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ECOLOGICAL POLICY: DEFINING APPROPRIATE ROLES FOR SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
Citation:
Lackey, R T. ECOLOGICAL POLICY: DEFINING APPROPRIATE ROLES FOR SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS. Presented at Seminar at Dept of Fisheries & Wildlife, Oregon State Univ, Corvallis, OR, January 7, 2004.
Description:
Effectively resolving the typical ecological, natural resource, or environmental policy issue requires an array of scientific information as part of the input provided to decision-makers. In my experience, 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. As with all human activity, 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 deliberative process for developing sound ecological policy because it can be a tool for policy advocacy that operates under the guise of 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 play the important role of informing (by providing policy-neutral scientific information) ecological policy discussions, but the role should be carefully circumscribed and understood by all involved parties. Scientific information and input from scientists are both important, even essential, for developing wise ecological policies, but for scientists who wish to maintain their scientific independence, involvement with policy is fraught with professional peril unless the important, but different, roles of science and policy are understood and adopted.