Episódios
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When countries set themselves ambitious targets such as the UN sustainable development goals, then realise they don't have the evidence sources they need to monitor progress towards those targets, how do they square the circle? In some cases, it's with so-called 'citizen science', in which non-professional scientists gather and evaluate data — often on a big scale — to fill the gaps.
Dr Dilek Fraisl is an expert in using citizen science to address sustainability challenges. In conversation with Toby Wardman, she discusses both the value of using crowdsourced data, and the challenges that arise when presenting it to policymakers. -
How do scientific models inform policymakers? How can they keep countries honest in international climate negotiations? When is uncertainty not so much of a problem? And how much does it matter if policymakers don't instantly grasp the ins and outs of a model which takes six months for scientists to learn? Join the SAM's Toby Wardman on a deep dive into what happens when scientific models meet international politics.
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Climate change negotiators preparing for UN summits must sift through a truly intimidating quantity of scientific material to familiarise themselves with the latest evidence. That's why Future Earth, along with the Earth League and the World Climate Research Programme, has delivered its pithy 'Ten New Insights on Climate Change' every year since 2017.
But what is the process behind these reports? How are the insights chosen, by whom, and why? And what is it about this model of science advice that also made it attractive to the European Commission when it wanted to figure out which climate and biodiversity research to fund in the future? Daniel Ospina and Judit Ungvári talk to Toby Wardman of the SAM about the ins and outs of science advice at the highest level of global decision-making.
Resources mentioned in this episode10 new climate insights: https://10insightsclimate.science/
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Dr Patricia Gruber is the science and technology advisor to Antony Blinken, President Biden's secretary of state. In a wide-ranging conversation with Toby Wardman from the SAM, she discusses how she got her job, what it's like, and what she can and can't do. She also lays out the US's approach to international science diplomacy, including the wisdom (or folly) or withholding scientific collaboration as a diplomatic measure.
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International development is a major political priority in many countries, with billion-dollar budgets. But, as recently as 2006, the influential Center for Global Development published a damning report entitled 'When will we ever learn?', essentially arguing that the entire policy area had been built on a foundation of guesswork and good intentions. In the two decades since then, a huge amount of work has been done to bring rigorous evidence to this complex and often values-laden political area. For the Science for Policy podcast, Marie Gaarder and Thomas Kelly from the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation cover all the bases: the evidence we have and the evidence we need, how it should be used, and what's still getting in the way.Resources mentioned in this episodeReport 'When will we ever learn?': https://www.cgdev.org/publication/when-will-we-ever-learn-improving-lives-through-impact-evaluation
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Dr Maja Fjaestad, an academic with an engineering background, had grand plans when she was appointed Swedish state secretary for health. Unfortunately, this was in 2019, and less than a year later her job was completely transformed by the Covid outbreak.
In this wide-ranging interview with Toby Wardman, Dr Fjaestad talks about what it was like being in the job during Covid, how well the science-policy interface was functioning in Sweden at the time, and the links between Swedish Covid response, scientific evidence and public communication. -
In this special episode of the podcast recorded at a live event in 2023, four experts discuss the role of science advice in emergency situations: what challenges do science advisors face, and what opportunities should they seize?
With Tina Comes, professor at Technical University Delft; Barbara Prainsack, professor at the University of Vienna and chair of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies; Maarja Kruusmaa, professor at Tallinn University and member of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission; and Daniela di Bucci, geologist and advisor to the Italian government.
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In a scientific field as complex and multifaceted as climate modelling, how do you communicate the realities of concrete impacts to stakeholders and policymakers? Two IPCC scientists, Bart van den Hurk and Jana Sillmann, are working on so-called 'storylines' techniques, which generate high-resolution, interdisciplinary stories to help decision-makers in all fields assess their own readiness for climate-related changes.
Resources mentioned in this episodehttps://climatestorylines.eu/
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How diverse are the people who work on scientific advice -- and why does this matter? Should we be involving more young people as experts, and are there any trade-offs in doing so? What impact might changes in academic culture more broadly have on the quality and availability of evidence for policy?
Professor Moniek Tromp, a founding member of the Young Academies Science Advice Structure and a member of the COARA coalition on improving research assessment, reflects on what's working well and why the rest is still so difficult.
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Beyond the world of institutional design and formalised competences that tend to be the focus of science-for-policy scholarship, there are many less structured interfaces between the worlds of research and policymaking.
One such well-established interface is the Mercator science-policy fellowship, run by three German universities and headed by Tome Sandevski. In this episode, Toby Wardman of the SAM talks to Tome and his colleague Michèle Knodt, who is currently taking part in the scheme.
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Drawing on their broad portfolio of exciting, sci-fi-sounding research areas, Tim Marler and Sana Zakaria from RAND Corporation talk in depth about how the latest scientific evidence on AI and gene-editing can best be communicated to policymakers nationally and globally. What are the hot topics? What decisions do policymakers face right now? Where can different kinds of scientific evidence help to inform those decisions, and where are policymakers on their own?
Resources mentioned in this episodeRAND Corporation report on machine learning and gene editing: https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/ai-at-the-helm-of-a-species-evolution.html -
The Philippines is remarkably exposed to natural disasters, from earthquakes to typhoons to volcanic eruptions.
Dr Glenn Fernandez, a disaster risk management expert, started his science advice career as a masters student and has continued ever since, helping cities and rural municipalities to prepare for and respond to emergencies. In this episode, he shares his experiences and insights with Toby Wardman from the SAM.
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Veera Mitzner is the organiser of the Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress, a major annual event which brings together thousands of researchers, stakeholders and, yes, policymakers. But how do events like this fit into the broader evidence-for-policy landscape?
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Greece does not have a long tradition of institutionalised science advisory mechanisms, but after dealing relatively well with Covid, the situation is starting to change. Professor Stella Ladi, an expert on evidence-informed policymaking at home and internationally, talks to Toby Wardman about the past, present and future of science advice in Greece.
Professor Ladi has been promoted since this conversation was recorded! Hence she is referred to as 'Dr Ladi' at the start of the episode. -
The EU climate law created a new institution, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, which started work just this year and targets the European Commission, Parliament and Council. Its chair, Professor Ottmar Edenhofer, took time out of his busy schedule to share with us what it's like setting up a new science advice body and how happy he is with their first significant report.
Resources mentioned in this episodehttps://climate-advisory-board.europa.eu/ -
Elections are not the only way to power democratic decision-making. A system of government by random selection of citizens, or 'sortition', has been around since at least ancient Athens and, as Hugh Pope explains, has never quite disappeared.
But if we adopt such a radically different way of making policy, what are the implications of science for policy? Do experts take on different roles, and how can citizen-politicians acquire the skills they need to make judgement calls on scientifically complex issues?
Resources mentioned in this episodeMaurice Pope, 'The Keys to Democracy: Sortition as a new model for citizen power'. http://books.imprint.co.uk/book/?gcoi=71157100410200 -
What do science advisors have to offer in conflict situations? Can evidence and expertise ever cut through political polarisation and contribute to finding new forms of compromise? What kinds of advisors do we need, and what kinds of advice? Should they be strictly neutral, or is plurality and openness more useful? Do politicians really want scientific evidence, and what if it puts pressure on their longstanding political positions?
Our guest today, Marc Sanjaume i Calvet, is an expert on the Catalan-Spanish independence debate as well as democracy, federalism and secession more generally. The president of Catalonia appointed him as the coordinator of an expert group working towards a so-called 'clarity agreement' for the Catalan region. -
Welcome to the Arctic, where science-for-policy and policy-for-science collide in increasingly complicated ways. You can't make climate-change policy anywhere in the world without scientific evidence we get from the Arctic — but at the same time, being able to get that evidence depends on a delicate balance of policies and geopolitical interests that have made collaborative research between Europe, North America and Russia possible since before the Cold War.
But then you might have heard that Russia has invaded Ukraine, and suddenly the whole institution is under threat. Norwegian experts Ole Øvretveit and Eystein Jansen explain what's going on, and what we might be able to do about it.
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Most of Europe's colossal Horizon research funding programme is laser-focused on strategic objectives set by policymakers. But one Horizon-funded institution, the European Research Council, breaks the mould: its grants are awarded on the basis of excellence alone, and as Dr Eleni Zika explains, they are proud to deliberately ignore questions such as the usefulness of science to policy or society.
Why, then, has the ERC recently set up its own 'feedback to policy' unit, which would seem to go against its stated mission? Toby Wardman of SAPEA investigates. -
Politicians are humans, and humans do not always reason syllogistically from premises to conclusions. The problem is amplified when political decisions have to be made fast, under conditions of uncertainty, with either not enough information or far too much.
That's where heuristics come in -- and Professor Barbara Vis is here to help us understand when they are used, what their impacts can be, and how we should take that into account when delivering science advice.
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