Via Breitbart, I find an interesting interview with the EU's chief scientific adviser Professor Anne Glover, who is bemoaning the attempts by politicians within the commission to, ahem, "commission" scientific evidence to support their political goals:
“Let’s imagine a Commissioner over the weekend thinks, ‘Let’s ban the use of credit cards in the EU because credit cards lead to personal debt’. So that commissioner will come in on Monday morning and say to his or her Director General, ‘Find me the evidence that demonstrates that this is the case.’”
I had previously thought that the role of a chief scientific adviser was simply to relay the views of the scientific establishment to politicians and to ensure a steady flow of funding in the opposite direction, the former often being a means to ensure the latter. It's therefore interesting to see this suggestion that politicians are getting something useful out of the arrangement too. But you can see how it has become a mutually beneficial arrangement, so we should probably give Glover credit for raising concerns over whether it operates wholly in the public interest. But with the incentive structures of both sides being royally rewarded, it's hard to imagine that there will be much enthusiasm to change things.
Like most CSAs, Glover repeats the conventional wisdom on the scientific subjects of the day (how could it be otherwise?). I wonder if she has ever wondered if the incentive structures of those involved in the evidence-based policy community might have biased a scientific dispute in other areas?