Hearing Our Policymakers’ Expectations (HOPE)
Published on April 13th, 2022
Anne Bucher has spent most of her career working on European policy making. She was Director-General in the European Commission until October 2020. While she is an economist by background, she has primarily focused on health and food safety issues, digital issues, taxation, social issues, and macroeconomic policies.
As a policy maker, what essential scientific knowledge do you need to be better prepared for future emergencies?
In many cases, the scientific community is good at presenting scientific information to politicians. However, scientists often do not realize that, for this information to result in decision making, they must provide a strong rationale and impress its importance upon policy makers. For example, although the most recent Horizon Europe program of the European Commission strongly advocated for greater investment in life sciences, even post-Covid the political commitment necessary to prevent future pandemics still does not exist. So, a system for effective dialogue between scientists and the policy community is necessary, to translate science into policy decisions.
This objective could be met by independent data aggregators like the IPCC, with strong credibility and multidisciplinary structure. In fact, to prepare for or prevent future pandemics and to generally improve global health, the G20 suggested creating an intermediary like the IPCC to, in Jean Claude Burgelman’s (Frontiers) words, “bridge the gap between the hardcore work at universities and the hardcore work of policymaking”. By speaking with a collective public voice and generating scenarios that are meaningful and persuasive to politicians, such an intermediary could serve as an alarm bell for policy makers. The independence of any such intermediary body is critical as a counterpower to political factors, as illustrated by the Covid-19 crisis. The public good that emerged from the pandemic (described below) was possible due to a tradition of collaborative research by an independent network of scientists at the international level. Global collaboration allowed us to rapidly compile the scientific information needed to manage the pandemic, despite geopolitical tensions. As a parallel, Burgelman stressed that, without independence, the impact of the IPCC would have been greatly reduced, as that panel clearly conflicted with politicians and policymakers for years.
Successfully addressing Covid-19 and future pandemics requires not only coordination between diverse areas of research, but also a political response to infectious diseases that is not yet adequate. Unlike the cancer field, in which there is a successful structure through which the scientific community communicates with politicians, issues like infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance still do not carry sufficient weight in the policy-making sphere. One strength of the IPCC is that it is viewed as the research arm of an international agreement, which gives its recommendations political weight. While organizations like the WHO, FAO, and agencies of the UN might work together to advance scientific knowledge, this does not always result in policy action. For such scientific panels to be heard and their advice acted upon, they need a political leg. As an example, although some recent missions of Horizon Europe were promoted by strong scientific groups, the lack of a political leg in this organization made it uncertain whether those missions would deliver a message audible to policy makers that would result in action.
What is the optimal way to present data and scientific information to policy makers, to maximize their resulting scientific knowledge?
To effectively present scientific information to policy makers, scientists must first create a political “hook” – they must proactively identify how their knowledge can contribute to the goals of policy makers and how they can use political momentum to channel an important scientific message. To do so, scientists could build relationships with global groups like the G7 or the G20, both to learn how to align their scientific conclusions with the concerns of politicians and policy makers to generate political commitment, and to procure the funding necessary to develop the scientific structure required to do so.
Additional thoughts
During the Covid crisis, we witnessed science happening in real-time, and this often involved conflicts between scientists over interpretations of emerging data. We cannot afford to have cacophony in crisis times. We need a structure in which scientists can disagree but still come together on a position that is salable to politicians, so that the necessary policy decisions (on masking, lockdowns, etc.) can be made. Independent, scientifically rigorous organizations, structured similarly to the IPCC, would be extremely helpful in both crisis management and in the prevention of future crises.
Bucher and Burgelman agreed that any such organization must be global in nature because many of the issues to be faced are global ones. A global approach also implicitly acknowledges the role of science in serving the common good. The G20 recently emphasized several outcomes of the pandemic that support the global public good and global responsibility. For example, disease surveillance promoted the global exchange of information and highlighted the value of holding knowledge in common. Advances in research, including the development of therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics, are another public good. Last, because the virus has no borders, the country that is the weakest link is a danger to the entire world. Strengthening the weak links is a global responsibility.
