Comments on: Principles of Scientific Advice to Government http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/2010/03/25/principles-of-scientific-advice-to-government/ Advancing ecology and making it count Tue, 14 May 2013 07:10:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Jonathan http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/2010/03/25/principles-of-scientific-advice-to-government/#comment-1641 Jonathan Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:59:44 +0000 http://britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/?p=964#comment-1641 Déjà vous surely accompanies anyone involved in UK science policy after even a few years. And so it is with the issue of scientific advice to policy-makers.

Not so long ago we had…
House of Commons Select Committee for Science & Technology (2006) Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence Based Policy Making.

A little earlier still we had

HM Government (2005) Guidelines of Scientific Analysis in Policymaking. Stationery Office, London.

And then even earlier there was

May, R., (1997) The Use of Scientific Advice in Policy Making. Office of Science & Technology, DTI, London. (Bob May being a past BES President.)

Not to mention many editions over the years of the ‘Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees’

Essentially these all contain nearly all the same elements, just that they are presented with a different emphasis and nuance. For example in the BSE and GM years the emphasis was on handling scientific uncertainty whereas now it is in the freedom of advisors to speak out.

Openness, transparency,independence of experts, evidence-based policy are not new concepts to UK science policy. The time and effort we spend in going over familiar ground is rather worrying (not least when we all have to tighten our belts).

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