Despite being important policy stakeholders, the youth remain largely absent from policy building and implementation. However, the growing literature has vividly illustrated the capacity of the youth from diverse age groups to make meaningful contributions to policy. In particular, university students are emerging as significant actors in science policy owing to their unique perspectives and knowledge. By drawing from the literature, we emphasize that the youth are capable of directly contributing to diverse policy matters while also indirectly benefiting from their participation. Consequently, there is a crucial need for initiating programs for promoting youth participation. Furthermore, to ensure the fruitfulness of such programs, more systematic research ought to be done with regards to the accomplishments and challenges of youth participation.

We examine arguments regarding the use of mechanistic evidence in assessing treatment efficacy and find that advocates and critics of EBM+ have largely been talking past each other due to a difference in focus. We explore aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease as a case which may speak to the role of EBM+ in pharmaceutical regulation. The case suggests the debate may be more fruitful if philosophers confine debates to particular domains of medicine and weigh in prospectively instead of relying on historical cases where outcomes are known and which are susceptible to hindsight bias.