How do we use evidence better in society today?

Over the last decade, the attention given to the use of evidence and expertise in policymaking has seen a transformation. We have seen an increase in people questioning authority and a desire to be involved in reasoned discussions, thereby creating better informed citizens who hold decision-makers to account. The term evidence is a broad term and may include social, scientific and other factors. One can also distinguish between pre-existing evidence which informs the policymaking process, and evidence which looks into the impact of policies and whether they are having the desired effects. In my role as research and public policy fellow, I am working on a project to understand how the government can take an increasingly evidence based approach to policymaking so that expertise and knowledge can be used towards making policies better and, ultimately, lives better.

The role of experts and evidence has been questioned and challenged on the national stage in recent months, in the context of Brexit in particular. There are a number of organisations concerned with the good use of evidence in policy making and two such organisations arranged a workshop on “How can Evidence and expertise be empowering?” One point came through clearly; evidence and expert judgement do not speak for themselves and making sense of evidence and expertise is always framed by prior assumptions and narratives.

An interesting example was around the need to come up with ways to ensure technology is used to inform but not control decisions, and we need platforms for genuinely democratic and inclusive discussions on how evidence should be used in political space. The workshop discussed the interplay of economics, psychology, sociology, ethics and values that go alongside scientific evidence in determining the outcome of a policy and the importance of exposing the pathway to a policy decision. Evidence based policy is not a linear process, it is iterative and complicated with multiple factors at play. So a question I am looking at in my project is what does the advice architecture look like across government departments and how can we ensure evidence is available and accessible at the right points in the process.

We also discussed the role of experts in supplying evidence. As scientists we like to think we are objective assessors of evidence and yet in reality none of us is disconnected or dispassionate and have our own interests in a given policy. That is certainly a good challenge to us as we endeavour to ensure that policymakers increasingly use evidence to inform their decisions.

Author: Dr Anusha Panjwani, Policy Fellow, Campaign for Science and Engineering