New government policy received public protests from high-profile scientists including former master of Trinity Sir Martin Rees Hernán Piñera

There has been a considerable amount of hand-wringing among the scientific community over the last few weeks, as a rather significant deadline approached. The implementation of new rules prohibiting lobbying by individuals or organisations who receive government funding was set for Sunday 1st May - until a rather sharp, late U-turn came through.

The reason for such a dramatic turn was the outcry at one particular implication of this ineptly worded new policy: academics whose research is publicly funded would be prevented from speaking out on its implications – such as those on current government policy. This would have included a wide-range of research of considerable public interest such as that into climate change, embryo research, transport policy and flooding – all clearly important issues which require an informed debate.

Thankfully, due to a petition signed by 20,000 academics as well as concerted campaigning across research sectors, a number of bodies which allocate research grants have been made exempt from these regulations. However, the underlying problems which drove this sort of ideological, rather than evidence based policy-making are still present.

The disregard for evidence we have seen in this episode is not exactly new: in Britain we have had governments, on both sides of the political spectrum, whose rush to abandon the facts for political gain has been spectacular. This is partly about ignoring scientific evidence – for example on harm-reduction approaches to dealing with drugs, which have been shown to be more effective than being 'tough' on illegal substances. Recently, Nick Clegg told The Guardian that Home Secretary Theresa May had attempted to alter the publication of a Home Office report outlining the lack of any “obvious” link between a zero-tolerance approach to drugs and levels of consumption.

However, it is also about taking the wrong approaches. The same misguidedness can be seen in the badger culling policies of the current government, which disregard scientific consensus on the issue. Instead of genuine scientific rigour being applied to the problem of bovine tuberculosis, we have a classic case of the political preference of the Minister in charge leading to fudged and cherry-picked evidence. It is clear that politics has a long way to go in terms of listening to its scientific advisers.

What is particularly staggering is that this exact situation has happened across the pond recently: Canada’s former Prime Minister Stephen Harper had instituted a very similar law aimed at curbing discussion of climate change, in order to support the oil industries, who were key allies of Harper. This meant that scientists were obliged to claim in the press that they did not know the answers to certain questions, in order not to have their grant funding removed – in effect reducing scientists to ineffective imbeciles in the public eye.

Upon the election of the more progressive Justin Trudeau, the law was immediately repealed and a new status quo, where academic freedom is rightfully valued in policy-making, has been implemented. It seems that for now, the British government has also realised the importance of academic freedom in advising and challenging government policy, by adding these exemptions. We can only hope that this marks a turning point in political attitudes, to seeing scientific evidence as a key part of policy-making. In all honesty, however, I doubt this will be the last time when we see science sidetracked for political aims.