Fall 2011 Integration of Environmental

Science and Policy

South River Virginia downsream of the source of historic Hg input from 1929-1950. The management of the river is being determined by a variety of governmental agencies and NGOs.

 

Wayne G. Landis
Director, Institute of Environmental Toxicology
Huxley College of the Environment  

Contact Information

Email:wayne.landis@wwu.edu

Email is a great way to contact me, be specific with your questions or comments and I usually can get right back to you. If we can not resolve the issue via email we will set up an appointment. Make an appointment with the Institute of Enviromental Toxicology office @ 650-6136. The staff are great at fitting students into my schedule.

ES345 Thursday 2-4 PM

A major theme among many Federal agencies that manage the environment is the attempt to integrate science into policy making.  Instead of policy determining the reporting of research results with noted events at NASA and NOAA, the current administration is asking how does science inform policy decisions.   During the previous administration the USEPA contracted with the National Research Council to prepare a report reviewing how science can be better integrated into the making of policy.  The resulting report Science and Decisions:  Advancing Risk Assessment (2008) summarizes the results of this effort.  There is now an USEPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) committee continuing this effort. 

This seminar will investigate the integration of science and policy within EPA, other Federal agencies and state and local governments.  The first two weeks of the course will be an introduction to the process of science, a review of Kuhn, Popper and Oreskes, and the interaction between observational and experimental data, theory and simulation.  Policy formulation under several federal level programs will also be introduced.  The rest of the seminar will be the detailed examination of several case studies presented by the students.  During the quarter local policy makers-shapers will also be invited to discuss their experiences in melding science and policy.

Another goal of this course is to instill in each student the ability to read and synthesize different kinds of information, to present their ideas in a clear manner, and to facilitate the use of the primary literature. Each of these items is in the typical tool box of a professional in environmental studies, whether it is science or the social sciences and policy making.

 

Suggested Reading Materials, two are very strongly recommended.

 

Orekes N and Conway E. 2010. Merchants of Doubt. We are going to discuss Orekes' ideas about the use of science in making policy and this is one of her latest efforts. Conway is a reporter and the two of them discuss how certain groups attack scientific results when they do not match the goals of the particular organization.
National Research Councill. Science and Decisions 2008, NRC Press. 2008. The National Research Council, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, prepared this report under a contract with EPA and was completed during the preceding administrtion. The coupling of science and decision making is now a looming issue at EPA and within other scientific agencies.
McGarity, T. and Wagner W. 2010. Bending Science How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research. Very interesting work describing how research is attacked in order to meet policy goals. Especially interesting are their suggestions for preserving science.
Strongly recommended Popper, K. R. 2002. The Logic of Scienfic Discovery. This book, first published in 1934, is one of the foundations of how science is actually performed. One of the foundations of the book is the premise that experiments are critical and that the falsification of a hypothesis is fundamental to the scientific endevor.
Strongly recommended Kuhn TS. 1996.The Sturcture of Scientific Revoutions 3rd Edition. Did you ever want to subvert the ruling paradigm? Well this is the book that defined paradigm and why it is always important to look for holes. This book is one of the most influential about how the scientific process actually works.
Taleb NN.  2007.  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  One of the best books on coupling decision making and management to systems. Many of his examples are economic, but they also apply to events that are observed in ecological structures. In addition the book is a great read.