Senior Fellow and former CN Paul M. Tellier Chair on Business and Public Policy
University of Ottawa
[In the interests of length, supporting citations and references have been dropped from this blog copy. The full paper on this topic is available from the author at richard.french@uottawa.ca]
There is a remarkable consensus that it has proven unexpectedly difficult to identify the successes of Evidence-based Policy (EBP). Those who, mostly starting from the normative premises of EBP, have looked more closely at the use of scientific knowledge in policy-making, rediscovered a number of phenomena, many well-known to students of policy-making, which may account for this absence. It should be emphasized that the great majority of these scholars began their research motivated by an instinctive conviction of the value of scientific research for public policy.
Former Fulbright Visiting Research Chair, ISSP
Immediate Past President of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society
Issues of who benefits, who is allowed to contribute to science, who has a say in how science is governed, and how science is admitted into society and culture have come to maturity only in the past decade. Taken together, these issues are called “the right to science” and form a new framework for considering a full range of issues in science and technology policy.
Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor, ISSP Principal,Paulicy works
Since 2005 when it was founded as the brainchild of John de la Mothe, a Canada Research Chair for innovation at University of Ottawa, and Nicholas Vonortas of George Washington University (GWU), the D. Allan Bromley Memorial Lecture and Event has provided graduate students with the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with senior science and technology (S&T) policy advisors from the two capitals—Ottawa and Washington, D.C. In the spirit of honouring the legacy of the Canadian-born science advisor to the US President George H.W. Bush, the event alternates between the two capitals.
Inaugural Director and Core Member, ISSP
Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of Ottawa
I had the privilege to be the rapporteur at the Workshop on Principles & Guidelines for Government Scientific Advice held on September 28, 2016 and to report the results to the plenary of the 2nd INGSA Conference two days later. The workshop was facilitated by James Wilsdon and Dan Sarewitz and included approximately 40 experts from 20 nations, with additional input from the Global Young Academy. I offer here observations from the rapporteur’s vantage point.
Postdoctoral Fellow, ISSP
Global Governance PhD candidate (ABD) at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo
The Canadian government has expressed a strong commitment to grounding its action on climate change in fact-based decision-making and robust science. Computer-based climate-economy models have become standard tools for aiding decisions on climate policy. As such, these models offer an important and revealing example of the science- policy interface that the ISSP works in.
The Ottawa Business Journal article, discussing the Faculty Affiliate of the ISSP and uOttawa Professor Andrew Pelling's lab, where students experiment in "biohacking".
This month, we continue our Covid19 special blog posts and we are featuring the ISSP collaboration with other uOttawa institutes on two future research projects.
Pandemics are far from new in the history of science fiction. Which is why familiar novels such as The Stand (1978) by Stephen King and movies such as Contagion (2011) by Steven Soderbergh were sought as references when lockdowns began.
