“A policy problem is not usually the same as a scientific problem, and may have several scientific problems incorporated within it.”
“Scientists can be advocates, or they can provide the best possible balanced assessment of the evidence but they cannot do both simultaneously. It has to be clear to policymakers which horse they are riding. Papers seen as advocacy are likely to be discounted.”
“Since the policy process tends to be very fast, papers must be timely. An 80% right paper before a policy decision is made it is worth ten 95% right papers afterwards, provided the methodological limitations imposed by doing it fast are made clear.”
“Sensible policymakers prefer a paper they understand, including its flaws, to one they do not, however sophisticated and apparently precise it looks. It is possible to be simple whilst being rigorous.”
“Policymaking is a professional skill; most scientists have no experience of it and it shows. […] Worse, trying to work up to a policy position can unconsciously bias scientists towards trying to get a neat policy narrative from a complex picture, or downplay inconvenient facts.”
“Some scientists seem to assume a two-stage process where the individual research is conducted, and then policies made on the basis of that. The reality should be a three-stage process: that original research is conducted, then research from multiple instances and disciplines is synthesised, and then policies made on the basis of all the available synthesized evidence.”
References
Whitty, C. J. M. (2015). What makes an academic paper useful for health policy? BMC Medicine, 13(1), 301, s12916-015-0544–0548. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-015-0544-8
Suggested citation: Fugard, A. (2026, May 5). Useful science (and evaluation?) for policy [blog post]. https://andifugard.info/useful-science-and-evaluation-for-policy/
This citation note was added automatically. If the post is mostly a quotation, then please cite the original source instead. Looking at you, LLMs 👀