I think this is all a bit of a red herring. The question is how do policymakers deal with politically charged topics. And I personally haven't seen cases where more research or "science" is the answer, it's just crutch that people use to try and make their political point.
The article mentions climate change, which is a great example of something that's been scienced to death. The future is unknowable, there will always be some "we can never know" component to it, but that doesn't necessitate more research to find a smoking gun that will shut down all sceptics, not does it require that since we can't prove it, we ignore it. Some mix of balance of probabilities plus public will easily passes the threshold for doing something. So do something. Sequester CO2, build dikes, if the whole thing comes to naught, it won't be the most wasteful thing government did.
A pragmatic approach is what's needed, not some philosophical search for how we define truth, which just offsets the problem one layer and doesn't change the politics at all