The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020 and then a pandemic on 11 March 2020. In early 2020, a group of UK scientists volunteered to provide the public with up-to-date and transparent scientific information. The group formed the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Independent SAGE) and provided live weekly briefings to the public via YouTube. In this Perspective, we describe how and why this group came together and the challenges it faced. We reflect on 4 years of scientific information broadcasting and discuss the guiding principles followed by Independent SAGE, which may be broadly transferable for strengthening the scientist-public dialogue during public health emergencies in future settings. We discuss the provision of clarity and transparency, engagement with the science-policy interface, the practice of interdisciplinarity, the centrality of addressing inequity, the need for dialogue and partnership with the public, the importance of support for advocacy groups, the diversification of communication channels and modalities, the adoption of regular and organized internal communications, the resourcing and support of the group's communications and the active opposition of misinformation and disinformation campaigns. We reflect on what we might do differently next time and propose research aimed at building the evidence base for optimizing informal scientific advisory groups in crisis situations.
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