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Advocating Science: Practical Approaches to Presenting Information and Results Without Advocating Policy or Preference
Citation:
Goodfellow, W., Timothy J. Canfield, AND P. Guiney. Advocating Science: Practical Approaches to Presenting Information and Results Without Advocating Policy or Preference. IN: SETAC North America 40th Annual Meeting, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development, Washington, DC, 1-3, (2020).
Impact/Purpose:
Currently presenting technical information and one’s position is seemingly under increasing pressure to make sweeping claims, maximize impacts or simply enhance being noticed. Environmental management and policy are only as good as the science that informs the discussions and ultimate decisions. The purpose of this session is to present information that focusses on the theme “Advocating Science: Practical Approaches to Presenting Science Information and Results without Advocating Policy or Preference”. The speakers provided talks with examples and experiences where science was either presented that achieved the non-advocacy results of the stated session or where presented talks fell short. This session will prompt a wide group of international scientists to start thinking about their experiences with how science is presented and where it could have been presented in a more policy neutral format. It will force scientists to evaluate their approaches to presenting science without advocating preferences in action or policy and help support the ultimate goal of seeing more science presented in a non-advocacy manner.
Description:
Environmental management and policy is only as good as the science that informs the discussions and ultimate decisions. Without a sound understanding of how environmental systems work and how stressors on these systems can affect ecosystems, programs intended to manage these systems will continually be off target and policies developed to protect and enhance these systems may be inadequate due to this lack of scientific understanding. An important aspect of the science that forms the foundational information needed to make correct decisions for managing these systems and developing policy is that the science and how it was obtained has to be transparent, well documented and impartial to the potential regulatory decisions that are under consideration. It is our contention that lack of proper science integrity and general misuse of science has become increasingly common in ecotoxicology and chemistry. This has the effect of undermining the scientific process and the confidence in environmental science. We live in a time where our science and scientific information is continually derided, and its validity or perceived lack of bias is called into question. How do we move forward to produce science that is impartial, fact-based, testable, does not presuppose a policy preference, and is a soundly empirical set of information that provides the necessary data and weight-of-evidence foundation that all good decisions must rely on? In short, how do we ensure that our science is objective and our scientists are trusted? In this session we will encourage discussion on how to produce good science that in and of itself does not advocate any particular policy position, but rather simply provides the foundation for decision makers to draw upon to address the environmental problems faced by society. This session will explore approaches and practical strategies to conduct and produce scientific information that is bias neutral, non-advocacy and impartial to positions of the decision makers.