Issue Analysts
7. Massively Parallel Roles & Tasks
Virtually all of the big problems facing democratic societies are extremely complex and require extensive technical expertise to understand well enough to find effective (or even remotely workable) solutions. Issue analysts help decision makers, politicians, and the public better understand and sensibly deal with this complexity. There are at least four different roles here.
- Technical Experts investigate, on behalf of the general public and democratic decision-makers, the extraordinarily complex challenges facing modern society and how they might be best addressed.
- Technical Reporters translate technical jargon into language non-technical people can understand.
- Evaluators help to incorporate public values into the analytical process because science cannot do that. Scientists can tell us, within some range of uncertainty, the nature of the problems we face and the likely consequences of different options for addressing those problems. They cannot, however, say what policy is best for a community or a nation. That is a value judgment that should be made by the public (and its elected representatives), not by technical experts.
- Lastly are Science Reformers who focus on holding scientists and technical organizations to high professional standards and protecting them from political pressures that sometimes undermine the quality of their work (by encouraging scientists to cut corners, to ignore or change politically problematic findings, etc. Science reformers are people and organizations who are trying to reverse this damage by policing the scientific industry to make sure that studies are, indeed, properly formulated, conducted, and reported.
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