If there was once an honest academic science narrative, it has long ago collapsed with first the climate change scam, then Covid-19, then both coming at us at once. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) “Improving Science Advice to Governments,” by Michael Kelly and Clive Hambler, Department of Engineering and Trinity Hall, University Cambridge Department of Biology, and Hertford College, University of Oxford, explores this theme. So, this is a high -powered team. The abstract of the paper reads:
“We present suggestions for improvement of scientific advice to government, aiming to minimize risks of unintended consequences such as loss of life, cost, and ecological damage. Key improvements would be: maximizing diversity of advice including crowd-sourcing; rapid challenge to the advice through red teams and crowd-review; ensuring reasonable accountability of scientists to discourage hype; and protection of scientists from career damage if they rationally disagree with mainstream views. The precautionary principle needs to be balanced against the opportunity costs incurred by 'playing safe'. Institutions such as universities, scientific academies and journals should not take official positions on scientific issues since this stifles diversity of thought, freedom of speech and the reliability of advice.”