In every field from climate change to education, politicians increasingly defer to experts, and scientific experts in particular. The government has surrounded itself with scientists, and politicians from all parties seems keen to cite experts’ evidence-based findings whenever they want to push new policies, whether early intervention in families to climate-change strategies. Too often the phrase ‘the science shows…’ is used to close down any possibility of debate; facts are scene to trump morality and politics. But is this indicative of a new respect for science, or rather a lack or political principle? Far easier to wave a peer-reviewed research paper and proclaim the science shows we have no choice rather than trying to convince the public of the merits of one or other policy decision. 

Indeed it seems that when politicians don’t ‘go with the science’, they find themselves without a leg to stand on. When the government sacked drugs advisor David Nutt last year, this was widely seen as an unwelcome and sordid intrusion of ‘politics’ into questions better left to the experts. So do we live in a ‘scientocracy’, and if so, is this a sign of enlightenment and political maturity, or should we be worried about the undermining of democratic decision-making? Has there been an elision of the natural and social sciences, with the latter borrowing the authority of the former? Does the elevation of scientific expertise obscure unexamined political assumptions and orthodoxies? Indeed, is there a danger that ‘policy-led research’ subtly reproduces political prejudices rather than uncovering genuinely inconvenient truths?