I don't think, scientists should be involved directly in politics. If democracy is taken seriously, decision-making should depend on the representatives of the population. Nevertheless, scientists should act politically, criticizing political decisions with the methods of their discipline.

Thank you for reply. But I think that at least the structure of national concepts/drafts, SWOT analysis should be elaborated with the assistance of researchers, as well as feasibility studies of proposed decisions. For example, how can be elaborated concept of development entrepreneurship for country or science development without researchers that are implicated in study of this problem?

In this context, what do you think about the measurement of impact of science for the society?

Marica, you are right. Politics has to rely on scientific knowledge in order to make decisions. And I see the problem: a scientific field has a broad range of opinions and theories - but politics will pick only one. I don't know, how to solve this problem. In Germany, there are national councils of ... historians, for instance. Those are people invited by the government that are supposed to give the government scientific advice in their field. Only... I would expect that there is a certain tendency to pick people politically close to the political line of the government. What are your experiences in that area? Do you know of earlier intents to measure the impact of science in society or politics?

When it comes to the drafting of policies, bureaucrats or planning commission sits in an air-conditioned office and draft the policies.They should be based on research.The actual facts and figures are never considered.

There is a huge discourse - both politically and scientifically - on the role of science in policy. So I do not think there is any simple answer to that question.

Crucially, the very idea that science could 'calculate' correct decisions is tempting, but only applicable in a very small range of questions, and fundamentally misunderstands the nature of political decisions. Political decisions are NORMATIVE choices about which values and interests receive priority in a situation of competing demands for scarce resources. Science can ever only provide insights about the potential consequences of possible decision alternative. It is a support function that might help policy-makers understand issues and make better informed choices - but science can never tell which decision is 'better' until a normative decision is made on what outcome society defines as desirable.

Advocating more influcence of scientists also fundamentally overestimates the knowledge of the scientific community - and the degree of its consensus. Just look at Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati publicly fighting over development policy approaches all the time - which 'science' are policy makers supposed to listen to in this case? Also, enough scientist actually tasked with drafting policies failed spectacularly and miserably in the past. Just a few decades ago air and water were considered 'free goods' by economists because they were assumed to be too abundant to face any scarcity constraint. Today, just read the Inclusive Wealth Report and you realize that all economic research relying on GDP-based numbers might completely mislead political decisions.

Regarding the policies that guide science and entrepreneurship - every undergraduate management student learns early on that attempts to plan innovation will very likely achieve the opposite. Involving established scientists (vested interests!) in writing the policies meant to encourage breakthough science may well lead to the opposite. SImilarly, societal impacts of science often occur after decades or are highly diffuse - limiting support to science whose impact is measurable by current methods might completely miss the point.

What does this mean for your question: To reflect this lack of knowledge, you should never ever limit the discourse on country development to only one concept. The more different and competing conecpts you use, the lower the risk that something important is forgotten or overlooked. Using just one concept creates a false sense of certainty, and it makes lazy and complacent. In addition, scientists should force policy to state the decisions that are political. The operational phrase is "We cannot give you recommendations until you very clearly state what you actually want"

One topic you could look at to get a sense of the dynamics guiding scientific influence in policy-making in general is literature on epistemic communities, and the various theories they used to discuss the topic.