Politics needs injection of science

The Ministry of Education received a “not achieved“from many educators last week. Most concerning was the leaked science curriculum draft document. Alarmingly, there’s no mention of core science subjects, physics, chemistry and biology; instead, the document suggests educators focus on climate change, biodiversity, the food-energy-water nexus and infectious diseases.

The draft arrived hot on the heels of schools quietly shifting away from the failed “open-plan classrooms” experiment – modern learning environments in ministry parlance; and the ministry’s decision to buy synthetic carpet from a US company for 800 schools instead of New Zealand-made woollen carpet. Sadly, the carpet decision may have been the most researched of all three faux pas.

New Zealand Institute of Physics president Joachim Brand described the draft curriculum as “heavy on philosophy and light on actual science”.

That sums up far too many public policy entities – heavy on philosophy and light on rigorous subject matter.

A curriculum for policy makers (including ministers) is needed, guiding engagement in critical thinking and evidence-based decision-making. An injection of science, if you will.

Not all government departments are the same of course. Treasury analysts, widely regarded as providing ministers with the most rigorous advice, could justifiably feel miffed about how little their advice has actually been accepted of late.

Then there is health. A system-wide restructure announced by the government before the country was clear of Covid was a cruel and untimely directive.

Predictably, the new structure isn’t delivering better outputs and hasn’t been successful in reducing the burden of those at the front-line.

David Meates, former chief executive of Canterbury District Health Board, commented recently: “Structural change very seldom delivers on the rhetoric of improved services and efficiencies – culture and an engaged workforce are fundamental ingredients to any transformation.”

He added: “When decision-making gets further removed from those providing care, the speed of decision-making slows down and fragmentation occurs. All this does is put more band-aids onto a system, without addressing the problem”.

I doubt the decision-making on the new health structure was subject to any more rigour than that described by Dr Bryce Wilkinson from the New Zealand Initiative in his 2022 report, Every Life is Worth the Same. It focused on the lack of evidence supporting race-based health policy.

He found neither the government nor the Ministry of Health could provide any objective data to support their argument that institutional racism underpins the relative ill-health of Māori.

This is disturbing because it is the basis on which many health system decisions are being made. Assertions by politicians and officials of racist causation or the assertion of its significant materiality couldn’t be supported when evidence was requested.

Wilkinson concluded: “Specifically, deep causes must be identified, and policy must seek to rectify them at source.

“Second, programmes to help people must be rigorously evaluated to determine whether they really work. Good intentions are not good enough if people really are to be helped to live better lives.”

An unlikely ally, Dr Des Gorman, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Auckland, supported the report and wrote the foreword because, “I care enough about the relative ill-health that Māori experience to believe that relevant aetiological hypotheses (causes) need to be tested robustly”.

He noted we must “shift the debate from unhelpful rhetoric to pragmatic science”.

Currently the best we have, across government agencies, is symptomatic relief when what is needed are efforts to cure the real causes of poor outcomes in health, education, housing, welfare, justice

– in fact all areas of public policy.

There is much to learn from science - a neutral, rigorous, systematic endeavour that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. In short, critical thinking and evidence-based decision-making is a good place for public policy to start.

Is there any hope, or are we destined to have a public service producing knee-jerk policy based on political ideology?

There are two glimmers of hope.

The first is the National Party’s social investment approach to the funding and delivery of social services. It aims to identify and deliver social services with the most positive long term impacts, using sophisticated data and evaluation to determine what works and what doesn’t.

The second is ACT’s proposed Minister and Ministry for Regulation. The intention is to “ensure new and existing regulations meet tough new standards and put red tape on the chopping block”.

We’re poorly served by an increasingly shambolic Government. Without robust leadership from ministers, much of the public service has abandoned critical thinking and isn’t providing evidence based advice.

An understanding of scientific approach is as important for public policy makers as it is for physical scientists. All is not lost if we agree an injection of science is needed. If only we can sort out the curriculum before the nation forgets what science is.

Heather Roy is a professional director and consultant. She is a former ACT MP and minister, and former reserve force officer in the NZ Army.