New guidelines on the use of scientific advice

The Government has published the Chief Scientific Adviser's Guidelines on the Use of Scientific and Engineering Advice in Policy Making.

Champions of public engagement will be pleased to see that one of the key messages to Government departments states the need to: “identify early the issues which need scientific and engineering advice and where public engagement is appropriate”.

The guidelines are designed to help clarify the place of scientific advice in policy. They importantly highlight the enduring conditions of uncertainty in which policy is made and acknowledge that there will always be a role for the judgement of policy makers. It is therefore acknowledged that there is no straightforward or simple relationship between science and policy and that policy makers have to weigh scientific advice against other forms of knowledge.

The relationship between scientists and policy makers was the subject of much debate at the Royal Society’s Annual Policy Debate which was supported by Sciencewise-ERC.

If you have views about how scientific evidence should be used in policy, log-on and post your views on the Sciencewise-ERC forum.