St Antony's Series-A Bias Radar for Responsible Policy-Making Foresight-Based Scientific Advice

Policymakers prepare society for the future and this book provides a practical toolkit for preparing pro-active, future-proof scientific policy advice for them.

Policymakers prepare society for the future and this book provides a practical toolkit for preparing pro-active, future-proof scientific policy advice for them. It explains how to make scientific advisory strategies holistic. It also explains how and where biases, which interfere with the proper functioning of the entire science-policy ecosystem, arise and investigates how emotions and other biases affect the understanding and assessment of scientific evidence. The book advocates explorative foresight, systems thinking, interdisciplinarity, bias awareness and the anticipation of undesirable impacts in policy advising, and it offers practical guidance for them. Written in an accessible style, the book offers provocative reflections on how scientific policy advice should be sensitive to more than scientific evidence. It is both an appealing introductory text for everyone interested in science-based policy and a valuable guide for the experienced scientific adviser and policy scholar.

Lieve Van Woensel is Head of Service at the European Parliament, where she introduced foresight methodologies into scientific advisory processes. She has a broad scientific background, has worked for over 30 years at the science-policy interface, and was the EU Visiting Fellow at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, UK, 2017-2018.