🚀 go-pugleaf

On 12 Feb 98 at 22:11, Carl Adams wrote:

> ....The majority of individuals willing
> to sacrifice a significant portion of their lives towards the study
> and research of our environment don't do so to become a public
> spokesperson.  It is not their responsibility to preach but rather
> our responsibility to learn from them and then pass on the
> information.  They (professors, research scientists) don't have the
> time, they already have their hands full with writing proposals,
> researching, publishing, teaching, and trying to make tenure.
>
....
>  Instead of criticizing the scientific
> community for not becoming environmental spokespersons we the
> intermediaries must concentrate on utilizing and disseminating the
> knowledge they have gained through countless hours of hard work....

I think it is not asking too much for those of us who do
environmental and ecological research (or in any discipline with
applied applications, for that matter) to take an active role in
getting our results into the public policy discussion, when and
where it is appropriate. Intermediaries, as you call yourself, are
certainly essential because there is simply too much information and
too many public forums (fora?) to leave the work to any small group.
The more we can get scientific results into the public domain, the
better off we all are. The public gets the benefit of the work, and
in return, they will likely be more understanding of the need to
fund the work. The time committment and other issues you bring up are
important considerations, but not reasons in themselves for
scientists to remain unengauged.

The dilemma that I have is the issue of uncertainty. In the
scientific community, vehement opponents on an issue can remain
productive colleagues, in part, because we all know that science is a
process of progressive discovery. Uncertainty in current results
inspires additional research to better understand (reduce the
uncertainty) the phenomena under investigation. But there is no
public policy analog to scientific uncertainty, that I am aware of.
So whoever interprets the scientific results for public discussion
has to discard one of the most important elements of those results.
If they do not discard the uncertainty, they are criticized for
making statements that are not useful. This is one of the principle
reasons researchers avoid public discussions.

This leaves the responsiblity for transferance in the hands of
others. Many are competent and sincere intermediaries.
Unfortunately, many are also demagogues (of all stripes) who are
only too happy to fill a knowledge vacuum with misinformation,
unfounded conclusions, or outright lies.

A great service to humanity (and the natural world) would be the
development and widespread implementation of a public policy analog
to scientific uncertainty. This should not be a discussion of
environmentalists versus ecologists, rather it is environmentalists
and ecologists.

Dan Tufford, Ph.D.
University of South Carolina
Health Sciences Building - Room 311
Columbia, SC 29208

Phone:  803-777-6994
Fax:    803-777-3391
E-mail: dtufford@sph.sc.edu