Prospect members should champion science in government, Sir Patrick Vallance tells conference

Prospect members should “champion science in government” and insert themselves into discussions and decision-making bodies, showing how science can be used to solve problems, the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor told Prospect members.

Sir Patrick Vallance was speaking at Prospect’s Public Services Conference on 18 May, and set out his hope that the experience of the pandemic would spark a new recognition for the value of science within government.

He argued that the last 14 months had seen a revolution in government in how science is used, how data is visualised, and how it relates to policy making, and that this experience should be harnessed to tackle future goals such as the path to Net Zero carbon emissions.

Sir Patrick said that it was important to ensure that there are career opportunities for scientists in government, and that there should be a “cadre of experts” involved in policy-making.

He acknowledged that issues such as reward and recognition needed to be addressed in order to help recruit and retain talented science specialists, and said he had asked the Government Science and Engineering board to focus on this.

Sir Patrick also made the point that everyone in government had to become more literate in science in order to properly gain the benefits from the scientific expertise contained within government. This includes getting away from the idea that science is “something done by very clever people over there” and towards the idea that the scientific method is a way of solving policy challenges facing government.

Throughout his contribution, Sir Patrick championed the idea of diversity within the scientific profession, warning that ‘monolithic thinking’ led to ‘monolithic answers’ and saying that in science it was impossible to get a good answer to large problems without “starting from a position of diversity”.