Specialists from academia and industry, along with experts from within government, make up the participation, which will vary depending on the emergency.
"[3] The May advice was updated in May 2011 in a document entitled Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees (CoPSAC 2011).
Their attendance and participation was widely criticised,[17] in particular by other attendees "shocked, concerned and worried for the impartiality of advice".
[20] Patrick Vallance argued in a letter to Parliament that scientists were protected by the anonymity from "lobbying and other forms of unwanted influence".
[22] A report in The Guardian stated that attendees at an April 2020 meeting of the group included:[23] Senior advisers: Medical and scientific experts: Political advisers: Vallance has written that SAGE includes scientists and experts from more than twenty separate institutions.
It was reported that one participant considered that Cummings' interventions had sometimes inappropriately influenced what is supposed to be an impartial scientific process; another expressed shock when Cummings first began participating in SAGE discussions, in February, viewing this as unwanted political influence on what should be "unadulterated scientific data".
[18] In May 2020, Professor Neil Ferguson resigned from SAGE after The Telegraph revealed he had violated lockdown rules to meet with a partner.
The following were included on the minutes of a 11 March meeting:[29] Scientific experts: Observers and government officials: Secretariat: The following were added to the list of participants:[22] An April 2020 article in The Guardian written by Richard Coker cited SAGE as a potential example of "scientific groupthink" in which disagreement and/or conflicting views are minimised to reach a consensus.
[30] Although disagreement is not preferable, this may ultimately lead to potentially irrational decision-making as counter views are not encouraged.
The editors remarked how in France hospital occupancy data were indeed published daily, while they were told by the NHS to submit a Freedom of Information request, which can take up to 28 days.
As an alternative, a group of scientists created Independent SAGE, chaired by Sir David Anthony King, a former Government Chief Scientific Advisor, in early May 2020 to "provide a clear structure on which an effective policy should be based given the inevitability that the virus will continue to cross borders".