How Does Government Listen to Scientists?

This Palgrave Policy Essential draws together recent developments in the field of science in government, policy and public debate. Practice and academic insights from a wide variety of fields have both moved on in the last decade and this book provides a consolidated survey of the relatively well established but highly scattered set of insights about the provision of deeply technical expertise in policy making (models of climate or disease, risk, Artificial Intelligence and ethics,  and so on). It goes on to link this to emerging ideas about futures thinking, public engagement, narrative, and the role of values and sentiment alongside the place of scientific and scholarly insights in public decision-making and debate. The book offers an accessible overview aimed at practitioners; policy-makers looking to understand how to work with researchers, researchers looking to work with policy-makers, and the increasing numbers and types of “brokers” - people working at the interface, in science advice, public engagement and communication of science, and in expert support to decision-making in the public and private sectors. In addition to outlining recent insights and placing them in the established frameworks of authors such as Pielke and Jasanoff, the book also brings in relevant areas less traditionally associated with the subject but of increasing importance, such as modelling, futures and narrative.

Claire Craig CBE is Chief Science Policy Officer at the Royal Society, the independent scientific academy of the UK and the Commonwealth, dedicated to promoting excellence in science. She previously led the Government Office for Science on behalf of two UK Government Chief Scientific Advisors. She established the UK’s Foresight programme of science-based strategic futures projects, covering topics from flood risk to cognitive enhancement and was a Faculty member of the World Economic Forum. Claire has worked extensively on strategy and science in decision-making. Her career includes periods at McKinsey & Co and the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit. She helped launch a hands-on science centre in her home town (Bristol), and has held Board roles at a variety of research and teaching institutions including the Council of King’s College London and the Governing Body of Newnham College Cambridge. She trained originally as a geophysicist.