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The duty of scientific academies is to lead public policy through expertise and evidence-based solutions in a changing world.
Scientific academies are not prize clubs. They are public institutions with independence, expertise, and convening power. In a period of climate instability, widening inequality, and declining trust in science, these attributes carry a duty to lead. This is not leadership as authority or control, but as stewardship: setting standards, shaping policy with evidence, mobilising networks to deliver practical solutions, and assessing impact in the public interest. Academies exist because of public investment in their members; their obligation is to apply collective expertise to the most pressing and serious societal challenges of the time.
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Timmis et al. (2026) studied this question.
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