Normal View Dyslexic View
Personal Reflection
Reflections on UK science–policy relationships in the light of Covid-19
Abstract
This article discusses one of many reasons why the UK did so poorly in managing the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic despite having access to extensive and high-quality scientific evidence and advice: science–policy relationships. Drawing on the author’s participation in and experiences of the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) and its behavioural sub-group, it discusses the following questions:
1.
Was the model (framework) for translating scientific advice to policy-makers as effective as it could have been?
2.
Could more have been done to communicate science and its implications for policy and practice to the public?
3.
Should scientists speak to policy-makers and the public about matters beyond their particular area of study, reflecting their multidisciplinary working and understanding?
4.
Do scientists have a social responsibility to discuss policy implications of scientific evidence and challenge politicians when their statements or behaviour go against prevailing evidence?
Future directions of inquiry should investigate the process by which research evidence is translated and used, applying social science and implementation science methods, evidence and theories. A question deserving attention across academe and society more generally is how scientists can best interact with, and contribute to, social good beyond their well-trodden paths of academic publications and conference presentations.
Keywords
Scientific advicepolicysocial sciencescience–policy relationshipCovid-19Introduction
The UK’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic is generally acknowledged to have been poor (Arnold et al. 2022; Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees 2021) leading to 148,897 excess deaths by December 2021 (WHO 2021), and a burden of long-term health problems that has damaged population well-being, productivity (Mortimer-Lee & Pabst 2022) and the economy (ONS 2021). This was despite the UK having an advanced research and development infrastructure, a public and national health service free at the point of need, and a large and sophisticated scientific advisory system that functions during emergencies to inform the government (SAGE: Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies).
Explanations for the poor outcomes in the UK and other countries have been discussed in scholarly articles (e.g., Baum et al. 2021, Sachs et al. 2022) and in the evidence submitted to the UK’s independent public Covid-19 Inquiry led by Baroness Hallett.1 These include lack of pandemic preparedness; the state of UK public services including depleted and fractured public health, hospitals, care homes and local government; poor working and living conditions for many; a government that was ill equipped to lead or to understand and act appropriately on scientific advice (Scally et al. 2020); major failures of public procurement (McKee 2020); and questions about the effectiveness of the translation of scientific evidence into policy and practice.
Effective infection control requires that people break pathways of transmission between them; for Covid-19 it was quickly established that this requires distance between people, and as the aerosol route was recognised, requiring well-ventilated or filtrated shared spaces. Since the distancing measures were highly disruptive, impacting disproportionately on those already disadvantaged, complementary measures were, and still are, needed to minimise their wider impact on health, education and wellbeing (McKee & Hiam 2022). Since social distancing practices were very unfamiliar to the UK population of 2020, effective methods of leadership and communication to all parts of society were required (Independent SAGE 2020a; SPI-B 2020a).
During crises, governments call on the advice of scientific experts to help them understand and manage them and their impacts. SAGE was established in 2020 to inform the government about the latest scientific understanding relevant to pandemic management. From a behavioural science perspective, much of the advice was aimed at enabling governments to effectively and speedily support people to behave in ways that would reduce viral transmission. Many in the behavioural group within SAGE (SPI-B) perceived a mismatch between the behavioural advice provided to government, and the government's policies and practices. Of course, governments take into account many factors other than scientific advice when making decisions, but the gap between advice and observed policy and practice was notable. Examples included a failure to adequately engage, consult and listen to communities most challenged in adhering to edicts, communicating in very general rather than behaviourally specific terms (for example, the vague ‘Stay Alert, Control the Virus’ message) and taking a punitive rather than enabling, positive approach to supporting people to adhere to rules.
The provision of independent, accessible and transparent scientific advice is important not only to inform government policies, but also to provide a trustworthy source of information for the public, media and other organisations. Trust in governments and authorities has been shown to be a key ingredient in enabling populations to follow government guidance, and hence to effective management of pandemics (Fancourt et al. 2020). However, there is relatively little published empirical work examining the processes and outcomes of scientific advisory committees in crises (Donovan 2021). The processes and outcomes of advisory groups in emergencies warrant analysis and empirical study. The UK’s Covid-19 Inquiry terms of reference and scope did not explicitly include the manner in which scientific advice was provided (UK COVID-19 Inquiry 2022).
This article raises questions about some of the methods of translating scientific knowledge and thinking during Covid-19, from the perspective of having served to advise policy-makers outside an emergency situation over decades and having been part of both the first SAGE created for the H1N1 (‘swine flu’) pandemic of 2009–10 and in the 10th activation of SAGE for the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 onwards.2 It is written as a contribution to the discussion about what can be learnt from the UK Covid-19 experience and taken forward to ensure that scientific advisory processes are in the best shape to contribute during the next crisis, which may not be far in the future.
It addresses three questions:
1.
Was the model (framework) for translating scientific advice to policy-makers as effective as it could have been?
2.
Could the science and its implications for policy and practice have been communicated better to the public?
3.
Do scientists have a social responsibility to discuss policy implications of scientific evidence and to challenge politicians when their statements or behaviour go against prevailing evidence?
This paper does not address the ways that advice is presented (for example, terminology, length, complexity), nor how advice is implemented downstream (such as how the complexity of factors, including scientific evidence, influences policy decisions); both are associated with large empirical and theoretical bodies of work. Rather, it focuses on models and frameworks for translating scientific evidence to potential users. To provide context, examples of failures of the UK Government in managing Covid-19 are provided, along with possible reasons for an apparent mismatch between scientific advice provided and policy decisions taken. A summary of the government’s scientific advisory process via SAGE is also provided as background.
Examples of failures in the UK government’s management of Covid
‘One of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced’ was the verdict on the government’s decisions in a House of Commons Committee report on ‘lessons learned’ in September 2021 (Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees 2021). This referred to both the government’s decisions on, for example, lockdowns and social distancing, and also on the advice that informed them. There are many examples of apparent failures of scientific advice finding its way into government action, possibly the most egregious being the delays to lockdown both in March 2020 and again in September of that year as the second wave started, despite SAGE advising earlier action on both occasions (SAGE 2020a, 2020b). The loss of life due to the first lockdown delay has been estimated as 34,000 (Arnold et al. 2022). I summarise three other examples of scientific advice–policy disconnect.
The first example is the poor government messaging that happened throughout, exemplified by the switch of slogans to guide people’s actions from the clear ‘Stay at Home’ to 'Protect the NHS' and 'Save lives' to the nebulous ‘Stay alert’ to ‘Control the virus’. SAGE was never consulted on this and, indeed, the ‘Communications’ scientific advice was removed from the brief of the behavioural science group within SAGE (‘SPI-B’)3 which had previously been SPI-B&C to include communications. This change was because the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser (‘CSA’) considered that communications was part of operations and logistics (Rubin 2023), suggesting that he did not sufficiently recognise that there was an important body of scientific evidence and theoretical base underpinning communications.
The third example illustrates a failure to implement what the WHO Director General in his 16 March 2020 briefing on Covid-19 referred to as the ‘backbone’ of pandemic management, an effective Test, Trace and Isolate system (WHO 2020). Isolating when symptomatic or testing positive for Covid-19 is essential for breaking transmission routes. Data from the CORSAIR study,4 a national weekly survey of 2000 people set up to measure pandemic-related behaviours and the influences on them, showed that in 2020 fewer than 30 per cent of those symptomatic were isolating from other people (Smith et al. 2021). The main predictors and reasons for this low rate of isolation were having low income, insecure jobs and suffering financial hardship (Smith et al. 2021). This was in the context of the UK having one of the lowest rates of sick pay in Europe, being only 16 per cent of average pay (Cominetti et al. 2023). When presented with these data, SAGE advised that sufficient financial support be given to those who needed to self-isolate to avoid hardship (SPI-B 2020b).
Since the CORSAIR study had been commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care to inform strategy, the hope was that the government would respond positively to the SAGE advice based on these data. However, the government response was to offer financial support that was less than the living wage to a restricted group of people, with a cumbersome application procedure, with associated low take-up and financial hardship (Reed et al. 2021). On the other hand, a measure about which there had been no consultation with SAGE/SPI-B was introduced, imposing fines of up to £10,000 for those not self-isolating when symptomatic or testing positive. The result was predictable: not only did it not solve the problem of low rates of self-isolation, but few people came forward for testing when symptomatic, only 30 per cent according to the CORSAIR study (Smith et al. 2021).
Another example of a policy introduced without consultation with SAGE was the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ campaign which was predicted by many, and then shown, to increase the number of Covid cases (Fetzer 2020). As became evident at the Covid-19 Inquiry, not even the CSA or CMO (Chief Medical Officer) were consulted about this policy, despite it being obvious that it would bring people together in close proximity for long periods of time in spaces with poor ventilation. The lack of consultation was not apparent to the public at the time, as the scientific advisory process was not transparent, potentially giving a signal to the public that it was now safe to spend time with people in these situations.
Possible reasons for an apparent mismatch between scientific advice and policy decisions
The UK government, at least for the first months of the pandemic, claimed to be ‘following the science’ when discussing their policy decisions, with the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, claiming his Covid-19 response plan was ‘driven by the science’, citing the UK’s ‘world-class expertise to make sense of the emerging data’ (Department of Health and Social Care 2020). Given that scientists understand that policy is informed by factors in addition to scientific advice, these statements were regarded with some scepticism, given the lack of specificity about which science was informing which decision and how (Fafard et al. 2022).
The Covid-19 Inquiry5 has received much material to consider in explaining why UK did much worse than it should have done in managing Covid-19. Explanations include the poor leadership provided by the government which may partly reflect ‘flaws in how ministers understand and use science advice to inform their decisions’ (Sasse et al. 2020) and a failure to learn from what was happening in other countries (Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees 2021). Another explanation may be that the scientific advice was not consistent with advice from other quarters, including political (for example, what is considered feasible), and ideological in terms of what is valued (such as reducing inequality or maintaining business profits). A lack of pandemic preparedness is widely cited as an explanation; certainly there has been little evidence of learning from the recommendations of the independent Inquiry that followed the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, led by Dame Deirdre Hine (Hine 2010). Recommendation 7 stated that ‘The Government Office for Science, working with lead government departments, should enable key ministers and senior officials to understand the strengths and limitations of likely available scientific advice as part of their general induction. This training should then be reinforced at the outbreak of any emergency’ (7). It is not clear that this was implemented. Recommendation 26 stated ‘The four UK health departments should consider new ways of proactively engaging with both journalists and the public’ (22). Despite this, during the Covid-19 Inquiry, the CSA expressed concern about scientists engaging with journalists, unless they only talked about their own field of research, a point I will return to. A further explanation may lie in the nature of the scientific advisory process itself. The editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, characterised the outcome of the advisory process as ‘the biggest failure of UK science policy in a generation’ (Ahuja 2020).
The UK government’s scientific advisory process for emergencies
The UK first created a ‘Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies’ (SAGE) in 2009 in response to the H1N1 pandemic; a tenth SAGE was created in 2020 to manage Covid-19 and operated for more than two years. It was a complex organisation, comprising a large number of world-leading independent university-based scientists, government and ‘arms-length body’ scientists, and political advisors as observers. They responded speedily to government requests with a vast number of excellent, evidence-based reports. University scientists received no remuneration for their SAGE work. All were termed ‘participants’ rather than ‘members’, whether they had attended once as a guest or were central players and attended all meetings. Of the more than 100 participants, there was a core of regular attenders, some of whom were chairs of sub-committees including the modelling group (SPI-M-O) and the behavioural science group (SPI-B) in which the author participated. As an indication of the volume of evidence and advice generated, SPI-B alone produced more than 100 reports with actionable advice (SPI-B 2020c).
SAGE was supported by a well-developed secretariat within the Government Office for Science. Advice based on evidence and scientific thinking addressing specific questions, with executive summaries, were passed to the main SAGE committee for review and ‘signing off’ before being sent to a variety of committees. The advice was reactive in that it could only be developed in response to ‘commissions’ from government. SAGE advice was communicated to government (COBRA and the Cabinet) via SAGE’s Chair, the Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA), Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Chris Whitty.
In the early weeks, SAGE operated in secret, without making public its membership, minutes or reports until May 2020. Considerable concern was expressed, including from former Chief Scientific Advisor David King, who responded by convening a multidisciplinary group of leading scientists and science-based practitioners to communicate scientific evidence and its implications openly and directly to the public and media: ‘Independent SAGE’.6 The positive response to its first broadcast, hosted by an organisation called ‘Citizens’,7 led to its continuation over the next 3$\frac{1}{2}$ years.
In many ways, SAGE was undoubtedly successful, producing a wealth and broad range of evidence-based scientific advice in hundreds of reports published on the government website (SAGE 2020c). The over-arching question this article addresses is whether there is room for improvement in the model of translating scientific advice to government, including methods for providing advice and its translational routes and, if so, what changes might be helpful in the future.
1. Was the model (framework) for translating scientific advice to policy-makers as effective as it could have been?
Complexity of the science–policy relationship
Although ‘science advice’ sounds straightforward, there is a complex relationship between science and policy, especially when decisions have to be made at speed and in conditions of uncertainty, such as during Covid-19 (McKee et al. 2022; Michie et al. 2022). Scientists’ expertise, as outlined in testimony to a 2020 parliamentary committee (Gough 2020: 2), included identifying relevant types of evidence and research questions to ask; having a broad overview of a topic and the nature of its evidence and framing; in-depth technical detail of a topic; innovative ideas about what to study or what evidence might mean; quality appraisal and challenging assumptions of evidence claims; synthesis and integration of different claims on the same topic and selecting between claims; integrating evidence across topics, including when driven by different values and priorities within and across different disciplines; interpreting evidence, including its implications; proposing courses of action and identifying likely outcomes.
There is a wealth of evidence, including in the journal Implementation Science, about how evidence can best be translated into policy and practice. A recent editorial on Covid-19, made the point that merely disseminating information is never sufficient for changing behaviour, organisations and systems in line with scientific thinking; active two-way engagement and evidence-based strategies are needed (Wensing et al. 2020). This reflects many years of study, and the generation of several frameworks, replacing the simple ‘pipeline’ model of evidence translation and use with models that have been variously referred to as knowledge brokerage, co-production and user involvement (Oliver et al. 2014).
The complexity of the evidence ecosystem in which research translation is seen not as a linear process from research to its use, but instead as a more dynamic two-way process is illustrated graphically in Figure 1 (Gough et al. 2022).
Learning lessons from the Covid-19 science–policy relationship
In 2020, CSA Vallance declared that ‘lessons will be learned’ (UK Parliament 2020), and that ‘the science system across government and across agencies needs to be robust’ and ‘we need to think about resilience of that system’ (Inge 2020). An analysis of the role and structure of scientific advice in Covid-19 policy in the UK using international comparators identified the need for advice to be (i) independent to ensure that governments did not influence the advice to align with their own agendas, and (ii) transparent in terms of who provided the advice and what the government did with it (Jarman et al. 2022). The authors concluded that ‘The UK’s advice system was not autonomous, being designed to answer questions posed by government with advisers appointed by government.’ In considering the role of scientists during Covid-19, former CSA King and Independent SAGE chair Deenan Pillay called for ‘a wholesale review of the structures, oversight and governance of government scientific advice is needed to regain the priorities of independence, trust, transparency, and freedom to speak directly to the public’ (Pillay & King 2021).
The remit of the Covid-19 Inquiry did not include directly evaluating the UK model of providing scientific advice. The lack of scrutiny of scientific advice in the Inquiry’s initial terms of reference was viewed as a serious omission by Independent SAGE, other experts and groups representing families of those who died with Covid-19 (Inge 2022). The final remit was widened slightly to include ‘the availability and use of data, research and expert evidence’ and ‘how decisions were made, communicated, recorded and implemented’ (UK COVID-19 Inquiry 2022). However, the overall process of how scientific advice was provided was not included. A wide range of reports from both scrutinising bodies and academics studying the science-to-policy advisory process have highlighted issues considered key to a trusted and effective advisory process. Three addressed here are transparency, accountability and independence. Two-way communication between advisors and policy-makers, and models of translating scientific advice other than the primarily linear one adopted by SAGE, are then considered.
Transparency
A review of the 2009 and 2010 SAGEs by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (Science and Technology Committee 2011a) expressed a concern that SAGE operated under a presumption of secrecy, rather than transparency and openness, and stressed the importance of the contribution from those with alternative, credible scientific views. The need for transparency in providing scientific advice was a key finding of the Phillips Inquiry following the BSE crisis in 2000 (Phillips 2000). It was also a key finding of a 2022 review of science and public trust within the policy-making system: that ‘trust requires researchers and the scientific process to be transparent and accessible’ (British Academy 2024). A study of four quite different case studies of scientific advice in crises, including the role of SAGE during the 2010 volcanic ash crisis in the UK, found some common themes (Donovan 2021). One concerned transparency:
Early and detailed, transparent consideration of the representation of the scientific advisory process and the advice itself—both its representation in dialogue with policymakers and its representation to the public—would have enabled a much more effective advisory process. It could also clarify the scientific evidence in relation to political influence and decisions—but this would require a high level of transparency from the start of the crisis …(Donovan 2021).
However, according to Sheila Jasanoff, Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard Kennedy School (Jasanoff 2005), the UK scientific advice has a long history of opacity and being a ‘safe pairs of hands’. The early secrecy of SAGE was acknowledged to have been a mistake by Vallance in 2020: ‘I think we definitely made a mistake early on by not getting the SAGE minutes and papers out quickly’ (Science and Technology Committee 2020a). The meeting minutes and reports were often couched in quite general terms (Farrar & Ahuja 2021) and there was no public information about which reports were received by which parts of government. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee concluded in 2021 that scientific advice was impaired by a resistance to transparency as well as by a lack of meaningful challenge to official advice from a wider range of experts and public-health practitioners (Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees 2021). A perceived advantage of not being more transparent may be that it protects scientists from blame; however, this patently did not work during Covid-19 as many politicians tried to blame SAGE and scientists for shortfallings, a pattern that is not new (Savoie 2003).
We do not know how much of SAGE advice was communicated to ministers and officials, as the translation routes were not transparent, at least not to SAGE scientific advisers. We therefore do not know whether mismatches between scientific advice and policy were because advice was not communicated to the right places, or communicated poorly, or whether government chose not to follow the advice because of factors other than scientific evidence, or did not value the advice. Without transparency, these questions cannot be answered, and accountability and scrutiny can be side-stepped, undermining possibilities for learning lessons for future advisory arrangements.
The testimony of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the ministers questioned by the Covid-19 Inquiry suggested that SAGE advice was not key in their decision-making and on occasion was not sought (for example, ‘Eat out to Help Out’) or engaged with. Scientists’ advice on ‘social impacts’ was found to be ‘less visible than epidemiological modelling advisers; and its role in decision making opaque’ (Science and Technology Committee 2020b). The Prime Minister’s Communications Advisor Lee Cain stated in his Inquiry testimony that he did not use behavioural or communications advice coming from SAGE/SPI-B behavioural scientists, that he was not advised to do so by the CMO or CSA and that nobody approached him with advice or feedback (from SPI-B) (Cain 2023). If true, this would constitute a serious breakdown in the translation of behavioural advice via SAGE.
This failure to use scientific advice was commented on by the Chair of the Inquiry, Baroness Hallett in thanking the SPI-B Chair for his testimony: ‘Obviously you and your colleagues did a huge amount of work to try to serve the public and advise the government. It’s unfortunate that your expert advice was sometimes misinterpreted, misunderstood or even possibly ignored. But I hope you and your colleagues understand how much the rest of us appreciate what you tried to do’ (Rubin 2023).
On other occasions, advice was actively circumvented. Abandoning the 2-metre social distance rule against the advice of SAGE was aided by the PM announcing a ‘Downing Street review’ which did not publish its members nor its advice. Another example was not instituting a SAGE-advised transmission ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown in September 2020 as the second wave of infection grew. This was enabled by inviting a small group of scientists not involved in the advisory process to Downing Street to give advice (this included Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan who supported the widely discredited herd immunity approach to Covid management). Their advice has been said to have influenced Johnson’s decision not to follow SAGE’s advice, likely causing many avoidable deaths (Farrar & Ahuja 2021).
Accountability
The status of people’s involvement in SAGE was unclear, with no members as such but only participants, who could have attended once or over a hundred times, all listed as participants. They could be uninvited at any point without explanation: at his Covid-19 Inquiry session, David Halpern, CEO of the Behavioural Insights Team, said he had stopped being invited, without explanation. This means they had limited stake and reduced responsibility and power within the system than if they had been members. It also meant that accountability was diffuse and opaque. For there to be democratic accountability, the public need to be able to evaluate the decisions of politicians and this requires knowing what advice was given by scientists and how it was used. Transparency and timeliness, necessary for public scrutiny, were both lacking, with SAGE reports made public only after key decisions were made, sometimes with delays of weeks (Jarman et al. 2020). Holly Jarman and colleagues make this point well:
transparent and independent advice can enable democratic accountability even if governments do not want it. It is rightly the task of elected politicians, not science advisers, to balance and represent interests, so a good science advice system for the UK should make it easier to see how they have incorporated scientific advice as they do that. This would allow observers and ultimately voters to judge the competence and priorities of their politicians (Jarman et al. 2022).
Whilst scientists generally did not agree with the Prime Minister’s early mantra that government ‘followed the science’, they did expect that their extremely hard work would be noticed and seriously considered. Scientists expected that their advice would inform, rather than determine, policy and there was a suspicion that the phrase ‘following the science’ was used by Government to protect themselves and blame ‘science’ for things that went wrong. This concern is reflected in the academic literature (Hulme et al. 2020), with ‘following the science’ making it possible for:
policymakers to offload their responsibility: after all, how can they be kept accountable for the consequences of decisions if they were merely doing what science tells them is best. Indeed, such a discrepancy in responsibilities means that science and knowledge production will be blamed for decisions that are considered unfavourable or seen to fail, eventually risking an equally undesirable overall discrediting of expertise (Maas et al. 2022).
Independence
The CSA and CMO, and other government-related scientists, were regularly seen on televised public briefings flanking the Prime Minister, sometimes without criticising policies when they were not supported by scientific evidence. Where science is marshalled to inform political decisions, the trustworthiness of science is—quite understandably—likely to come under the spotlight. A Guardian editorial in July 2021 headlined ‘Boris Johnson’s Covid experts: sadly on tap, not on top’ stated ‘It is hard to find much support for Prof Whitty’s [CMO] claim that there was overwhelming scientific and medical support for the prime minister’s plan to open up’ ( Guardian 2021). The concern about science being used as a justification for political decisions without good evidence is that it is likely to undermine trust in scientists, their advice and the whole scientific system (British Academy 2024).
Former CSA King suggested that a better procedure, to assure the public that there was no political interference with scientific advice, would be for the CSA and CMO to first appear with an introduction by the prime minister, who would then withdraw after making it clear that the government would support the advice (Sir David King, personal e-mail communication, 26 February 2024). Subsequently, he considered there to be merit in the prime minister not appearing with the scientific advisors, but instead talking separately about how the government was responding to the advice: the procedure followed in Greece.
Walter Ricciardi, who advised the Italian government on Covid-19, said that that it was time for the UK advisers to speak ‘truth to power’ as '[n]ot doing so risked damaging the public standing of science itself’ ( Guardian 2021). Scientific advisor to the Scottish Government, Sridhar, asked whether ‘in the current [scientific advisory] system, are they [scientific advisors] muzzled by personal and ideological interference from politicians’ and whether ‘truly independent advisory groups should be brought in’ (Sridhar 2023). The threat to independence is revealed in a diary entry of Vallance dated 2 July 2020 in which he reports a quote from the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Sunak ‘It’s all about handling the scientists, not handling the virus’ (Vallance 2023). Evidence for the use of scientific advisors for political ends came to light in a legal case initiated by the Good Law Project that cited evidence of an official writing to the Deputy CMO, Professor Jenny Harries:
We are experiencing problems on the ground with care homes refusing to accept patients discharged from hospital unless they have been tested negative for Covid-19, as they are fearful of accepting someone who then infects everyone. As you can imagine building care home confidence in accepting patients is going to be critical for us to free up the 30000 beds (Gardner & Harris 2021).
The official suggests that Professor Harries should ‘make some very clear statements about how care homes should feel it is safe to accept patients from hospital’.
Given the need for public trust in science to promote adherence to health policies (Bargain & Aminjonov 2020; Bollyky et al. 2022), one of the lessons from Covid-19 may be that the CSA, CMO, departmental CSAs and advisory bodies like SAGE should have greater visible independence and responsibilities than those outlined in the government’s guidance of more than a decade ago (Government Office for Science 2010). This appears to be outside the scope of the Covid Inquiry. Building a culture of open, independent scientific voices in both policy advice and public engagement is likely to be important for pandemic preparedness, public trust, and resilience to the many other societal crises we face.
Alternative models of providing scientific advice
Two-way communication between advisors and policy-makers ‘Advisors advise and ministers decide’, an adage first expressed by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ( Financial Times 2020), was repeated frequently during 2020–2 to support the notion that SAGE scientific advisers had a limited, if any, role in commenting on policy, and should only speak publicly regarding their narrow area of expertise (Farrar & Ahuja 2021; Vallance 2021). The normal practice was that scientists produced their reports in isolation from relevant policy-makers and operational staff. My experience was that we were not allowed to illustrate advice statements with possible policy options nor discuss policy implications of scientific advice in reports nor give policy examples of what that advice might look like in practice. In the same spirit, whilst the behavioural sub-group (SPI-B) during the H1N1 pandemic had had responsibility for advising about communications, this was not the case during Covid-19, as the CSA deemed communications to be an operations issue rather than a subject of scientific enquiry (Rubin 2023). The need for behavioural scientists to understand the operational details that their advice referred to was referred to by Dr Halpern, CEO of the Behavioural Insights Team, in his inquiry testimony (Halpern 2023). The separation of scientific advisors from policy-makers and implementers meant that scientists did not necessarily understand the policy context within which their advice was being sought, nor the purpose for which the advice was being sought. They also did not generally know who received their advice, nor how it was received, and did not get feedback about how the advice was received. Had the latter occurred, it may have helped to improve the way in which advice was communicated over the course of the life of SAGE.
This model of communicating science is very different than that encouraged in UK scientists’ day jobs where they are often expected, in their publications and conference presentations, to discuss the policy and practice implications of their research findings. Indeed, universities are financially rewarded according to the policy and practice impacts of science funding within the university, via the Research Excellence Framework process, in which scientists are strongly encouraged to produce ‘research impact cases’ (UKRI 2023). Given that this is standard practice in UK science, it is odd that it was discouraged during the Covid crisis. Although the mantra of the CSA applied to SAGE was ‘scientists advise, policy makers decide’, a partnership approach to the advisory process does not mean that scientists decide; rather, they are part of the discussion about the implications of scientific evidence for policy and practice. Indeed, despite the instruction to other SAGE participants to avoid discussing policy implications of scientific evidence, there were examples of this: for example, recommending financial and practical support for self-isolation (SPI-B 2020b). There were also examples of situations in which policy implications of scientific evidence would have been helpful to present: for example, the implications of scientific understanding of transmission on the national policy of ‘Eat Out to Help Out’; in his inquiry testimony, Whitty said ‘Had I been consulted I would have advised it was highly likely to increase transmission’ (UK COVID-19 Inquiry 2023).
Scientists can play different roles in advisory processes and there are several frameworks characterising them. In his 2007 book, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, Roger Pielke identified four roles: the ‘pure scientist’, the ‘science arbiter’, the ‘issue advocate’ and the ‘honest broker’ (Pielke 2007). The first two roles do not engage with decision-makers on policy: the ‘pure scientist’ sees their role as limited to presenting facts and not considering these in relation to policy or practical decisions, and the ‘science arbiter’ sees their role as a resource for answering others’ questions. The latter two roles do engage with decision-makers in relation to policy: the ‘issue advocate’ advises decision-makers as to what they should do about particular issues and the ‘honest broker’ provides information on a wide range of decision-related options. These are not mutually exclusive and advisers may play different roles in different circumstances. Despite the appearance of ‘neutrality’, Pielke argues that the first two are not value free in their communications as the evidence selected and how it is presented often reflects values and preferences, even if not consciously. This is illustrated in a study of a working group advising the UK government during the BSE crisis (Millstone & van Zwanenberg 2001). Ostensibly independent scientists contributed to ‘making a very serious problem considerably worse’ by giving messages acceptable to ministers and the meat industry. The separation of science and policy within a linear model has been critiqued not just because it expects researchers to provide ‘value-free’ evidence, which is not possible, but also because policy-makers are expected to quickly understand the evidence they receive and turn their value-laden policy debates into science-based ones (Maas et al. 2022).
A fifth model of providing scientific advice is a partnership in which scientists and policy-makers are actively engaged in communicating with each other about the nature of the problem, policy options and their evaluations, with evidence, values and preferences laid out as explicitly as possible. This is referred to as ‘the linkage or interaction or integrated knowledge translation model’ by Richard French (2018), who concluded that the best way of promoting the use of evidence in policy-making is to develop and maintain direct relationships between researchers and policy-makers (French 2018). This contrasts with the more linear technical–rational model in which knowledge is linearly passed on to policy-makers to inform policy; this is closest to the SAGE model. Susan Owens makes the point that the notion of ‘rationality’ is more hope than practice, given the value systems that inevitably come into play both in producing and in using scientific knowledge (Owens & Rayner 2015).
The partnership model is consistent with one of the four models of scientific advice in policy contexts identified by Owens: the ‘cognitive model’ (Owens & Rayner 2015). In this model, the science–policy process is one of mutual learning, in which scientists and policy-makers exchange experience and insight. It is based on the premise that scientists need to learn (and rapidly in emergencies) about the policy context, given that ‘The scientific enterprise does not naturally produce information useful to lay decision-makers; rather, the scientific enterprise produces knowledge for internal consumption’ (Andrews 2002). Others agree: ‘The policy implications of any given piece of research are far less compelling for policy-makers than researchers assume, in part because researchers have no very accurate picture of the making of policy’ (French 2018).
A trend towards this more co-productive, partnership model of providing scientific advice has been noted across domains (Sienkiewicz & Mair 2020; Turnhout et al. 2020). The other two models that Owens presents are the political–strategic model (the ‘policy-based evidence approach’) in which scientific advice is selected with political purposes in mind. There was reference to this during the Covid-19 Inquiry (for example, when moving from 2 to 1 metre social distancing and, more extremely, not asking for scientific advice to inform the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ initiative). The belief, often experience-based, amongst many scientists that this political process occurs may help to explain the vulnerability that some scientists feel when advising policy-makers (Boin et al. 2009). The fourth model put forward by Owens, ‘co-production’, involves scientists in dialogue with a wide range of potential ‘science users’ in society. This model was adopted by the public-oriented scientific advisory group ‘Independent SAGE’, which will be described in a later section.
The partnership, rather than linear, model most closely reflects my experience over decades of providing scientific advice to policy-makers, engaging with them in direct communication and sometimes close collaboration (McKee et al. 2022; Michie et al. 2022). In practice, this has meant three types of interaction between scientific advisors and policy-makers. The first is discussing requests for advice to ensure that the advising scientists understand the reasons for and context of the request. The second is iterative advice development: for example, sharing an outline draft to ensure it covers the scope of what was wanted and the third is discussing the penultimate draft to check that it is comprehensible and that there are no unanswered questions that could be addressed. This partnership approach enables scientists to explain how science is conducted and how scientific knowledge leads to advice, helping policy-makers to factor in the uncertainty inherent in scientific advice when making their decisions. This is especially true in crises when often there is a dearth of directly relevant evidence to draw on, and hence more uncertainty than in non-crisis situations. The notion that there can be a strict demarcation between science and policy is often challenged, as illustrated by Jasanoff:
although pleas for maintaining a strict separation between science and politics continue to run like a leitmotif through the policy literature, the artificiality of this position can no longer be doubted. Studies of scientific advising leave in tatters the notion that it is possible, in practice, to restrict the advisory practice to technical issues or that the subjective values of scientists are irrelevant to decision-making (Jasanoff 1994).
2. Could the science and its implications for policy and practice have been communicated better to the public?
Good pandemic management has good communication at its core, both to convey key information and to gain the trust of the population and thus increase adherence to measures to limit pandemic transmission and harm. Weaknesses in the UK’s official mechanisms for communicating science to the public during Covid-19 have been indicated in a joint report from two parliamentary committees (Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees 2021). The UK government’s messages often failed to indicate what people should do or the rationale for what was being communicated: for example ‘Stay Alert; Control the Virus; Protect the NHS’ and ‘Hands, Face, Space’. Press conferences produced slides at speed, heavy with unexplained data and other information that was difficult even for numerate scientists to decipher. Independent SAGE and others called on the government to consult with academics on the vital task of communicating how to assess and manage risk. As mentioned previously, since communication had been taken out of the scope of SPI-B, there was no official body responsible for providing the scientific advice to inform communication strategies and operations.
Two important methods for communicating science to the public are via the media and via platforms in which scientists can directly engage with public audiences. A 2022 review of trust in scientific advice stressed the importance of promoting the accessibility and transparency of science to the public through, for example, panels of scientists speaking to and listening to the public, public events and the wider media (British Academy 2024). However, the SAGE ethos and strong message coming from the CSA, as he outlined in his witness statement to the Covid-19 Inquiry, was that SAGE and its sub-group participants should be very circumspect when interacting with the media. A meeting minute presented to the inquiry reported that ‘Vallance started the meeting by highlighting he had seen several reports in media of SAGE members commenting on the science behind the government’s approach. He highlighted that this was not helpful, saying that no one should be speaking to the media’ (Vallance 2023), although Vallance clarified this to say that they could talk about their own expertise. In an email to the Prime Minister revealed during the inquiry, Vallance stated in June 2020 ‘I think there is too much enthusiasm for the camera at the moment and will speak to them [SAGE members] again’ (Wainwright 2023).
A group of about 14 scientists, Independent SAGE, was brought together early in the pandemic when SAGE was still operating in secret by a former CSA, David King. Its purpose was to communicate with the public about scientific knowledge and thinking relevant to Covid-19 management. In June 2020, when the government stopped its regular Covid press briefings, Independent SAGE started weekly public briefings streamed live via YouTube, to present data, address specific topics, sometimes hosting guests with expertise in particular areas, and answer questions.8 The broadcasts continued for more than three years, regularly attracting up to 20,000 viewers (150,000 maximum); its Twitter (X) account was followed by >173,000 people.
The briefings, and communications via social and conventional media, addressed scientific and policy-relevant questions posed by the public, media and decision-makers. In order to build good understanding about the transmission and harms of Covid-19 at individual and population levels, the group included scientific leaders in, for example, public health, immunology, virology, behavioural and social sciences, genetics, evolutionary biology and mathematical modelling. The group held weekly internal meetings to bring together relevant and new research findings from disparate academic disciplines and discuss their policy and practice recommendations. These discussions informed responses to questions from the public and organisational representatives that were posed via social media and the Independent SAGE website. Questions were answered on broadcasts, by email and through regular reports posted on the website.
Vallance regarded Independent SAGE as a problem and in addressing the inquiry said that he thought it problematic to both be on a government advisory body and on a public-facing science communication body because the latter would undermine the former role: ‘it was very, very difficult when scientists spoke about policy and other areas because it then undermined trust in the committees’ (Vallance 2023). Vallance’s views that scientists should have to choose between advising the government and communicating with the public was part of his inquiry testimony. In relation to SPI-B members joining Independent SAGE, he said ‘I’m second to none in my belief in academic freedom, but if you join a government committee it’s slightly odd to then be on a committee that’s set up to challenge the government committee’ (Vallance 2023). It is unfortunate that he misrepresented the aims of Independent SAGE, which were definitely not to challenge SAGE (indeed, views were nearly always consistent) but to communicate science transparently and directly.
The tension between serving on a government advisory committee and publicly commenting on policy implications of that scientific advice was well expressed by the Chair of SPI-B Rubin:
It was a legitimate tension, it was a difficult issue, and I still don’t have an answer to it. Academics have academic freedom, and we fight very hard for that, and it’s part of our identity, and I think it’s very important in forming the public debate, and part of that academic freedom is the freedom to comment on public policy. At the same time, if the committee is to be trusted by government and we’re to have government departments come to us and be frank with us about the quandaries that they have or the dilemmas or the uncertainties and to give us information that they may not necessarily want to disclose in the public domain, while it is making those kind of—a running commentary on public policy, does that detract from the government’s ability to approach the group? So there is that tension there and I must admit I was never able in my own mind to resolve that tension, although I was quite clear throughout that as academics, everybody on the group did retain the right to talk to the media about whatever they wished (Rubin 2023: 23).
An alternative point of view to that of the CSA, and one shared by Independent SAGE members and many authors writing about science communication, was expressed by Professor Alice Roberts, in the last session of Independent SAGE (December 2023):9
I think Patrick Vallance was wrong, simply wrong about engagement. As a professor of public engagement in science, it was really dismaying for me to hear that view. I don’t think at all that scientists should be retreating inside their ivory tower, slamming the doors and only talking to policymakers and not talking to the public … if you’re in a democracy, that is not even an option.
The process of placing scientific ideas and evidence into its broad context within public arenas helps to develop scientific findings into scientific knowledge suitable for public use. Most scientists, especially those in public health or in a social or behavioural science, are encouraged to speak to the public; indeed, the Science Media Centre has been set up to support and train scientists to communicate science in language understood by all.10
Providing scientific advice to official organisations is a complementary function to communicating with the media and the public. One of the recommendations of the 2000 BSE Inquiry was to consider how scientific advisory bodies can be encouraged to engage in regular dialogue and engagement with the public (Phillips 2000). A key aim of Independent SAGE was to support leading scientists to communicate directly with the public (Independent SAGE 2020b; McKee et al. 2022). Indicators of its success were its high levels of engagement by MPs, city mayors, local government officers, non-governmental organisations and the wider public. Direct communication of transparent scientific advice to the public from trusted sources is key to maintaining public trust which, in turn, is key to the effective management of a crisis (Bargain & Aminjonov 2020; Bollyky et al. 2020; Wright et al. 2021). Data during Covid-19 showed low and decreasing levels of trust in the UK government, and good levels of trust in scientists (Ipsos 2022). This suggests that scientific advisors should engage proactively with the public, and not limit their communication to being alongside politicians. Former CSA David King was clear that scientific advisers should act as bridges between the scientific and political systems, but also that their role was to engage and inform the public and media directly, not just limiting their role to being part of politicians’ briefings (King 2020). In his testimony to the Covid-19 Inquiry, Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, explained that, given the experience of the 2019 swine flu pandemic, he thought it would have been better to have health messages coming from experts, not politicians, and had unsuccessfully advocated this in early 2020. The advantage of having scientists alongside government officials at press briefings is that it gives official communications added weight; the disadvantage is that it may give the impression that scientists (such as the SCA and CMO) were supportive of policies that were harmful for public health and that they privately disagreed with.
If a government fails to implement evidence-based policies, scientists with both a government and public-facing role may face a quandary. On the one hand, scientists should be free to criticise policies that may be causing harm or even costing lives whilst also in a role providing advice to the government. University scientists should be independent of, not beholden to, any government. This point has been made by Farrar, SAGE member and former Director of the Wellcome Trust: ‘Does staying in an advisory role mean being complicit in the outcomes of bad decisions?’ (Farrar & Ahuja 2021), and by myself and co-authors: ‘scientific advisers have a right and obligation to ask, if their advice does not appear to be reflected in policy, why this is the case—and, if appropriate, to explain this to the public’ (Michie et al. 2022). On the other hand, scientists in a formal role feel a responsibility to present a united front, even when they may disagree with what is or is not being said by other scientists in a formal role. On the point about being able to both advise government and the public directly, Vallance told the inquiry,
Well, I don’t know if it was the best. I mean, there may be better ways of doing it [my emphasis]. I did know that it was very, very difficult when scientists spoke about policy and other areas because it then undermined trust in the committees, and we saw that later in the pandemic with some departments and some ministers saying, ‘I won’t bring something to SAGE because it’s just going to leak and people will talk about it.’ (Gething 2024).
This is conflating talking broadly about science and policy implications with leaking confidential information which no-one would support. Despite saying that there may be better ways of doing it, Vallance also makes it clear that in the SAGE Development Plan, scientists will need to choose between advising government or sitting on other science communication bodies, or at least only do the latter with permission. To arrive at the best practice in complex situations such as this, I suggest that this quandary requires extensive and open discussion and empirical research to identify the pros and cons of options and then to maximise the pros and ameliorate the cons.
The CSA and CMO have different roles from those of independent scientists serving on SAGE, as they are senior public servants and accountable to government. They therefore have to balance their duties to the public as quasi-independent scientific experts with needing to build trust within government. SAGE members on the other hand, are, or should be, truly independent and should not compromise their communication of science and its implications by feeling a need to find favour with the acting government. Of course, all scientists need to be circumspect in how they present their scientific advice, seeking to maintain trust across as wide a board as possible, but this should not, in my view, mean refraining from criticising government policy when it is counter to scientific advice and to public health and safety.
There were differing views about the breadth of expertise that scientists should feel free, and able, to draw on in communicating with policy-makers and the public about scientific matters in relation to Covid-19. There were also differing views about the extent to which scientists should feel free to discuss policy implications of relevant scientific evidence. One view was that scientists should not talk about matters other than their own specific field of study (‘stay in your lane’), nor discuss policy implications of scientific advice nor comment on government policies. In his testimony to the Inquiry, Vallance said: ‘the repeated commentary that I made at SAGE, was:
any of you can speak to your own topic, your own expertise, in the press and should feel free to do so. … We asked that people didn’t comment on policy, because that then would confound the SAGE remit with their policy views, and we asked that they tried not to stray into areas that were not their area of expertise, because that inevitably would reflect back on SAGE …’ (Vallance 2023).
The notion of only speaking about your own work or research directly related to it has been termed ‘staying in your lane’. This goes against the increasing recognition in public health and other areas of health studies, that the subject is intrinsically multidisciplinary and that we should aim to be thinking and working in interdisciplinary ways. For example, one cannot understand the health effects of phenomena such as austerity or the collapse of the USSR without bringing together insights that stretch from biological and pathological mechanisms to social and political sciences. Similarly, one cannot understand how best to enable people to reduce viral transmission and its effects without understanding many aspects of the virus. Complex problems require teams that include specialists in particular areas and have a breadth that allows them to appreciate the contributions of other disciplines. Thus, where possible, public health should be transdisciplinary, since often knowledge cannot be assigned to any one discipline and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Egede et al. 2021; Jenkinson 2021). This interdisciplinary ‘team science’ and systems approach is advocated within public health research, policy and practice (Academy of Medical Sciences 2021). It was also very much in evidence in both SPI-B and Independent SAGE, where reports and communications were interdisciplinary, drawing on a range of academic disciplines to produce advice that cut across disciplinary ‘lanes’. However, this was not reflected in the main translational route between SAGE and the government which was via the CSA and CMO, both medical professionals. Had there been the model adopted in Scotland of more direct contact between scientists with different disciplinary backgrounds and government, the harmful notion of ‘behavioural fatigue’ would have been unlikely to gain traction (Michie et al. 2020). A Chief Scientific Officer for behavioural and social sciences, as suggested in a House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report, is likely to have corrected this notion (Science and Technology Committee 2011b).
The ‘across lanes’ view might be characterised as ‘look across lanes, learn from what is in them that might be helpfully integrated with what is in your lane to enable the lane to widen, with many feeder lanes’. This requires capabilities, held by many scientists, of cross-disciplinary learning and interdisciplinary engagement and communication. This means being able to discuss issues in broad terms and drawing on a range of disciplinary expertise, whilst acknowledging the boundaries of one’s own expertise. This approach was embodied by Independent SAGE which presented ‘joined up’ information in response to new issues or public questions, informed by knowledge across many disciplines. Examples were behavioural scientists learning about viral transmission and mutation into new variants (for example, a highly cited Conversation piece on variants led by a behavioural scientist) (Michie et al. 2021), and virologists learning about methods for supporting the public to adhere to rules. Issues interact with each other and cannot be neatly divided into separate lanes. The concept of separate lanes reflects a more biomedical, rather than public health, model of science.
The contribution of Independent SAGE (and other independent inquiries and advisory civil society and professional organisations) was recognised by the analysis of the UK scientific advisory system based on international comparisons mentioned earlier (Jarman et al. 2022), and by a review of trust in science (British Academy 2024). They pointed to limitations consequent on the UK government’s control over the original SAGE membership and over the issues for which scientific advice was sought. A conclusion of Donovan’s empirical study of four case studies of providing scientific advice in crises was that:
crisis situations should involve wider dialogues than simply the use of existing committees. While the UK SAGE mechanism is designed to provide flexibility, it has been less effective in the COVID-19 pandemic than in other cases. Some of the reasons for this may be political but others are institutional. Perhaps an ideal would be to incorporate additional flexibility and dialogue with the Independent SAGE and wider expert groups on risk, particularly from the social sciences and the WHO (Donovan 2021).
3. Do scientists have a social responsibility to discuss policy implications of scientific evidence and challenge politicians when their statements or behaviour go against prevailing evidence?
The experience of Covid-19 and the different roles and perspectives that UK scientists took raises the question of the role of scientists and academics more generally in crises. Do scientists have a social responsibility to try to communicate their research to the public even if feels a bit messy and not pure? Definitely, according to Alice Roberts, Professor of public engagement in science, who summed up this position in the final session of Independent SAGE (December, 2023) (Independent SAGE 2023):
Communication is part and parcel of good scientific practice … studies have shown time and time again that you can you can present scientific facts [but that] isn’t enough … whether or not people trust science … comes back to the scientists themselves and their willingness to engage, to listen to people, to be to be seen, to be human, to have a dialog, to empathize … Science isn’t just a body of abstract knowledge. It is people who are doing it. And you keep trust through openness and honesty and humility. … there’s a philosophical and a moral dimension to this … which is about the role of scientists in society, the fact that scientists have a moral duty even to engage with the public, not just be getting on with their science in their labs, but to be out there talking about it and to engage with the public and to make sure that that science is benefiting everyone in society.
Many working within public health maintain that public health is intrinsically political (Bekker et al. 2018; Mackenbach 2009) and that there cannot be a clean separation between scientists and the political process, especially in complex, contested situations (Funtowicz & Ravetz 1993; Jasanoff 1994; Sarewitz 2011). This is reflected in a growing literature on politics and health, pointing to a two-way relationship. For example, political decisions, such as austerity, have a profound impact on health (Karanikolos et al. 2013), but poor health creates fertile ground for populist politicians, with communities who felt they were abandoned, disproportionately voting for Donald Trump (Bor 2017) and Brexit (Koltai et al. 2020). A science writer awarded the Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the pandemic in the United States, Ed Yong, stated:
The naive desire for science to remain above politics meant that many researchers were unprepared to cope with a global crisis that was both scientific and political to its core. Science is undoubtedly political, whether scientists want it to be or not, because it is an inextricably human enterprise (Yong 2021).
Whether or not one accepts the intersections between public health and politics, those who belong to scientific and professional bodies (for example, the British Psychological Society or the British Medical Association) agree to abide by a code of ethics. This includes not just understanding ill health but combatting it. The logic of this is that scientists should feel not only free, but duty-bound, to point out when policies and messages are potentially harmful.
Need for empirical and theoretical research
Our role as scientists ought to be to investigate the processes [my emphasis] surrounding the use of evidence and policy activities more widely and to disseminate findings in order to help others make informed decisions, of all kinds(Oliver et al. 2014).
There is a need both to learn retrospectively from the Covid-19 SAGE and to set up structures in advance of future crises so that scientific advisory processes can be monitored and evaluated concurrent with advice being provided. An ESRC-funded study of how SPI-B advice was translated between SAGE and government during Covid-19 is being conducted over 2024–5, based on participant interviews and documentary analysis (for protocol, see https://osf.io/m9yt3/). It is hoped that UK’s preparation for the next pandemic includes a protocol for evaluating the scientific advisory process.
Conclusions
This article considers some lessons arising from the UK’s handling of Covid-19 about how scientists can best contribute to the effective management of pandemics, and emergencies more generally. A consideration of relevant evidence and experiences suggests that the model of separating scientific advisors from relevant policy-makers and others using the science (for example, policy-makers, implementers, communicators) may impair both the usefulness of the scientific advice and potential users’ understanding of that advice. A second message is that, since public health reflects knowledge across a wide disciplinary spectrum, scientific advice is strengthened by scientists being able to interact with and learn from this diversity, enabling them to advise on a breadth of questions not just the specific topics of their research. In other words, enabling broad lanes that many can inhabit is likely to be more fruitful than separating scientists into narrow lanes. Third, both the process of producing useful scientific knowledge and the impact of that knowledge, are likely to be strengthened by scientists interacting with the many publics that make up society, which may be in addition to their government advisory role. Fourth, the process by which research evidence is translated and used is a topic of social science research that should be applied to all these issues. And one question deserving attention across academe is how scientists interact with, and contribute to, society beyond their well-trodden paths of academic publications and conference presentations.
Acknowledgements
The ideas in this article developed over the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, with my serving on both SAGE/SPI-B and Independent SAGE. They arose partly from reflecting on my own experience and observations of providing policy advice to government and other bodies over decades and, importantly, from discussions with my colleagues on Independent SAGE. Many new issues emerged to grapple with, both in terms of scientific understanding and in terms of communicating that science. The collective approach, combining curiosity, openness and warm support, provided a wealth of understanding and motivation to take on considerable work in addition to our day jobs. I thank them for the privilege of working with them, for sharing their scientific expertise and their humanity. Especial thanks to Professor Robert West, Professor Trish Greenhalgh, Professor Steve Reicher, Professor Martin McKee, Professor Liz Stokoe and Dr Duncan Robertson for their generosity and insights in commenting on earlier drafts. Final thanks to four anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback.
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Cite
DOI: 10.5871/jba/012.a27
Published on: 13 August 2024
Volume: 12
Issue: Issue 3
Article view count: 187
Article download count: 6
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© The author(s) 2024. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International LicenseCite this article
Michie, S. (2024), ‘Reflections on UK science–policy relationships in the light of Covid-19’, Journal of the British Academy, 12(3): a27 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/012.a27Crossref
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July 2023
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