It is important that policy decisions that can affect us all, for example environmental protection legislation, are based on robust and objective evidence underpinned by sound science. Without this, the risk of unintended consequences is severe. Ongoing dialogue between policy makers and scientists is therefore critical. How do we initiate and sustain this dialogue? How do we ensure that policy makers and scientists are able to communicate effectively? What new mechanisms are needed to enable scientists to respond to the needs of policy makers and vice versa?
Experience reveals that matching the research design to the characteristics of intended users is not easy. No matter what, research findings will simply not be used if the latter are ignored. Willy-nilly, research institutions must find ways to relate research findings to practical applications in planning, policy making, program administration, and delivery of services. To help improve the definition, design, and implementation of policy research, researchers should adopt a strategic outcome-oriented approach.
Article Linking Research to Practice
Article Enriching Policy with Research
ِDear Olivier Serrat
I completely agree with you. Thanks for introducing useful articles,
Although primarily focusing on U.S. and European contexts to a lesser extent, I would highly recommend David Michaels' work, including his book, The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception. David Michaels is an epidemiologist and President Obama's OSHA administrator and President Clinton's chief safety officer of nuclear weapons complex. His entire book is great and in the last chapter he writes: "In order to have a system that protects people and the environment from harm, we must ensure the production and application of the best science possible, produced by independent, unconflicted scientists." He proposes: building the evidence base; having unconflicted scientists decide what the evidence means; completing disclosure of funding and control; protecting the public from entire classes of chemicals rather than individual ones only; recognizing the role of litigation in protecting public health; organizing (activism; collective efficacy); understanding how regulations defend capitalism rather than protect health and safety, etc.
David Michaels. The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-triumph-of-doubt-9780190922665?cc=us&lang=en&
Dear Cynthia A. Golembeski
Thanks for the important points that you said. It was very useful.
Dear friends, sound communications can never be ensured entirely, because it demands mutual trust, which in turn can only be achieved through practical means. In the old British saying, 'the test of the pudding is in the eating', and thee saying is truthful specifically to a foreigner, for whom the taste of a Yorkshire pudding may be really awful! In short, any attempt at communication is always a risky intersubjective enterprise!
We know that developed countries have many large research and advisory centers, and it has become, in our time, one of the criteria for classifying countries, the extent to which the proportion of expenditures on research and development constitutes the total public budget, as well as the knowledge economy has become the important and the basis for raising the level of economic growth in any country. And other variables, there is a large correlation in the effect of science and knowledge on the economy and then on public policies.
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I found this report written by scholars at the University of Minnesota useful when thinking about this particular question.
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