First, not all philosophers are ethicists. Philosophical expertise includes expertise in conceptual work: drawing out the necessary and sufficient conditions to secure desired conclusions given the concepts introduced in the statement of an argument. This work is especially valuable in teasing apart solvable — albeit difficult — problems in evidence-based policymaking from those that are impossible to solve. For instance, as part of an international collaboration on the epistemology of evidence-based policy⁶, we targeted the basic mechanics of decision-making during ongoing empirical research to cut to the heart of what it means for the policymaking process to proceed in light of current science. This enabled us to identify root causes of disagreement in policymaking: for example, placing different importance on different kinds of evidence, miscommunication or misinterpretation of evidence, or misunderstanding of the policy process. We concluded that without a particular type of transparency — transparency of reasoning — it is impossible to determine whether anything has gone wrong in specific episodes of evidence-based policymaking based only on studying outcomes of the policymaking process (R.H. et al., unpublished).

We also identified upcoming challenges in research within the biosecurity space by teasing out which residual questions for future research extracted during a survey of the literature were themselves formulated in such a way as will require philosophical expertise to solve. For instance, many of the extracted questions were identified as involving a give-and-take between values (for example, principles, ideals or morals). Merely allocating funding towards additional empirical research is insufficient in these cases, as answering questions concerning a give-and-take of values involves some amount of reasonable disagreement, must be negotiated among relevant parties, and cannot be settled by any empirical method. How to identify when disagreement is reasonable and how to properly incorporate values into science and policy are questions discussed by philosophers, generally in the research subfield known as ‘values in science’. Importantly, the philosophical work to be done is only effectively integrated with empirical research through active collaboration: scientific research and philosophical analysis can only adequately answer crucial questions at the science–policy interface in tandem.

首先，并非所有哲学家都是伦理学家。哲学专业知识包括概念工作方面的专业知识：根据论证陈述中引入的概念，找出必要和充分的条件来获得所需的结论。这项工作对于区分循证决策中可解决（尽管很困难）的问题和无法解决的问题特别有价值。例如，作为基于证据的政策认识论⁶的国际合作的一部分，我们在持续的实证研究中瞄准了决策的基本机制，以切入决策过程的核心意义。当前的科学。这使我们能够确定政策制定中出现分歧的根本原因：例如，对不同类型的证据给予不同的重视，对证据的沟通不畅或误解，或者对政策过程的误解。我们的结论是，如果没有特定类型的透明度（推理的透明度），仅根据决策过程结果的研究就不可能确定基于证据的决策的特定事件中是否出了问题（RH 等人，未发表）。

我们还通过梳理文献调查中提取的未来研究的剩余问题，确定了生物安全领域研究即将面临的挑战，这些问题本身就需要哲学专业知识来解决。例如，许多提取的问题被认为涉及价值观（例如原则、理想或道德）之间的交换。在这些情况下，仅仅为额外的实证研究分配资金是不够的，因为回答有关价值观交换的问题涉及一定程度的合理分歧，必须在相关各方之间进行谈判，并且不能通过任何实证方法来解决。如何识别何时分歧是合理的以及如何将价值观正确地纳入科学和政策中是哲学家们讨论的问题，通常在被称为“科学价值观”的研究子领域中。重要的是，要做的哲学工作只有通过积极的合作才能与实证研究有效地结合起来：科学研究和哲学分析只能同时充分回答科学与政策界面上的关键问题。