Any initiative that presents evidence to lobby for change is confronted with the question of how exactly that evidence may feed into the political or bureaucratic process that can bring about said change. To what extent, do you think, should the Institute of Progress concern itself with the study of this evidence-to-policy pipeline? How interesting is this topic to you in general, and which other players are well positioned to contribute to research on the topic?
2mattclancy2yYeah, this is a hugely important topic that is tough to appreciate from outside.
I'm fond of this quote by Duncan Watts:
"For 20 years I thought my job was, as a basic scientist, publish papers and
throw them over the wall for someone else to apply. I now realise that there's
no one on the other side of the wall. Just a huge pile of papers that we've all
thrown over."
The conventional wisdom is that, at least in the USA, you need a think tank
apparatus that specializes in digesting academic literature and packaging it for
policy-making. That's one of the roles that the Institute for Progress plays on
the metascience front. Also, this general topic is something I hope to look into
more as a New Things Under the Sun post.
Any initiative that presents evidence to lobby for change is confronted with the question of how exactly that evidence may feed into the political or bureaucratic process that can bring about said change. To what extent, do you think, should the Institute of Progress concern itself with the study of this evidence-to-policy pipeline? How interesting is this topic to you in general, and which other players are well positioned to contribute to research on the topic?