Science has played an influential role for at least the past 70 years in helping us to frame public policy in many areas of concern. But in recent years science itself has become an area of concern. This is partly because scientific theories can be difficult to understand, and partly because the evidence for evaluating them is rarely as definitive as we might hope. But it is also because scient...

Should we always engage in critical thinking about issues of public policy, such as health care, gun control, and LGBT rights? Michael Huemer (2005) has argued for the claim that in some cases it is not epistemically responsible to engage in critical thinking on these issues. His argument is based on a reliabilist conception of the value of critical thinking. This article analyzes Huemer’s argu...

The term ‘evolution’ is used loosely in the policy literature and its meaning is frequently unclear. This article injects clarity into debates of evolution and establishes its ability to describe and explain policy change. It has four main aims. First, it identifies the explicit and implicit uses of evolutionary theory in policy studies. Second, it considers how such accounts relate to each oth...

Although the science of global warming has been in place for several decades if not more, only in the last decade and a half has the issue moved clearly into the public sphere as a public policy issue and a political priority. To understand how and why this has occurred, it is essential to consider the history of the scientific theory of the greenhouse effect, the evidence that supports it and ...

Kingdon’s multiple-streams framework, which emerged in the mid-1980s, today forms one of the indispensable analytical frameworks for understanding public policy agenda-setting. However, it is only in the context of wealthy countries that this approach has been validated for setting the agenda of national and international policies. This article reports the results of empirical research in an Af...

Jackie Fletcher's letter highlights an important area of concern, the failure of the government and medical profession to address the possibility of vaccine damage at a clinical level while retreating behind an unconvincing body of epidemiology [1]. Even the best conducted epidemiology might mask damage to significant subgroups as pointed out by for National Institutes of Health director, the l...

Like many trends that influence public policy and administration, ‘e-government’ is a multifaceted and nebulous idea, easily applied to a range of different situations, across the entire gamut of government and society, and with differing intentions. There are wideranging claims made for e-government, considerable hopes pinned on it, and substantial commitments – financial and otherwise – made ...