Science advice: The United Kingdom’s Independent SAGE and a pop-up shadow team in the midst of a time of change

It is a time of change and evolution in science advice. Finland is one country experimenting with different models for providing advice. A number of groups, including the US National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC, are trying to speed up the delivery of advice to fit a rapid pace of work. The UN secretary-general launched a board last year.

When there was a scientific crisis in London, someone would shout down the hall for Solly Zuckerman, the government chief scientific adviser. Zuckerman, a physician, had guided the government on military planning during the Second World War and was appointed as GCSA by prime minister Harold Wilson in 1964.

In other countries, national academies of scholars have a more central role. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington DC are a key pillar of US science advice, along with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and its director, who advises the president. There are also myriad other ways that research informs branches of the US government.

The number-one lesson, Pielke says, was that “no one really got it right”. The US looked bad, that’s number two. When Donald Trump stated that science did not support his anti-malaria drug policy, it was obvious that science wasn’t telling politicians how to vote. The member of the White House task force on coronaviruses, Anthony Fauci, raced to correct him.

One of the most prominent examples was the United Kingdom’s Independent SAGE. Former GCSA David King and other scientists started the group in mid-2020 in response to concerns about a lack of transparency from the government’s SAGE, which did not initially publish its membership or meeting details. Some scientists criticized SAGE for not pointing out when government policies weren’t consistent with scientific evidence and for lacking expertise in certain disciplines.

In the Philippines, less controversially, a pop-up shadow team of experts called OCTA Research became a leading source of science advice during the pandemic. Benjamin Vallejo Jr., an environmental scientist with the University of the Philippines Diliman, says that the group had a wide range of expertise. He said it communicated to politicians in a way that wouldn’t endanger their public credibility.

In the future, Pillay and Pielke agree that a mechanism is needed to incorporate a wide variety of expertise. Pielke says, “If the shadow voices become significant enough, you invite them into the room.” More than 60% of survey respondents said that science advice fails to incorporate a diversity of people or viewpoints.

The skills required are: the ability to communicate complex ideas in succinct, daily language; the capacity to build trusting relationships so that politicians have faith in the information they receive and that their confidence will not be betrayed; being able to respectfully understand others’ views and priorities. “Only in this way can you hope to convey the evidence to them in a way that helps them understand and appreciate it,” says Mark Ferguson, who was Ireland’s chief science adviser between 2012 and 2022.

A growing number of institutions worldwide offer training to both scientists and knowledge brokers. The International Institute of Science Diplomacy and Sustainability is based in Kuala Lumpur, and was founded last year by Zakri Abdul Hamid, a former science adviser to Malaysia’s prime minister. Preparing people for United Nations climate meetings is one of the things the institute prepares people for.

INGSA offers training too, but wants to do more, says Rémi Quirion, chief scientist of Québec, Canada, and INGSA’s president. Research funders and employers need to incentivize researchers to do science-advice training and work. The survey said funders failure to do so was an impediment to science advice.

These efforts need to be informed by evidence. A study in 2022 identified more than 1,900 initiatives worldwide aimed at promoting greater engagement between policymakers and researchers, from the collaborative production of policy briefs to networking events (K. Oliver et al. Evid. Policy 18, 691—713; 2022). Only 6% had been evaluated to assess how well they worked.