Michael Schneider

Knowledge brokers, usually conceptualized as passive intermediaries between scientists and policymakers in evidence-based policymaking, are understudied in the philosophy of science. Here, we challenge that usual conceptualization. As agents in their own right, knowledge brokers have their own goals and incentives, which complicate the effects of their presence at the science–policy interface.We illustrate this in an agent-based model and suggest several avenues for further exploration of the role of knowledge brokers in evidence-based policy.

I provide some philosophical groundwork for the recently proposed ‘trans-Planckian censorship’ conjecture in theoretical physics. In particular, I argue that structure formation in early universe cosmology is, at least as we typically understand it, autonomous with regards to quantum gravity, the high energy physics that governs the Planck regime in our universe. Trans-Planckian censorship is then seen as a means of rendering this autonomy an empirical constraint within ongoing quantum gravity research.