This talk is co-hosted by the Oxford Martin School, University College & Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, and is a continuation of the Trinity Term Series Science and Populism: from evidence to narrative

National governments may have less immediate power than they used to but, in matters large and small, someone somewhere often has to make a decision that will affect many lives. The Ministers making those decisions are human too, and what we know about how science works in government can tell us a lot about its place in wider public debates. Making decisions today, based on evidence from the past, in order to change the future: what could possibly go wrong?