Scientists and politicians: we need to learn how to talk to each other

The conversation around evidence and policy may seem to grow louder each week, but scientists think they deserve yet more attention from politicians.

However, as delegates at the International Conference on Science Advice to Government in Brussels last Thursday discussed, the problem is that wedging science into the often-perplexing policy process is challenging.

Scientists and policymakers do not work to the same timetables and are motivated differently – so little wonder they resemble computers running on different operating systems at times.

To bridge the cultural gap, scientists need to be less impatient, suggested Henrik Wegener, provost of the Technical University of Denmark and chair of the EU’s Scientific Advice Mechanism, a group of seven top scientists who gather evidence on selected topics for the European Commission.

“The difficulty is that everyone’s an expert now,” he said. “I’m an expert when I go to the doctor. I want to hear that I’m right; that I came up with the diagnosis myself. And it’s the same with scientists when they go see politicians.”

The divide could also be a result of politicians getting defensive about their record in office and bending facts to fit their purposes, said Gordon McBean, a Canadian climate researcher and president of the International Council for Science. One politician he advised did not want to hear anything about climate adaptation.

“He’d say ‘Don’t talk to me about adaptation, it implies failure to mitigate, which reflects badly on me’,” said McBean. A frayed interaction like this can make scientists feel hemmed in, he said.

If the message gets lost in translation, it is because “politics is hot, science is cold,” observed Julie Maxton, the executive director of Britain’s Royal Society, the first woman in 350 years to hold the post.

Scientists who think their particular issue should be higher on the public agenda should spend as much time thinking about how policymakers use evidence as they do about producing the best possible facts and figures, Maxton advised.

To gain the attention of lawmakers, people usually strapped for time, the Royal Society distils scientific issues into series of guides or primers.

Sympathy for the devils

Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has been on both sides of the debate, as a research physicist and eight-term Democratic member of the US Congress. His stint in politics left him with an “immense sympathy” for lawmakers, who come under a heavy bombardment of information from competing sources daily.

Politicians face “enormous, paid-for, organised obfuscation, agreed John Potter, chief science adviser to the Minister of Health in New Zealand. “Where once it was the tobacco industry, you now have a big lobby against climate change,” he said.

In Australia, it is a deeply-held disregard for genetically modified (GM) crops that politicians come up against, and no amount of science seems able to counter it, said the government chief scientist, Alan Finkel. “Greenpeace, for example, is just adamant about not using GM crops. They’ll say all the science shows we need to act on climate science. But when it comes to GM, they violently and actively disagree,” he said.

Not in their ivory towers

The image of the cut-off politician is an unhelpful caricature, said Mady Delvaux-Stehres, a centre-left member of the European Parliament from Luxembourg, claiming she chases after scientists, not the other way round. 

“In my 30 years as a politician, no scientist has ever approached me to say, ‘I have new findings and you should hear them’.” It usually takes several meetings with a scientist before Delvaux-Stehres feels she has the information she needs.

“Some meetings with scientists are no use for me,” she said. “Generally, the first meeting is not satisfactory on its own. You need time to take in the scientist’s information and you need to go back and ask questions.”