Science–policy research collaborations need philosophers

First, not all philosophers are ethicists. Philosophical expertise includes expertise in conceptual work: drawing out the necessary and sufficient conditions to secure desired conclusions given the concepts introduced in the statement of an argument. This work is especially valuable in teasing apart solvable — albeit difficult — problems in evidence-based policymaking from those that are impossible to solve. For instance, as part of an international collaboration on the epistemology of evidence-based policy6, we targeted the basic mechanics of decision-making during ongoing empirical research to cut to the heart of what it means for the policymaking process to proceed in light of current science. This enabled us to identify root causes of disagreement in policymaking: for example, placing different importance on different kinds of evidence, miscommunication or misinterpretation of evidence, or misunderstanding of the policy process. We concluded that without a particular type of transparency — transparency of reasoning — it is impossible to determine whether anything has gone wrong in specific episodes of evidence-based policymaking based only on studying outcomes of the policymaking process (R.H. et al., unpublished).

We also identified upcoming challenges in research within the biosecurity space by teasing out which residual questions for future research extracted during a survey of the literature were themselves formulated in such a way as will require philosophical expertise to solve. For instance, many of the extracted questions were identified as involving a give-and-take between values (for example, principles, ideals or morals). Merely allocating funding towards additional empirical research is insufficient in these cases, as answering questions concerning a give-and-take of values involves some amount of reasonable disagreement, must be negotiated among relevant parties, and cannot be settled by any empirical method. How to identify when disagreement is reasonable and how to properly incorporate values into science and policy are questions discussed by philosophers, generally in the research subfield known as ‘values in science’. Importantly, the philosophical work to be done is only effectively integrated with empirical research through active collaboration: scientific research and philosophical analysis can only adequately answer crucial questions at the science–policy interface in tandem.