This post highlights four different approaches to evidence in policymaking and suggest how researchers and policy organisations might use these findings to engage differently with policy

Geopolitics is polarising the world, hampering cross-border science and technology collaboration and slowing progress. ScienceBusiness proposes a few solutions.

Stepping down well is an important leadership skill - and one that is rarely named or valued.

The fight for science is far from over, so what does it take to bring science advocacy into the classroom and beyond?

Policies to boost R&D will inevitably create tensions.

Many people in the bureaucratic machinery have little interest in research

The European Commission's acknowledgement that research and innovation have the potential to generate environmental harms can be viewed as a landmark in the history of research policy.

To fully desegregate science, institutions should bolster mentorship, safe spaces and a culture of belonging.

Five pointers to help researchers get policymakers interested in their work, based on a guide co-created by government and academics from the University of Leeds

Increasing investments, transforming research culture and boosting talent attraction - these are the recommendations for a more equal European R&I landscape outlined in a new paper by Science Europe.

The current scholarly publishing system is detrimental to the pursuit of knowledge and needs a radical shift. There have already been many attempts and partial successes to drive a new shift in scholarly publishing. Many of them should be further developed and generalised.

All data should get checked, but not every article needs an expert.

It’s on course to guzzle half the world’s carbon budget, so why are governments so afraid to discuss it?

You might know what policymakers should know. That doesn't mean you know how to help them to use that information.

In this article, the Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation team's Dr Duncan MacFadyen and Rendani Nenguda write about the technical reports developed through the African Group of Negotiators Expert Support, which provides an armful of scientific evidence to underpin Africa's case at COP27.

Oliver Müller's brief tenure at the technology giant taught him that many skills acquired in academia are highly valued.

The European Innovation Council's (EIC) future will involve more horizon scanning, intelligence and strategy, according to a programme manager responsible for scoping the potential for technological and innovation breakthroughs and for directing EIC health-related projects, to ensure there is a coherent plan that will support development of a competitive sector.

Is there an entrenched stasis in scholarly communication in which the core elements of the system have not been much moved by the revolutions happening around us?

The world's richest man promises more than he has delivered. His social network purchase is likely to go the same way

The authors critically discuss their experience as guest editors for a Frontiers journal. They aim to foster open scholarly debate about Frontiers publishing practices, triggered by Frontiers hindering such debate on their own pages.

Science is a social process, and teaching students how researchers work in tandem to develop facts will make them less likely to be duped by falsehoods.

ERC President Professor Maria LeptinSpeech at European Academy of Sciences ceremony. 

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are not a priority for research in high-income countries. That must change.

What if even by saying "fake science" you inadvertently participate in a scam? What if this phrase legitimizes fraud, lies, and deceit?  Let's call it what it is - dupery.

Rather than arguing about the suitability of natural experimental methods to inform decisions we need to focus on refining their scope and design, say Peter Craig and colleagues Natural experiments have long been used as opportunities to evaluate the health impacts of policies, programmes, and other interventions. Defined in the UK Medical Research Council's guidance as events outside the control of researchers that divide populations into exposed and unexposed groups, natural experiments have greatly contributed to the evidence base for tobacco and air pollution control, suicide prevention, and other important areas of public health policy.1 Although randomised controlled trials are often viewed as the best source of evidence because they have less risk of bias, reliance on them as the only source of credible evidence has begun to shift for several reasons. Firstly, policy makers are increasingly looking for evidence about "what works" to tackle pervasive and complex problems, including the social determinants of health,23 and these are hard to examine in randomised trials. In Scotland, for example, legislation to introduce a minimum retail price per unit of alcohol included a sunset clause, which means that the measure will lapse after six years unless evidence is produced that it works. This has resulted in multiple evaluations, including natural experimental studies using geographical or historical comparator groups.4 Similarly, the US National Institutes of Health has called for greater use of natural experimental methods to understand how to prevent obesity,5 and a consortium of European academies for their greater use to understand policies and interventions to reduce health inequalities.3 Secondly, a wider range of analytical methods developed within other disciplines, mostly by economists or other social or political scientists, are being increasingly applied to good effect. A good example is the use of synthetic control methods …

Science led the way out of the COVID-19 pandemic and can rise to other challenges, as long as there is sustained investment in research and research infrastructures, according to the head of the European Molecular Biology Lab.

Does forcing students to mandatorily publish a research paper before thesis submission lead to a high-quality PhD thesis, or does high-quality PhD work lead to publications in good journals? This question is unlike the chicken...

Magic mushrooms are no magic cure for society's ills, and a substance as powerful as psychedelics can be dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands

This year's winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics were driven by curiosity, skill, and tenacity.

The way that the global north pays for publishing hampers public, scholar-led efforts in Latin America.