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Science could solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Why aren’t governments using it?

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2024-12-04 17:30:13

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Killer viruses. Artificial intelligence. Extreme weather. Microplastics. Mental health. These are just a few of the pressing issues on which governments need science to inform their policies. But the systems that connect scientists with politicians are not working well, according to a Nature survey of around 400 science-policy specialists around the world. Eighty per cent said their country’s science-advice system was either poor or patchy, and 70% said that governments are not routinely using such advice.

“Every country is asking how we can do science and scientific advice,” says Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the importance of strong links between scientists and policymakers, the challenges to providing advice have grown. Spiralling mis- and disinformation risks obscuring science advice, while anti-science sentiment is eroding trust in experts and evidence — a phenomenon that scientists worry will worsen under the second US presidency of Donald Trump, who has repeatedly ignored or distorted evidence from research.

Nature’s survey — which took place before the US election in November — together with more than 20 interviews, revealed where some of the biggest obstacles to providing science advice lie. Eighty per cent of respondents thought policymakers lack sufficient understanding of science — but 73% said that researchers don’t understand how policy works. “It’s a constant tension between the scientifically illiterate and the politically clueless,” says Paul Dufour, a policy specialist at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

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