Donald Trump’s return to the White House is the latest evidence of a global trend towards populist politicians questioning the veracity of science, and a socio-political context in which conspiracy theories not only thrive but also reject the validity of science-based counter-claims. This challenge of engaging with politicians and policy-makers represents a growing concern for academics all over the world. Despite the sense that the potential contribution of science to society is arguably greater than at any time in human history, there are heightened expectations for scientists to demonstrate the non-academic social value of their work. This latter pressure explains the emergence of what Kathryn Oliver and her co-authors (What works to promote research-policy engagement?, 2022) describe as a vast “rudderless mass of activity,” in which an ever-increasing array of activities and initiatives are launched with a shared emphasis on promoting research-to-policy (R2P) engagement activities. Writing with Annette Boaz, Oliver (“How well do the UK government’s ‘areas of research interest’ work as boundary objects to facilitate the use of research in policymaking?” Policy & Politics, 51(2), 2023) subsequently notes that “finding ways for research to make a meaningful contribution to policy has been an ongoing concern for the research community, and from a policy perspective.” This is demonstrated in scholarship about knowledge-brokerage and role-playing at the intersection of science and policy (as epitomized in Roger Pielke’s seminal The Honest Broker, 2007), and in the emergence of numerous “how to” guides for academics who want to engage with policy-makers (for a review see Paul Cairney and Richard Kwiatkowski, “How to communicate effectively with policymakers: combine insights from psychology and policy studies,” Palgrave Communications, 3(1), 2017).

In this context, Rachel A. Epstein and Oliver Kaplan’s Speaking Science to Power (2024) provides a powerful primer on “the politics of policy engagement” through a focus on “responsible policy engagement” and, more specifically, on the existence of “policy engagement dilemmas.” These “dilemmas” take the form of social, political, economic, and ethical pressures that scientists may find themselves navigating as they seek to work at the nexus between science and policy. “Seduction,” for example, involves researchers engaging in unethical practices, or allowing their findings to be used for questionable ends, in the hope of retaining access to certain sources of funding or policy-influencing relationships. Jason Lyall’s contribution explores this dilemma in relation to military intervention and promotes pre-engagement thinking around ethical redlines. Tricia Olsen’s analysis of the dilemmas posed by having to give unpopular findings in a policy context—in this case in relation to human rights abuses—unveils the true complexity of responsible policy engagement. The same is true for George DeMartino’s exploration of “pro-social lying,” which involves the risk that scientists might be tempted to overstate the strength and implications of their research findings to maximize their policy influence.

A range of dilemmas in relation to undertaking responsible policy engagement are sketched out with clarity and precision. This is a book that should become core reading for all PhD students and early career researchers due to its contributions to both professional and intellectual debates. Professionally, the editors are correct to note that very few scientists—even those with a reputation for policy engagement—have received any formal training or boundary-spanning mentorship on general professional ethics or in “responsible engagement.” Most academics either refuse to dirty their hands in the grubby world of politics and policy-making, or they try to engage on the basis of a combination of trial-and-error, “learning on the job,” and good fortune or fate. In a world in which scientists are increasingly required to operate across the research, development, and innovation ecosystem in ways that ensure that “knowledge-creation” flows into “knowledge mobilization,” such an amateurish approach to professional development is no longer tenable. As such, this book may well mark the beginning of a more explicit and inclusive conversation about the challenges and opportunities, barriers and blockages, pitfalls and potentialities of policy engagement for scientists.

And yet to define this collection as being solely focused on professional skills and the practicalities of policy engagement would represent a gross misreading of its content and relevance. Speaking Science to Power makes several intellectual contributions in relation to deepening our understanding of the “science-of-science,” “meta-science,” and the emerging field of “impact evaluation studies.” It achieves this in at least two ways. Firstly, the book utilizes case study analysis to identify specific challenges to the adoption of scientific insights; or, to put the same point slightly differently, it highlights the existence of irrational incentive frameworks, and the potentially problematic influence of partisan pressures. The collection, therefore, connects with, and adds to, the existing seam of scholarship on “evidence-based,” “evidence-led,” and “evidence-informed” policy (e.g., see Brian Head, “Toward More ‘Evidence-Informed’ Policy Making?” Public Administration Review, 76(3), 2016; Kano Hiroyuki and Takehiko Hayashi, “A framework for implementing evidence in policymaking,” Environmental Science & Policy, 116, 2021). Notably, it achieves this connection while making a second intellectual contribution through an explicitly solution-oriented perspective, which seeks to identify “boosters” (see Ditte Thøgersen, Susan Waldorff, and Tinne Steffensen, “Public Value through Innovation,” International Journal of Public Administration, 44(14), 2020) rather than focusing solely on the existence of well known “barriers and blockages” (for a review see Matthew Flinders and Jessica Benson-Egglenton, “Understanding the Dynamics of Research-Policy Fellowships: An Evaluative Analysis of Barriers and Blockages.” Mimeo, University of Sheffield, 2024).

As such, this book initiates a conversation about the trials and tribulations of “speaking science to power” through a focus on the concept of “responsible policy engagement,” with the core argument being that if scientists are pre-informed about the likely existence of different dilemmas, then they will be empowered to develop coping and mitigation strategies. Yet, like all good books, this is a collection that raises as many questions as it answers, and it seeks to further conversation on three topics—one conceptual, one political, one relational—that deserve brief consideration.

Firstly, the concept of “responsible policy engagement” demands further dissection. Responsible for what, to whom, why, and when are dimensions that remain opaque, whereas the normative connotations of “being responsible” also require further debate and discussion. What one scientist views as responsible might for another researcher appear nothing less than reckless, or at the very least dubious. The adjudication and regulation of professional standards of responsible policy engagement may present a positive step forward, but the introduction of formalized professional processes may also sap energy, increase bureaucracy, and risk the imposition of a self-defeating form of uniformity (i.e., “this is how you do responsible policy engagement”). Further conceptual clarification is urgently required, flowing back into a focus on the politics of responsible policy engagement. The central claim is that although Epstein and Kaplan’s collection seeks to spark a debate at a broader level, the political dimensions of the recalibration of the science-society relationship which is encapsulated in notions of “the engaged scholar” (Andrew J. Hoffman, The Engaged Scholar, 2021) remain under-studied, under-theorized and generally under-acknowledged.

If there is a weakness in this collection, it is arguably that the cruder, more instrumental, and highly politicized dilemmas of R2P activities remain under-exposed. The editors point to Hendrix et al. (“The Cult of the Relevant,” Perspectives on Politics, 21(4), 2023) and Barma and Goldgeier (“How not to bridge the gap in International Relations,” International Affairs 98(5), 2022) to highlight the existence of “powerful market rewards for academics who engage” (p.5). Yet the politicization of market forces within an academic context—as exemplified in Watermeyer’s Competitive Accountability in Academic Life (2019)—goes much further than those suggested in Speaking Science to Power. The biggest challenges arguably relate not to “seduction,” but to co-option and criticality. The former in the sense of researchers becoming what Chomsky (“The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” New York Review of Books, 1967) labeled the “technocratic and policy-orientated intellectuals” who effectively did the work of state planning and, as such, lacked the latter element of criticality. If anything, the whole concept of “responsible policy engagement” points the scientific community towards the existence of a dangerous “Faustian bargain” whereby researchers feel tempted or compelled to trade down their independence and criticality in return for impactful opportunities. For example, Smith and Stewart’s (2017, 121) study of how social policy scholars engaged with the impact agenda uncovered significant concerns. As one of their interviewees noted:

The issue with defining this primarily as an ethical dilemma for individual scientists to navigate, as Epstein and Kaplan generally do in this collection, is that it risks depoliticizing a highly political and structurally systemic issue. Speaking truth to power is difficult if those in power only want to hear certain things. This is precisely the deeper perspective on politics that an emphasis on responsible policy engagement yields, but it is not a new perspective. The existence of political tension between independence and engagement is also an issue that could take the discussion back to, for example, C. Wright Mills’ (The Sociological Imagination, 1959) devastating critique of the “main drift” of the social sciences, through to Weiss’ seminal work (Public Administration Review, 39(5), 1978) on the “many meanings of research utilization” and to more recent concerns about (inter alia) “taking sides” (Les Back, “On the side of the powerful,” Sociological Review Magazine, 2015; Warren Garthwaite, “Whose side are we on and for whom do we write?” Evidence & Policy, 11(2), 2015), the “dark side of co-production” as a methodology for maximizing policy engagement (Kathryn Oliver, Anita Kothari, and Nicholas Mays, “The dark side of coproduction,” Health Research Policy and Systems, 17(1), 2019), and studies on the full range of roles that academics play in relation to policy (see Marleen Brans and Arco Timmermans, eds., The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe, 2022).

There is, however, a risk that emphasizing the politics of responsible policy engagement and the existence of a “Faustian bargain” (especially for early career researchers in precarious employment situations for whom the temptation to make compromises is likely to be greater than those who enjoy the protections of tenure) is that it may over-politicize understandings and produce a hyper-sensitivity on the part of scientists. This introduces a third issue and a focus on relational dynamics. The risk of focusing on “speaking science to power” is that it underplays the need to also consider the how, when, and why of “speaking power to science.” The dilemmas of R2P also need to be understood from a P2R (Policy-to-Research) perspective. This is also an argument that has been played out before. In 2013, for example, a group of scientists published an article in Nature (William J. Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter, and Mark Burgman, “Policy: twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims,” Nature, 503, 2013) which contained “twenty top tips” for policy-makers who wished to interpret scientific claims, and this triggered a strong counter-response in the form of the “Top 20 things scientists need to know about policy-making” (Chris Tyler, The Guardian, 2013). Subsequent guidance documents have continued this rather binary opposition. The Institute for Government’s How government can work with academics (2018), for example, was quickly followed by a follow-up report on How academics can work with government (2019).

In this context, the great value of Epstein and Kaplan’s collection is that it looks beyond an emphasis on R2P or P2R, instead focusing its attention on the need to nurture mutual understanding and meaningful high-trust, low-cost relationships between scientists and policy-makers. This relational dynamic flows through each and every page of the book and is itself the major contribution of this collection. In this sense, the editors were correct to conclude that, through a focus on responsible engagement, “what we are doing here is different from standard ‘bridging-the-gap’ exercises and the quest for relevance” (p.198).