The American People and Science Policy: The Role of Public Attitudes in the Policy Process examines and evaluates the structure and efficacy of public participation in the formulation of science policy in the United States. Organized into 10 chapters, this book first reviews major science policy issues in the 20th century. This text then introduces a stratified model of public policy formulation that appears to fit science policy. The public participation in science policy is also explained. Other chapters explore the science policy agenda; attitudes of both policy leaders and the attentive public on resource and independence issues; and the future of public participation in science policy. Lastly, the formulation of science policy in a democratic society is addressed. This book will be useful for professional students engaged in this field of interest.

Basic scientific research and technological development have had an enormous impact on innovation, economic growth, and social well-being. Yet science policy debates have long been dominated by advocates for particular scientific fields or missions. In the absence of a deeper understanding of the changing framework in which innovation occurs, policymakers cannot predict how best to make and manage investments to exploit our most promising and important opportunities. Since 2005, a science of science policy has developed rapidly in response to policymakers' increased demands for better tools and the social sciences' capacity to provide them. The Science of Science Policy: A Handbook brings together some of the best and brightest minds working in science policy to explore the foundations of an evidence-based platform for the field. The contributions in this book provide an overview of the current state of the science of science policy from three angles: theoretical, empirical, and policy in practice. They offer perspectives from the broader social science, behavioral science, and policy communities on the fascinating challenges and prospects in this evolving arena. Drawing on domestic and international experiences, the text delivers insights about the critical questions that create a demand for a science of science policy.

“An engaging, insightful, and challenging call to examine both the rhetoric and reality of innovation and inclusion in science and science policy.” —Daniel R. Morrison, American Journal of Sociology Stem cell research has sparked controversy and heated debate since the first human stem cell line was derived in 1998. Too frequently these debates devolve to simple judgments—good or bad, life-saving medicine or bioethical nightmare, symbol of human ingenuity or our fall from grace—ignoring the people affected. With this book, Ruha Benjamin moves the terms of debate to focus on the shifting relationship between science and society, on the people who benefit—or don’t—from regenerative medicine and what this says about our democratic commitments to an equitable society. People’s Science uncovers the tension between scientific innovation and social equality, taking the reader inside California’s 2004 stem cell initiative, the first of many state referenda on scientific research, to consider the lives it has affected. Benjamin reveals the promise and peril of public participation in science, illuminating issues of race, disability, gender, and socio-economic class that serve to define certain groups as more or less deserving in their political aims and biomedical hopes. Ultimately, Ruha Benjamin argues that without more deliberate consideration about how scientific initiatives can and should reflect a wider array of social concerns, stem cell research—from African Americans’ struggle with sickle cell treatment to the recruitment of women as tissue donors—still risks excluding many. Even as regenerative medicine is described as a participatory science for the people, Benjamin asks us to consider if “the people” ultimately reflects our democratic ideals.

This symposium, which was held on March 10-11, 2003, at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, brought together policy experts and managers from the government and academic sectors in both developed and developing countries to (1) describe the role, value, and limits that the public domain and open access to digital data and information have in the context of international research; (2) identify and analyze the various legal, economic, and technological pressures on the public domain in digital data and information, and their potential effects on international research; and (3) review the existing and proposed approaches for preserving and promoting the public domain and open access to scientific and technical data and information on a global basis, with particular attention to the needs of developing countries.

Does the public trust science? Scientists? Scientific organizations? What roles do trust and the lack of trust play in public debates about how science can be used to address such societal concerns as childhood vaccination, cancer screening, and a warming planet? What could happen if social trust in science or scientists faded? These types of questions led the Roundtable on Public Interfaces of the Life Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a 2-day workshop on May 5-6, 2015 on public trust in science. This report explores empirical evidence on public opinion and attitudes toward life sciences as they relate to societal issues, whether and how contentious debate about select life science topics mediates trust, and the roles that scientists, business, media, community groups, and other stakeholders play in creating and maintaining public confidence in life sciences. Does the Public Trust Science? Trust and Confidence at the Interfaces of the Life Sciences and Society highlights research on the elements of trust and how to build, mend, or maintain trust; and examine best practices in the context of scientist engagement with lay audiences around social issues.

In 1945, Vannevar Bush, founder of Raytheon and one-time engineering dean at MIT, delivered a report to the president of the United States that argued for the importance of public support for science, and the importance of science for the future of the nation. The report, Science: The Endless Frontier, set America on a path toward strong and well-funded institutions of science, creating an intellectual architecture that still defines scientific endeavor today. In The Changing Frontier, Adam B. Jaffe and Benjamin Jones bring together a group of prominent scholars to consider the changes in science and innovation in the ensuing decades. The contributors take on such topics as changes in the organization of scientific research, the geography of innovation, modes of entrepreneurship, and the structure of research institutions and linkages between science and innovation. An important analysis of where science stands today, The Changing Frontier will be invaluable to practitioners and policy makers alike.