Professor Jacqueline Rowarth has been appointed the inaugural Chief Scientist for the Environmental Protection Authority, beginning next month. Here, she explains her role and how it will affect the food and beverage industries. A new role for any person is an exciting challenge. When the role is completely new to the organisation, the exciting challenge has aspects of blue skies, green fields and various coloured ocean strategies as well. Getting it right will require 360-degree discussion. The Environmental Protection Authority has created the new position of Chief Scientist to enable improved understanding of scientific issues - for society and the development of policy. More specifically, the Chief Scientist is to provide strategic leadership, operational advice, and guidance on science and policy issues for the Chief Executive. He, in turn, can advise ministers. The new role aligns with statements from the Prime Minster’s Chief Science 16 SEPTEMBER 2016 Advisor Professor Sir Peter Gluckman about the ‘evolving nature of science advice’. His website (www.pmcsa.org. nz) contains many of his papers and thoughts on the complexity of policy formation, and how the scientific community, the policy community and the political decision-makers must interact to enable evidence to underpin policy information and implementation. The general problem is that decisions have to be made on issues where there is high public interest, incomplete knowledge and great complexity. These issues are almost always associated with values, emotions and personal experience… what Sir Peter describes as “the political power of the anecdote.” He also points out that the plural of anecdote is not data…the difficulty EVOLVING THE NATURE OF SCIENCE ADVICE is that as science and technology becomes increasingly complex, in parallel with the increasingly complex issues of modern-day global living, the potential for different interpretations increases. It is easier to understand somebody’s story on how they have been or will be affected, than explain or take a position on the greater good. This means that policy makers are facing challenges in reaching trade-offs between contrasting views and inputs. Sir Peter has opined that “science should have reached greater importance because it provides a relatively value-free knowledge base on which the public and policy makers can make decisions, after having considered the information, and integrated their own values and priorities.” The general problem is that decisions have to be made on issues where there is high public interest, incomplete knowledge and great complexity. A N E X C L U S I V E I N T R O D U C T I O N
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