Page 385 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS169 Gaby U.
forms a precondition to influence actors in a process rather than stages in a
cycle.
Rendering the science-policy interface for the injection of data and evidence
into politics even more complicated is the ‘paradox of scientific authority’ that
accompanies the rise of populism and politicisation of evidence that led to
contestation and instability of expertise (Newman and Clarke 2018; Fleming and
Rhodes 2018); failure of evidence to influence policy-making; mis- or
disinformation, post-truth and post-fact phenomena. Research on their
foundations, inter alia rooting in strategies of ‘deceptive misinterpretations”
(Frankfurt 2005), as well as on emotions, values and interests in politics
experiences a boom to which not only academics, but also journalists
increasingly contribute. As a result of this ‘emotional turn’, data providers are
challenged by perception-based and emotional politics and biases that are
strongly influenced by scepticism and change averse attitudes; (dysfunctional)
political communication in the age of social media and fake news as well as
potential strategies to neutralise negative impacts of false information
(d’Ancona 2017; Davis 2017; Gluckman and Wilsdon 2016; Levitin 2017; Rosling,
3
et al. 2018). Cognitive biases and bounded rationality interfere with the power
of data evidence in politics and influence the selection of (best possible)
evidence for the political process. ‘Rational’ (goal-oriented selection of
evidence) as well as ‘irrational’ (stricto sensu belief- and/or emotion-based
prioritization of information) behaviour of political actors are hence
fundamentally influencing the kind of evidence selected for policy-making
(Cairney 2016). Emotions and political behaviour can hence be assessed as
gatekeepers when it comes to the selection of evidence for policy-making.
Additionally, ‘the gap between the needs of policy makers and the ways
researchers present evidence’ (van der Heide, et al. 2016) is identified as a
central barrier for the injection of evidence into policy-making that enhances
‘the non-systematic or almost accidental feature of the processes leading to its
inclusion” (Lin 2005). In this context, the translation and ‘processing of this
information and expert knowledge is [viewed as] problematic and highly
variable across organizations’ (Head 2015) and communities.
Moreover, questions of truth and mis-/disinformation in politics; the role
and relevance of asymmetries of knowledge; forms of knowledge and
knowledge transfer; measurement of evidence use in politics and the
difference between EBPM and ‘ideological or faith-based policy-making’
(Head 2010) become increasingly relevant also for statistical bodies. As both
policy problems (e.g. climate change, fracking, cyber security) and required
solutions are complex and multidimensional, the data evidence informing the

3 Such as framing effects, representativeness heuristic, availability heuristic/processing fluency,
prospect theory, cognitive dissonance, need for coherence, status quo biases/sunk costs
fallacy/optimism biases, or groupthink.
374 | I S I W S C 2 0 1 9