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SCIENCE, SCIENTISTS, AND POLICY ADVOCACY - MAY 16, 2007
Citation:
LACKEY, R. T. SCIENCE, SCIENTISTS, AND POLICY ADVOCACY - MAY 16, 2007. Presented at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Annual Employee Retreat, Sacramento, CA, May 16, 2007.
Description:
Effectively resolving many current ecological policy issues requires an array of scientific information. Sometimes scientific information is summarized for decision-makers by policy analysts or others, but often it comes directly from scientists. The ability of scientists (and scientific information) to constructively inform policy deliberations diminishes when what is offered as 'science' is inculcated with personal policy preferences. The scientific enterprise is not free of values, nor is it objectively independent. By definition, scientific information is ¿normative¿ when it contains implicit policy preferences and thus, by extension, promotes or at least tends to favor particular policy options. Normative science may corrupt the deliberative process for developing sound ecological policy because it is a form of policy advocacy. Normative science may be unknowingly accepted by decision-makers and the public as policy-neutral science. With its implicitly derived value and preference character, normative science provides little substantive help in reconciling the most divisive elements of ecological, natural resource, and environmental policy. My recommendation is for scientists to energetically play the important role of informing ecological policy discussions by providing policy-neutral scientific information. Providing relevant, timely, accurate, and understandable scientific information to decision-makers and the public is important, but scientists should carefully circumscribe the role of science for everyone involved. Scientific information is important, even essential, for developing wise ecological policies, but scientists should, especially when working at the science-policy interface, be vigilant not to let personal policy preferences infect their scientific input.