Advising governments is not easy and so should be trained
The failure of science advice in India and other countries: the story of COVID19 and how independent SAGE became a global expert network for science advice
Chagun Basha is the chief policy adviser in the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India who is based in Bengalaru. History, culture and crises have shaped each country’s system. The Council for Science, Technology and Innovation in Japan is a means of providing advice. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is in China. Chile has ad hoc committees. And at least half of countries do not have science-advice systems with a chief adviser and staff, although they might have other ways to bring evidence into policy, says Soledad Quiroz, who studies knowledge management at the Central University of Chile in Santiago.
Zuckerman is believed to have arrived, said his piece, and left in a smooth manner, but then there would be no sign of him. Mark Ferguson, who worked for the government of Ireland as chief science adviser until 2022, says that lack of transparency is one of the reasons for how science advice should work.
In other countries, national academies of scholars have a more central role. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC are a key pillar of US science advice, along with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and its director, who advises the president. There are also myriad other ways that research informs branches of the US government.
The lack of a high level expert advisory mechanism to inform the government of their responses was exposed by COVID19, which is why Pielke wanted to read it. “Given that the United States is kind of the world’s colossus of scientific research, it’s a shocking oversight,” he says.
Independent SAGE broadcast its public briefings for more than three years. The chair of Independent SAGE from September 2020 to October 2022 was a clinical geneticist at University College London. It also put forward policy options informed by science, such as how to safely reopen schools. He says it wasn’t adversarial, in that its recommendations were broadly in line with SAGE’s published reports.
The shadow team of experts calledOCTA Research became a leading source of science advice in the Philippines. The group was successful because it had a wide range of expertise, including physicians, economists and a media specialist, says Benjamin Vallejo Jr, an environmental scientist and OCTA member at the University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City. It also communicated to politicians “in a way that wouldn’t threaten their public credibility”, he says.
In future, Pillay and Pielke agree, science advice needs a mechanism to incorporate a wider diversity of expertise. “If the shadow voices become significant enough or have enough influence, you invite them into the room,” Pielke says. More than 60% of survey respondents said that science advice fails to incorporate a diversity of people or viewpoints.
Another requirement is a repertoire of people skills: the ability to communicate complex ideas in succinct, everyday language; the capacity to build trusting relationships, so that politicians have faith in the information they receive and that their confidences will not be breached; being able to respectfully understand others’ views and priorities, however different. Mark Ferguson, Ireland’s chief science adviser from 2012 to 2022, said only in this way can he hope to convey the evidence to them.
A growing number of institutions offer training for both scientists and knowledge seekers. The International Institute for Science Diplomacy and sustainable practices was founded last year by Zakri Abdul Hamid, who was an adviser to the prime minister of Malaysia. The institute prepares people for UN climate meetings by training them to bridge science and diplomacy.
INGSA offers training too, but wants to do more, says Rémi Quirion, chief scientist of Québec, Canada, and INGSA’s president. Researchers have to be incentivized to do training and work. The survey respondents said that funders failing to do so was the main impediment to science advice.
These efforts need to be informed by evidence. More than 1,900 initiatives around the world aimed at promoting greater engagement between policymakers and researchers have been identified in a study. I was appalled. Policy 18, 691—713; 2022). Only a small percentage of them had been evaluated to assess how well they worked.
What do we learn from studying soft cells? (Scientific American | 15 min read) Is it a plane or a drone with bird-like legs?
The first description of soft cells, a new class of shapes that fill space with curved edges, nonflat faces and few sharp corners, will change how we comprehend the real world. (Scientific American | 15 min read)
Is it a plane, or a drone with bird-like legs? Researchers have created a fixed-wing drone with lightweight legs to try to reproduce birds’ incredible variety of locomotion. Although heavily simplified, these mechanical drumsticks have proven to be very versatile — the drone can walk, hop and leap into the air in a manner very evocative of the real thing.
Meanwhile, a Republican-led US government committee — notable for its rancor and partisanship — bucked the opinions of many scientists and concluded that SARS-CoV-2 likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan. Democrats on the panel released their own report flatly contradicting many of their colleagues’ conclusions.
A new analysis of samples from early 2020 seems to add to the evidence that a market in Wuhan, China was the likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Genomic data from raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) and greater hog badgers (Arctonyx collaris) found at the market seem to show signs of infection with SARS-CoV-2 or other closely related viruses. This supports the theory that animals were infected, which could have led to a ‘spillover’ event in which the virus infected people. In terms of solid proof, Stanley Perlman says that it doesn’t replace finding the viruses in an animal.
The spade-toothed whale, a species that is rare and has never been seen before, was sliced open by marine biologists and Mori experts. With only six other whale specimen found, researchers have lots of questions about the species. A marine scientist thinks that a new type of parasites may be living in a whale. Who knows what we discover?
Venus: A Dry Planet that Has Never Had Liquid Water On Its Surface – Evidence from the Vacuum Composition of Venus’ Interior
Venus has never had liquid water on its surface. One theory of the rocky planet’s history posited that after being covered by magma, the planet maintained a temperate climate for billions of years, which allowed oceans of water to form. The water content of Venus’s interior is shown by the chemical composition of volcanic gases in the atmosphere. They found only a 6% water content in the gases, suggesting a very dry planet that has never had liquid water on its surface.