Do we need more scientists in Parliament? They may not make any difference

There is one scientist in the current House of Commons, and only a handful more with any kind of scientific background. This fact is frequently used to illustrate Parliament’s apparent inability to bring about evidence-based policymaking. However, as Mark Goodwin argues, parliamentarians with scientific backgrounds don’t tend to vote any differently from their non-elected counterparts, suggesting that either efforts to improve the number of scientists in the House are either pointless, or that they make their expert contributions in other, less visible, ways.