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July 07, 2006
The Honest Broker, Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You
Posted to Author: Pielke Jr., R. | The Honest Broker
This week I shipped off to Cambridge University Press my final revisions on my forthcoming book, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics. It is scheduled to be published early next year. Consequently, I’ll be shamelessly promoting the book here until then! An article in this week’s Nature on science and advocacy (Thanks CW!) makes me think that the book is well timed, here is an excerpt:
For conservation biologists, it's the question that won't go away. Should they make the leap from describing the facts of a case, to telling people what ought to be done?Biologist Reed Noss of the University of Central Florida believes they should. Addressing a meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) in San Jose, California, last week, he tried to convince the crowd that they have a responsibility to be not just scientists dealing in objective facts, but also advocates pushing particular policies.
But Mike Scott of the University of Idaho, organizer of the symposium, thinks the SCB should stick to the facts. "We need to position ourselves as the go-to authority on conservation matters worldwide," he says. "We can more forcefully do that if we do rigorous science, and then leave it for the decision-makers to figure out what to do with that."
The advocacy question is perhaps more difficult for conservation biologists than many other scientists. Their field is already premised on the value of having lots of species around. And most of these scientists got into the field because of their strong feelings about nature, the wilderness and often particular species.
Peter Brussard, a population biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, points out that the debate goes back to at least 1951. Then the Nature Conservancy split from the Ecological Society of America because of a dispute over whether scientists should do more than just describe.
These days, he thinks, "the debate has been reframed a little bit", with more researchers willing to be advocates. In the end, he says, much depends on the definition of advocacy. "We never seem to get beyond semantics."
For example, does advocacy include sending a paper to policy-makers? Or to the press? Or reiterating your findings if you don't think policy-makers have taken enough notice of them?
Back in San Jose, the US Geological Survey's Susan Haseltine warns the meeting of the harm a scientist can do to their credibility by being an activist. "I don't believe you can be strong in science and in advocacy," she says.
Hopefully my book will help to inform such a discussion about advocacy and the role of scientists in policy and politics.
Posted on July 7, 2006 12:45 PMComments
Congrats on finishing the book!
As someone who attended the “science and advocacy” symposium at the Conservation Biology Annual Meeting, your book has great promise to inform such discussions – at least portions of the debate (if this blog is any indication of the ideas in your book). It is worth noting that of central focus at this symposium, while discussing science and advocacy more generally, was the appropriateness of advocating for a preferred policy options in the refereed literature.
While the perceived tension between science and advocacy is rife in many scientific communities, Conservation Biology is in many ways unique. There are at least two relevant factors worth discussing to understand the context of this discussion within the discipline.
1) The formation of Conservation Biology as a scientific disciple was an overt policy alternative developed in response to a perceived societal challenge. This is evident in the first issue of Conservation Biology where Michael Soulé (1987) stated that the discipline arose to solve “the biological diversity crisis…[of] the twenty-first century.” Certainly other scientific disciplines evolved in response to societal challenges. What makes the discipline of Conservation Biology unique is that the discipline explicitly embraces an overriding value preference as its foundation. Biodiversity = Good; Loss of Biodiversity = Bad. There is little attempt to hide this preference under the guise of objective science.
2) The identification of “Conservation Biology” is misleading to the lay public. Conservation Biology is not just about biology in a conservation setting. In recent years many political scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, policy scientists, etc–often with little biophysical science background–fully consider themselves to be conservation biologists. As such, the content of the journal has shifted to include a considerable amount of social science research. It may go without saying that the professional norms between traditional disciplines (particularly the biological and social) and specialized jargon are not always consistent. There is quite a bit of confusion among the diverse set of specialists who call themselves “conservation biologists” what constitutes policy research, what constitutes policy advocacy, and when, where, and what types of advocacy are appropriate.
In other words, the science/advocacy discussion that Nature reported on revolves around at least two different but related challenges. (1) A paradigm clash between scientific management (those who see the separation of science and values as necessary for effective policy) and a contextual paradigm (those who see the integration of science and values as necessary for honest policy inquiry/practice). (2) A field that is wrestling with how to integrate different disciplines in a cohesive fashion.
Posted by: David Cherney at July 7, 2006 06:23 PM
Congrats! I very much look forward to picking up a copy... I trust you'll let us know when it's available.
Posted by: James Bradbury ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 12, 2006 08:49 AM