Science, Technology & Public Policy: Challenges and Opportunities

This essay examines the intricate relationship between science, technology, and public policy, highlighting how scientific advancements and technological innovations influence policy decisions and societal progress. It discusses the importance of scientists' involvement in policy-making to address complex issues like economic growth, poverty, and climate change, while also acknowledging the potential risks of technocratic control and misuse of scientific knowledge. The essay further emphasizes the role of government in fostering innovation through investments in research and development, infrastructure, and entrepreneurship. It also touches upon the significance of ethical considerations, data interpretation, and reward systems in ensuring the responsible and effective integration of science and technology into public policy for the betterment of society and the economy. Desklib offers a wealth of resources, including similar essays and study tools, to help students delve deeper into this subject.

Running head: PUBLIC POLICY
Public Policy
Name of student
Name of University
Author note
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Body...........................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................6

1PUBLIC POLICY
The interaction between science and society evaluates the progress towards the
modern technological implementation, furthermore helps in promoting new technologies too
through investments in quality research and development (Dunn, 2015). The investments in
education for the young generation further promotes greater skills and knowledge
development for the present generation and enables innovation and growth to ensure
successful growth in economy and advancement in the future as well. With the technical
growth, the living standards have improved, which has created enough scopes and
opportunities for people to succeed (Ehrenberg & Smith, 2016).
The scientists should be involved in multiple ways of making public policy decisions
and if they do not provide relevant knowledge to the policy process, then there might be risks
associated with the making of decisions needed to resolve complex issues. The scientists, in
case, play major roles to address the issues and the respective solutions, might be subjected to
risks associated with the replacement of democratic governance with technocratic control.
With the social attitudes of people become more polarised, the scientists could be used as a
weapon to polarisation, which could even be harmful as their knowledge and skills might be
used for wrong purposes and even create political unrest conditions. Another major issue is
the inability or lack of interest in understanding while bringing science and technology
together to solve complex problems (Vedung, 2017). This would also help in gaining
awareness of science, furthermore remain connected to the innovation system and ensure that
science and technology transforms for a better future.
The science has the ability to solve complex issues like hunger, poverty and poor
education and even overcome the problems associated with the old customs and traditions.
There are major issues that have been faced when there was lack of competition to generate
enhanced business performance and there are multiple other bureaucratic and obstacles that
are experienced as well. The economic growth is achieved not only with the involvement of
laboratories and scientists, but also with the need for setting up a large number of institutions
that are away from the latest technologies, proper physical infrastructure capital markets that
are functioning along with management of modern communication, connectivity and
following basic rules and regulations (Hill & Hupe, 2014).
The Government with the involvement of scientists has believed that innovation is an
important aspect where investments are needed to be done on the activities that can lead to
innovation perspective. Alongside the research and development activities, there should also
be large infrastructures created for managing transfer of technology and enabling
entrepreneurship for facilitating the innovation prospects and ensuring innovation all
throughout by integrating with science and technologies (Birkland, 2015). Examples include
denying the scientific consensus on climatic change conditions and a commission to resolve
forensic science was formed, which threatened withdrawal of United States from the Paris
agreement based on the climatic change conditions. The public trusts the science because it
works and thus the scientists should deliver the relevant knowledge and skills that could help
in the implementation of new technologies and ensure higher growth in economy. Scientists
involved in poor designing, misuse of statistics and poor supervision of trainees along with
poorly implemented peer review could affect the social circumstances and furthermore create
a negative impact on the ability to manage responsibilities towards the society.

2PUBLIC POLICY
The concepts of economics is not just science, but social science whereas the science
reflects way of thinking that focuses on the development of hypothesis and then conducting
experiments that determine whether the hypothesis is right or wrong (Kaku, 2016). The real
life experiments involving physics does not always be effective for the production of
products in major areas such as communication technologies, advanced nanotechnology,
manufacturing and production along with information and communication technologies too.
The policies and laws implemented by the Government could create better conditions for
people to work in through investment of financial resources for the purpose of economic
growth and wellbeing (Gubbi et al., 2013). For example, the citizens of Korea are focused on
the creation of jobs and improve the economy of the nation. The transition team has
considered major ways to streamline the Government for enhancing the efficiency and this
could also allow for developing an infrastructure that integrates both science and technology
and accomplish the goals and objectives of reaching an economic parity with the other
developed nations. The advanced technologies nowadays need proper scientific research
while for conducting researches also, technology and science are necessary for transforming
the technologies that could be beneficial for the future.
Another complex issue could be the wrong interpretation of data and information by
rushing into a decision of selecting a smaller sample size, which could also happen due to
poor use of science and technology. It is also found that lack of rewards provided to the
employees could also be related to the poor business performance and interpretation of data
and information wrongly. The science and technology drives economic growth as well as
transforms the entire way of managing businesses to keep the employees satisfied with the
help of rewards and providing them with incentives and non-monetary rewards too. The
reward programs should be stated to the employees during the development, implementation
and revision of reward programs and also making them knowledgeable about how to gain
those is an integral part. According to the organisational policies, with the implementation of
new technologies, transparent and reasonable performance standards for the rewards should
be set. The real-time metrics could be an advanced technology that measures the transparency
of performance standards for rewards and could allow the employees to check the rewards
that could be attained through engagement in various efforts. The issues’ are needed to be
assessed for prioritising on the entrepreneurship role and innovation aspect, which could be
placed in the theoretical context. The Human capital, on the other hand, could evaluate the
various conceptions and economic policies to bring social changes that could be beneficial
and resolve the economic issues too. It should also encompass the economic rights and
human rights such as the rights of employment and ensure creating a positive change on the
economic affairs managed.

3PUBLIC POLICY
References
Birkland, T. A. (2015). An introduction to the policy process: Theories, concepts, and models
of public policy making. Routledge.
Demchenko, Y., Grosso, P., De Laat, C., & Membrey, P. (2013, May). Addressing big data
issues in scientific data infrastructure. In Collaboration Technologies and Systems
(CTS), 2013 International Conference on (pp. 48-55). IEEE.
Dunn, W. N. (2015). Public policy analysis. Routledge.
Ehrenberg, R. G., & Smith, R. S. (2016). Modern labor economics: Theory and public policy.
Routledge.
Gubbi, J., Buyya, R., Marusic, S., & Palaniswami, M. (2013). Internet of Things (IoT): A
vision, architectural elements, and future directions. Future generation computer
systems, 29(7), 1645-1660.
Hill, M., & Hupe, P. (2014). Implementing public policy: An introduction to the study of
operational governance. Sage.
Kaku, M. (2015). The future of the mind: The scientific quest to understand, enhance, and
empower the mind. Anchor Books.
Vedung, E. (2017). Public policy and program evaluation. Routledge.