Effects of politicization on the practice of science

Since many of the problems societies face today are complex and, by origin, are scientific (e.g., climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, etc.), scientific evidence is imperative in many policymaking processes to get a deeper understanding of these issues and possible risks and to derive and justify certain policy measures. The close intertwining of science and politics, however, can have both positive (e.g., growing recognition or reputation, fact-based decision making) and negative consequences (e.g., growing science skepticism, expertocracy, and misuse of scientific credibility to pursue political agendas) for science. The first aim of our paper is to sharpen the theoretical conceptualization of the phenomenon of politicization, and the second aim is to disentangle different drivers (politics and political actors, media and journalists, science and scientists) that may fuel a politicization of science. Based on this, possible effects of politicization for individual scientists and for science as a whole and, thus, for the practice of science are discussed.