Trustworthy Science Advice: The Case of Policy Recommendations

Abstract This paper examines how science advice can provide policy recommendations in a trustworthy manner. Despite their major political importance, expert are understudied the philosophy of and social epistemology. Matthew Bennett has recently developed notion what he calls recommendation trust, according to which well-placed trust experts’ requires that aligned with interests trust-giver. While interest alignment might be central some cases public this argues against significance interest-alignment meritorious trust. First, bodies citizens have basic kind based on an all-things-considered judgement regarding possession relevant competencies, responsible conduct, proper institutional design. Moreover, scientists’ seen as open-ended dynamic proposals enable inter-institutional reasoning deliberation. Finally, by providing conditional recommendations, scientists expand scope feasible options from choose, thus making condition even less significant provision recommendations.