governments and legislatures and international legislative bodies have established a variety of institutional structures for generating scientific advice. In this subsection, I describe two models and consider some examples to illustrate how scientific policy advising can be organised. However, I do not provide an exhaustive list of models or scientific policy advising bodies.
National governments and legislatures and international legislative bodies have established a variety of institutional structures for generating scientific advice. The two most common structures are the Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) and the parliamentary or governmental scientific advisory body or committee. A CSAās task is to provide governments and their departments with strategic and operational scientific advice on questions pertaining to science policy. The CSA model is typical for Anglo-Saxon countries, and in recent years several have appointed them. The US appointed its CSA, the worldās first, in 1957 followed by the UK in 1964 and Ireland in 2004. In 2009, New Zealand appointed its first CSA, and in 2011 Quebec appointed the first CSA in Canada. In 2012, the European Commission appointed Anne Glover as the first CSA to the President of the European Commission. But her role was never clearly defined, she was under-funded and she worked as part of the Barroso Commission, whose mandate ended in October 2014, and her office was abolished that year. A polarizing debate ensued over whether the European Commission needed a CSA or an advisory body with members covering different disciplines. Eventually, the Juncker Commission decided on the latter and established the Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM ), a body of seven prominent scientists from various disciplines, which has advised the College of European Commissioners since the end of 2015. SAM provides the Commission with high-quality, timely and independent scientific policy advice.
Scientific advisory bodies usually serve parliaments, though a few also advise governments and their ministries. Overall, technology assessment (TA) bodies , which are the common scientific advisory bodies for public policy, can be quite varied. They can be based within the parliamentary administration or a ministry or be an independent organisation. Their tasks can range from informing only the parliament to stimulating public debate. Some conduct TAs using own expertise; others partly or primarily outsource their TA studies.
One example of a parliamentary advisory body is the European Parliamentās Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA). Established in 1987, it is administered by the EPās secretariat. 25 Members of the European Parliament, who are nominated by nine parliamentary committees, now sit on the panel. STOA is part of the Scientific Foresight Unit , which is embedded in the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), the EPās think tank. STOAās mission is āto contribute to the debate on and the legislative consideration of scientific and technological issues of particular political relevance.ā1 Another prominent example is Finlandās Committee for the Future , established in 1993, which has the mission of generating parliamentary dialogue on major future problems and opportunities. It is a permanent committee of 17 parliamentarians drawn from all of the political parties represented in the parliament, and they deliberate about matters affecting future research, technology and its impacts. In effect, they act as Finlandās think tank and guard against parliamentary and government short-sightedness. Other European examples (some of which also advise other governmental bodies) are:
- Franceās Office Parlementaire dāEvaluation des Choix Scientifiques et Technologiques (the Parliamentary Office for Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Options) (OPECST) , created in 1983;
- The Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA ) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OAW), founded in 1994;
- The UKās Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST ), launched in 1989;
- The Office of Technology Assessme...