Scientists at Westminster -- MPs Visiting the Labs -- the Royal Society's Version of "Science Meets Parliament". (November 17, 2005)

    Robert May, President of the Royal Society, is to host a reception for UK MPs and scientists today as part of the Royal Society's fifth annual "Westminster Week" in its continuing attempt to build bridges between parliamentarians and some of Britain's "best researchers".

According to the Royal Society's media release, "Twenty-five scientists will spend the week 'shadowing' MPs to gain first-hand experience of how Parliament deals with science issues. The scientists will be introduced to the work of the Parliamentary Scientific Committee, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and the Science and Technology Select Committees of both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. They will attend a number of Parliamentary meetings including evidence sessions of the Select Committees."

For their part the scientists in the coming weeks will host the MPs giving them the opportunity to visit the scientists in their universities and research institutes in order to learn about "the issues that researchers face."

Lord Selborne, chairman of the Royal Society's Science in Society Committee, points out that it's the scientific issues with strong political aspects such as cloning, climate change and GM foods that principally interest the parliamentarians. While understandable, the narrow focus tends to hamper the MPs gaining a better understanding of the overall role to be played by mathematics and the enabling sciences for nation's intellectual and economic wellbeing.

Over the last five years 74 MPs and 93 scientists have taken part in the scheme and this year ten of the 25 MPs taking part were newly elected in May.

Unfortunately, it's not at all clear what effect the scheme has had on increasing mutual understanding between the scientists and their public masters.