The launch of the new Ask for Evidence campaign from Sense about Science is timely given the subject of Terrence’s blog yesterday.
Ask for Evidence aims to get more people challenging those who make misleading claims about science and medicine – companies, advertisers, campaigners, journalists and of course Government – and importantly, provides them with tools and support to help them do so.
I support this wholeheartedly: openness to challenge isn’t just good policy, it’s good science. Scientific understanding only moves forward by scrutiny, discussion, testing and disproof.
At the FSA, being open, transparent and science- and evidence-based are core principles, and I think we measure up to this challenge pretty well – but we’re always open to suggestions on how we can do better. I hope people will be inspired by this campaign. We’re happy to take our share of scrutiny and publicly provide evidence to justify the decisions we make.
So please, if you have comments on the Agency’s approach share them…
