Recently in Policy Category

From Rob McDonald at Cool Green Science:

It is not the job of scientists to produce papers that reinforce a preconceived advocacy position. Rather, it is the job of scientists to lay the facts on the table, so those facts can inform advocacy. (emphasis in the original)

If that sounds familiar, it may be because I wrote this about a month ago:

[T]here's one thing we all must do: be true to the science. We have to be honest about what the data say, even if the data tell us things about the policy we'd prefer to adopt that we'd rather not hear.

Go read all of Rob McDonald's post. It's well worth your time.

I may not be very good at reaching a broad audience, but thanks to Randy Olson's Don't Be Such a Scientist, I have a good idea of the skills I need to develop if I'm ever going to do it. In their recent book, Unscientific America, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum argue that scientists are partly to blame for science's lack of prominence, relevance, and influence, precisely because we haven't paid attention to the skills that Randy describes.

They won't get an argument from me on that point. In fact, that's the point I argued in my presidential address to the Botanical Society of America a couple of months ago. Here's how Mooney and Kirshenbaum put it:

[W]e need a nation in which science has far more prominence in politics and the media, far more relevance to the life of every American, far more intersections with other walks of life, and ultimately, far more influence where it truly matters -- namely, in setting the agenda for the future as far out as we can possibly glimpse it. (emphasis added)

Houston, we have a problem.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum gloss over a distinction that's as hard to communicate as it is important to understand, the difference between what scientists can conclude about the world as scientists and what science-informed policies should be adopted. Science should inform the agenda for the future, but science alone can't set it.

Take climate change for example.