"So the third theme has been science can never be the sole determinant of a policy decision, and both politicians and scientists need to distinguish between scientific disagreements and policy disagreements when debating issues. For example, questions about how much risk a substance poses need to be differentiated from questions about how much risk the public should accept."
1st theme: politics is a legitimate part of decision-making on scientific issues.
2nd theme: the public generally holds science and scientists in very high regard, as both polling and behaviour repeatedly show. This does not mean, of course, that the public understands science or always accepts scientific conclusions, evolution being an obvious case in point.
4th theme: not everything that happens politically to science happens because of what politicians think about science.
This is from David Goldston's last Nature column.
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