Ban academics from talking to ministers? We should train them to do it!

March 7th, 2016 by Ben Goldacre in evidence based policy, politics | No Comments »

The Cabinet Office has come up with a crazy plan to ban academics like me from talking to politicians and civil servants. In this piece I explain why that is an almost surreally stupid idea. I also describe how I hustle, in Whitehall, to try and get government policy changed on open data, scientific transparency, and evidence based policy. Readers with a weaker constitution should be forewarned that this piece contains lurid descriptions of very positive experiences I have had with Oliver Letwin, and other popular right-wing hate figures. There is no apology for that, in the name of pragmatism and democracy: we should train academics to talk to ministers, and encourage them to do it.

www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/i-talk-to-ministers-mps-and-wonks-is-that-lobbying-you-decide

(Sorry, I keep forgetting to post things on badscience.net, this will change shortly, I have a big backlog of posts and will splurge over the next month or two!).


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If you like what I do, and you want me to do more, you can: buy my books Bad Science and Bad Pharma, give them to your friends, put them on your reading list, employ me to do a talk, or tweet this article to your friends. Thanks! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++