Date:                  Thursday 15 May - Saturday 17 May 2025
Location:           Academy of Science, Athens, Greece

Co-organisers: European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility
Mariolopoulos-Kanaginis Foundation for the Environmental Sciences
Critical Scientists Switzerland
 

In May 2025 ENSSER will organise an in-person and online conference dedicated to the relationship between science and policy in this age of global permacrisis. The conference will take place in Greece. The results of the conference will be discussed with EU politicians and administrators at a workshop in Brussels.

Nowadays, while many scientists claim they are not heard by politicians, many politicians claim that their actions are “science-based”, a term that we want to explore more and provide alternatives for. Scientific advice to policy-makers is a hotly debated topic, especially where scientists and politicians disagree. Moreover, policy decisions justified by reference to scientific advice often serve industrial and corporate interests rather than, for example, the protection of public and/or environmental health.

What are the roles of scientific evidence and advice in political decision-making? What are the roles of other organisations and interest groups, such as industry, public interest NGOs and think-tanks? How should responsibilities for finding ways out of our permacrisis be allocated? Under what conditions can policies be both scientifically and democratically legitimated? How should scientific advisors and policy-makers respond to scientific disagreements, and the uncertainties that characterise currently available evidence and opinions? And, what can responsible scientists do when governments adopt measures intended to shut down or at least control scientific dissent, when it challenges official narratives?

Questions like these will be the starting point for the three days of reflection at this conference in Greece. By promoting an open debate and reflection, this conference aims to engage with the pluralities of scientific perspectives. It will also examine attempts to polarise and over-simplify debates, often by deploying misinformation and opportunistic selections of experts and evidence.  Do we have ‘science-based policy’ or ‘policy-based evidence selection’?  How can ENSSER and its members combat disrespectful actions towards dissenters, and reopen spaces for debate that have been shrinking?

In this conference we shall examine interactions between politics and science in three areas that clearly differ in the extent of disagreement among scientists, and we will scrutinise the role of industry and other third parties in each of these areas. There is only rarely consensus among scientists, and even less so when the topics are policy-sensitive; disagreements and debates are two of the dynamic impulses that influence the pace and direction of scientific change and industrial innovations. The degree of (dis)agreement among scientists varies a lot between different areas of science. Industry often provides its own selection and interpretation of scientific evidence, and opportunistically exaggerates or under-states scientifically significant uncertainties. Uncertainties and knowledge gaps are essential elements of science; yet official scientific advisors to public policy-makers typically portray the available evidence as sufficiently robust to support their conclusions and recommendations. While considering all this, we want to reflect on the relationships between scientific and political considerations in political decision-making.

In this permacrisis, we cannot afford to forego potential social and technological solutions. Therefore, scientific debates need to be broadened again, not reduced. Politicians may not be expected to take part in scientific deliberations. But when and where there is a diversity of opinions and policy-relevant uncertainties in the available scientific evidence and interpretations, politicians need to be fully informed about the diversities and uncertainties, and actively engage with them, and make democratically accountable decisions about how to respond.  There is a politics of uncertainties, with which ENSSER is engaging. The precautionary principle, and more or less precautionary policy options, are often available for policy-makers, to guide them in their decisions. They should also tackle chronic conflicts of interest amongst their scientific advisory bodies, diversify recruits to advisory bodies, and enhance democratic participation and accountability in their advising bodies and policy-making institutions.

The conference will result in a report on alternative approaches, suggestions and possible solutions that were presented and discussed during the conference. This outcome will be the base for an in-person workshop with members of the European Parliament and their scientific advisors in Brussels, after the conference. This will provide us the chance to discuss the results of the conference at the heart of the EU decision-making, with those that have the political responsibility to get us out of this permacrisis, to hear the problems they face and to, hopefully, find “roads” that we will follow together.

Draft Programme

18h – Welcoming: (20 minutes)

·       Prof. Polyxeni Nicolopoulou-Stamati, Medical School of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, Chair of ENSSER and Secretary of the Board of Mariolopoulos Kanaginis Foundation for the Environmental Sciences

·       Prof. Christos Zerefos (TBC), Secretary General of the Academy of Athens

18h20-20h– Roundtable: Science in a time of permacrisis – the role of science in political decision-making

Moderation: Dr. Angelika Hilbeck, retired from Institute of Integrative Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

·       Prof. Larissa Bombardi, Department of Geography, University of São Paulo, Brazil (on leave) and Visiting Researcher at CESSMA (Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques), Programme PAUSE, Université de Paris, France

·       Prof. Giuseppe Longo, Centre Cavaillès (République des Savoirs), CNRS and Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris

·       Prof. Ignacio Chapela, Dept. of Environmental Science, University of California Berkeley, USA

·       Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, EcoNexus, Oxford, UK

·       Emeritus Prof. Vyvyan Howard, Professor of Bioimaging, Biomedical Sciences Institute, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

10h – 10h05: Morning welcome and information: Polyxeni Nicolopoulou-Stamati

10h05 – 13h05: Panel 1: Political Economy of Science and Political Decision

Moderation: Prof. Polyxeni Nicolopoulou-Stamati

10h05 - 11h00: How has science come to be recognised and institutionalised as a policy resource in the past 80 years? (40 minutes + 15 minutes discussion)

·       Emeritus Prof. Brian Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University, UK

11h00 - 11h55: Under what conditions can the interactions of scientific and political considerations in policy-making be both scientifically and democratically legitimate? (40 minutes + 15 minutes discussion)

·       Emeritus Prof. Erik Millstone, Emeritus Professor of Science Policy in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, UK

11h55 – 12h10: Coffee Break

12h10 - 13h05: What is the role of the economy in regulating the relationship between science and political decision-making? (40 minutes + 15 minutes discussion)

·       Dr. Irina Castro, University of Coimbra, Portugal

·       Nina Holland (TBC), Researcher and campaigner Corporate Europe Observatory, Brussels

13h05 – 13h45: Discussion Round: Knowledge Transfer for Policy in times of crises – who selects knowledge, scientists and when?

·       speakers of panel 1

13h45 – 14h30: Lunch break

14h30-18h40: Panel 2: Illustrative examples of science - policy interactions

Moderation:

Prof. Ignacio Chapela, Dept. of Environmental Science, University of California Berkeley, USA David Gee (TBC), Centre for Pollution Research and Policy, Brunel University, London

14h30 – 15h50: Dissent: The case of GMO and NGT

·       Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, EcoNexus, Oxford, UK (80 minutes with discussion)

15h50 – 17h10: Consensus: The case of Climate Change

·       Prof. James Skea (TBC), Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (80 minutes with discussion)

17h10 –17h30: Coffee Break

17h30 – 18h40: No debate yet: The case of soil science

·       Dr. Andrea Beste, Agricultural scientist, graduate geographer and soil expert

·       Dr. Rob Blakemore, Soil ecologist, Australia

(80 minutes with discussion)

19h00 Conference Dinner

09h – 9h05- Morning welcome and information: Prof. Polyxeni Nicolopoulou-Stamati

09h05 – 11h00: Panel 3: Roads to follow for a more fruitful science-policy relationship

Moderation: Diederick Sprangers, Scientific Coordinator of ENSSER

09h05 – 9h35: Why we need policies 'based on the best scientific knowledge available' and not 'science based' policies

·      TBD

09h35 – 10h05: Why 'science' as currently conceived is often part of the problem, and how it could become part of the solution

·       Ephraim Poertner (TBC), Critical Scientists Switzerland, associated researcher in Political Geography at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern

10h05 – 10h35: title TBD

·       Prof. John Ioannidis (TBC), Stanford University, USA

10h35 – 11h00: Coffee Break

11h00 – 12h45: Round Table: What roads can be followed?

Moderation:

Ephraim Poertner (TBC), Critical Scientists Switzerland, associated researcher in Political Geography at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern

Irina Castro, University of Coimbra, Portugal

·       Emeritus Prof. George Chrousos, Professor of Pediatrics and Endocrinology and former chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Athens University

·       Dr. Angelika Hilbeck, retired from Institute of Integrative Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

·       Dr. Andrea Beste, Agricultural scientist, graduate geographer and soil expert

·       Prof. John Ioannidis (TBC)

·       David Gee (TBC), Centre for Pollution Research and Policy, Brunel University, London

·       Dr. Aude Lapprand (TBC), Physical chemist, Sciences Citoyennes, France

(with discussion)

12h45 – 13h00 – Closing: Prof. Polyxeni Nicolopoulou-Stamati

13h00 – Optional Lunch

Workshop, Brussels (date to be determined)

A report will be written with the conclusions and recommendations from the conference about improving the relationship between science and policy. This report will be presented to EU politicians, administrators and their scientific advisors in a workshop to be held in Brussels some time after the conference. One of more of them will be asked to comment on the report. This will be followed by a discussion of the report, with some of the speakers of the conference. The workshop will last one afternoon.