The Cabinet Office has come up with a crazy plan to ban academics like me from talking to politicians and civil servants. In this piece I explain why that is an almost surreally stupid idea. I also describe how I hustle, in Whitehall, to try and get government policy changed on open data, scientific transparency, and evidence based policy. Readers with a weaker constitution should be forewarned that this piece contains lurid descriptions of very positive experiences I have had with Oliver Letwin, and other popular right-wing hate figures. There is no apology for that, in the name of pragmatism and democracy: we should train academics to talk to ministers, and encourage them to do it.
www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/i-talk-to-ministers-mps-and-wonks-is-that-lobbying-you-decide
(Sorry, I keep forgetting to post things on badscience.net, this will change shortly, I have a big backlog of posts and will splurge over the next month or two!).
