In this series of posts, we sit down with a few keynote speakers of the 247th AAS meeting to learn more about them and their research. You can see a full schedule of their talks here and read our other interviews here!
“I think there’s a desire among scientists, often, for science to be neutral and apolitical. And I think the reality is that that’s not ever how evidence is used”, says Dr. Alexander Furnas. For many scientists, this fact has recently become clear and pressing, but the work of today’s plenary speaker shows that this has always been the case. “There has to be some kind of social contract between the scientific enterprise and the society that it serves,” he says, “and…we’re in this moment of re-adjudicating what that relationship is going to be”, making the topic of his lecture particularly pertinent for attendees of this year’s AAS conference.
Dr. Furnas is a researcher at Northwestern University, where he studies “the use of information and expertise in science policymaking”. His research uses mountains of policy documents to analyze how governmental staffers and think tanks from across the ideological spectrum use science in their policymaking work. Using statistical techniques such as embedding spaces, Dr. Furnas is able to identify how the role of science and expertise changes in different settings. To understand his research, we have to understand that the policy documents that Dr. Furnas analyzes are very different from a standard scientific article. They’re put together by staffers who likely do not have specific scientific expertise – “they’re policy professionals, not scientific professionals,” explains Furnas. Policymakers turn to scientific evidence for a variety of reasons, not just to understand scientific consensus, but also potentially to “find evidence that’s supportive of their position” and understand possible unintended consequences of proposed legislation.
One aspect of Dr. Furnas’s work reveals how different sides of the political spectrum cite scientific studies. His work has found that, of all papers cited at least once in policy documents, “only 5%…were cited by both Republicans and Democrats”. Even when narrowing down the sample of documents to include only documents written on similar topics, only a small fraction of citations are seen across party lines. Furnas’s work found that papers that do make it into both Democrat and Republican policy documents tend to be “extraordinarily high impact” papers and are highly cited within their fields. However, he noted that bipartisan citation is also “unequally distributed across the space of science”; some areas, such as tax economics and healthcare markets, have a higher rate of bipartisan citations than areas like gendered violence or civil rights law.
Dr. Furnas’s work can also help us to contextualize the current moment of science policy. His work has analyzed how the appropriation of funds for scientific research changes depending on the administration. His work shows that, historically, Republican administrations tended to appropriate more money for scientific research, illustrating that the current administration is actually “a pretty big departure from the past”, reflective of growing anti-intellectualism and mistrust of academic institutions.
In terms of what we can take from his work, as scientists, Dr. Furnas highlights a couple of key aspects. First, that his research can help scientists understand how their work is being used, second what they can do to ensure their work reaches policymakers, and finally how scientists can navigate the complex relationship between science and politics; “I think scientists need to advocate for, not the political neutrality of science, rather the objectivity of the methods we use” he says.
To learn more about how science is used in policymaking and learn more about the current landscape of science policy, be sure to attend Dr. Alexander Furnas’s Plenary Lecture at 11:40 AM MST on Wednesday, January 7th at #AAS247!
Edited by: Skylar Grayson
Featured Image Credit: AAS
