Answer:
A) only one of the factors that influence policy makers
Explanation:
Politics is extremely complicated, since everyone knows what should be done, but no one does it. Politicians live in an alternate universe where only what they say or make up is valid, and reality doesn't really matter very much. And I'm talking about the US where a few government agencies do rely on scientific research (e.g. NASA) and the government also provides grants mostly to universities but sometimes to private companies also in order for them to investigate certain issues.
But even with tons of scientific research done, politicians do as they want, e.g. the current government rejects global warming even though government scientists believe the contrary.
When politicians are deciding on different policies, scientific truth is not something that they usually rely on. Luckily for us, it still exists and at least we know about them. In the rest of the world things work out the same, but scientific research is either non-existent or not available to the public.
