Australian Chief Scientist releases new ‘Trust in Science’ paper

The Australian Chief Scientist, Dr Cathy Foley has recently released a paper Trust in Science: Clarifying the distinctions between research integrity, research quality, excellence, and impact. In the paper, Dr Foley explains the differences between integrity and quality, and highlights how both aspects underpin scientific excellence and impact. The paper comes about following Dr Foley’s concerns “that in debates involving science — especially those focused on contentious issues — the integrity of the science is sometimes wrongly questioned.”

Dr Foley describes the update of the 2022 Scientific Consensus Statement (SCS) on land use impacts on Great Barrier Reef water quality and ecosystem condition (a joint Australian and Queensland Government project) which is being led by the C2O Consulting team as “an exemplar of how to bring science to policy”. The SCS process has been designed to build trust and confidence in the science through early engagement with a wide range of stakeholders and end-users and follows a robust, transparent, and structured evidence-based method which is underpinned by an extensive independent peer review process. As part of the process, the Australian and Queensland Chief Scientists are providing oversight to ensure the methods used to develop the SCS are rigorous and follow best practice.

Read the full paper to learn more about research integrity, research quality, excellence and impact.