Patrick Brown of The Breakthrough Institute had an interesting Tweet today. It reminded me of an apocryphal story of the Forest Service’s Dr. Tom Mills, an economist. When working as Station Director at the Pacific Northwest Station during the development of the ICBEMP.
For those of you who weren’t around then, that was the “Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project.” It was finalized in 2000. I heard it referred to as “ickybump” but have also heard other pronunciations. This was one of those massively expensive and lengthy effort by scientists to do some kind of regional assessment/analysis/planning.
I think it would be interesting, just as with the NWFP, to take an interdisciplinary group not affiliated with the effort to review the original intent and whether it was successful or not. It’s intriguing to me which efforts seem to get a formal “lessons learned” and which do not.
As I recall, I was on a WO review of PNW and Tom Quigley seemed to believe that people who didn’t want tree cutting or grazing would change their minds based on monitoring. I remember thinking “do you really understand these people? What are your alternative hypotheses to “more info, folks will agree?” I also wondered whether the fact that scientists and monitorers would be getting more work (or the Station getting more bucks) make this a bit of a conflict of interest for them?
What disagreements of that time have been resolved since, and which not? Maybe more long-term research on conflict resolution efficacy would have been a useful investment?
Anyway, back to the Tom Mills story.
Supposedly he said something like “I don’t want to see any “shoulds” in this (ICBEMP) report” which led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the authors (according to the story).
Maybe other scientists aren’t as rooted in philosophy as economists. Maybe they are not required to take courses in the philosophy of science. Maybe, since economists get feedback from the real world sooner, and results can be observable to all without sophisticated equipment, many have more humility.
One more ICBEMP economist story.. I remember Richard Haynes remarking that he was surprised to find that the biologists he was working with didn’t use sensitivity analysis in their models. And yet, some lump all this stuff together and claim the authority of “science.” Others among us remain skeptical.
Anyway, back to Patrick’s tweet. Patrick’s background is in atmospheric science although he has recently done some work in wildfire, as we shall see.
*********************
Is high-impact climate science really just “science”?
Greg Mankiw’s, Principles of Macroeconomics textbook makes an interesting distinction between the different roles that economists play: “When economists are trying to explain the world, they are scientists. When they are trying to help improve it, they are policy advisers.” He alludes to Hume’s is-ought distinction, saying scientists make descriptive claims about how the world is, not prescriptive claims about how the world ought to be.
Critically, he says, “Deciding what is good or bad policy is not just a matter of science. It also involves our views on ethics, religion, and political philosophy.” This is a very interesting distinction in the context of high-impact “scientific” publishing on climate change because in order for “science” to be “high-impact” (of sufficient interest to a general readership), it is often incredibly helpful for it to be framed as having important prescriptive implications for contemporary policy debates. The journal Nature, for example, recommends that the end of the abstract/intro paragraph give a “broader perspective” on the findings, which in practice often means “state why these findings are of sufficient interest and palatability to our readership.”
In the climate science landscape, this recommendation often manifests as studies focused on the physical and biological world but concluding with a prescriptive claim about how the world ought to be (a claim that does not actually follow from the study itself because the study is way too narrow to make said claim).
These types of abstracts very much blur the lines between Mankiw’s definition of a “scientist” and a “policy advisor.” What’s particularly insidious is that having a strong prescriptive implication on e.g., reducing greenhouse gas emissions acts as a selection mechanism for what studies get published and amplified as the most important “science”. This muddying of the waters between researchers acting as scientists or policy advisors wouldn’t be such a problem except that the public perceives that a journal like Nature is a scientific journal, and thus, it produces more-or-less authoritative truths, not claims that rely on ethical, philosophical, and moral assumptions. This can be partially remedied if the public understands that the prescriptive statements emanating from these journals are subjective and do not deserve the perceived authority typically bestowed upon the idealized concept of “Science.”
We’ve talked a little about energy transmission, especially in conjunction with renewable energy production, and the need to improve the electrical grid. One thought seems to be that conservation interests are a barrier to that. It turns out that the coal industry may be an even bigger barrier. At least, here’s an example from the Trump Administration.
The Seams study demonstrated that stronger connections between the U.S. power system’s massive eastern and western power grids would accelerate the growth of wind and solar energy—hugely reducing American reliance on coal, the fuel contributing the most to climate change, and saving consumers billions.
But a study like Seams was politically dangerous territory for a federally funded lab while coal-industry advocates—and climate-change deniers—reign in the White House.
According to interviews with five current and former DOE and NREL sources, supported by more than 900 pages of documents and emails obtained by InvestigateWest through Freedom of Information Act requests and by additional documentation from industry sources, Trump officials would ultimately block Seams from seeing the light of day. And in doing so, they would set back America’s efforts to slow climate change.
The fallout was swift: The lab grounded Bloom and Novacheck (the lead researchers), prohibiting them from presenting the Seams results or even discussing the study outside NREL. And the $1.6 million study itself disappeared. NREL yanked the completed findings from its website and deleted power-flow visualizations from its YouTube channel.
If NREL researchers are able to work unencumbered by political concerns and release Seams in its entirety, it could help point the U.S. toward a greener future, in which a robust economy runs on renewable energy. But for now, Seams is demonstrating an unintended finding—that when administrations stick their hands into scientific research, politically inconvenient truths are in peril.
The author indicated later that Congress had demanded that the study be released (and here it is).
This story is another example of political interference in science production and distribution. I remain a strong skeptic that the pro-environment side can match this kind of interference by the coal lobby and “climate-change deniers” (as some have suggested here, including self-proclaimed climate-change “skeptics”). It also seems obvious that this direct intervention is a lot more influential than any bias that exists in research funding.
The 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking charges the Office of Science and Technology Policy to (1) review agency scientific integrity policy effectiveness and (2) to develop a framework for regular assessment and iterative improvement of agency scientific integrity policies and practices (Framework). In January, the Biden Administration released the Framework. It includes a “first-ever Government-wide definition of scientific integrity,” a roadmap of activities and outcomes to achieve an ideal state of scientific integrity, a Model Scientific Integrity Policy, as well as critical policy features and metrics that OSTP will use to iteratively assess agency progress. Here is that definition:
Scientific integrity is the adherence to professional practices, ethical behavior, and the principles of honesty and objectivity when conducting, managing, using the results of, and communicating about science and scientific activities. Inclusivity, transparency, and protection from inappropriate influence are hallmarks of scientific integrity.
The 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking also charges OSTP and NSTC to “review agency scientific integrity policies and consider whether they prevent political interference in the conduct, management, communication, and use of science …” The “Model Scientific Integrity Policy for United States Federal Agencies” says this:
It is the policy of this agency to: 1. Prohibit political interference or inappropriate influence in the funding, design, proposal, conduct, review, management, evaluation, or reporting of scientific activities and the use of scientific information.
Ensure that agency scientists may communicate their scientific activities objectively without political interference or inappropriate influence, while at the same time complying with agency policies and procedures for planning and conducting scientific activities, reporting scientific findings, and reviewing and releasing scientific products. Scientific products (e.g., manuscripts for scientific journals, presentations for workshops, conferences, and symposia) shall adhere to agency review procedures.
It defines these terms:
Political interference refers to interference conducted by political officials and/or motivated by political considerations.
Inappropriate influence refers to the attempt to shape or interfere in scientific activities or the communication about or use of scientific activities or findings against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification.
I found it rather interesting, given the way the these terms are used, that the 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking actually says this:
Improper political interference in the work of Federal scientists or other scientists who support the work of the Federal Government and in the communication of scientific facts undermines the welfare of the Nation, contributes to systemic inequities and injustices, and violates the trust that the public places in government to best serve its collective interests.
Executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall establish and enforce scientific-integrity policies that ban improper political interference in the conduct of scientific research and in the collection of scientific or technological data, and that prevent the suppression or distortion of scientific or technological findings, data, information, conclusions, or technical results.
Deliberate or careless? Could there be “proper” political interference, especially given the distinction made about “inappropriate” influence (which is defined in terms of “interference”)?
Any way, it’s good to know someone is working on this aspect of scientific integrity. And it seems to be helping – compare these results of the Union of Concerned Scientists 2023 surveys of scientists at federal agencies with those from 2018. (Unfortunately, while the 2023 survey includes USDA, it did not include the Forest Service.)
AKA: Ignorance and Arrogance Still Reign Supreme at the Sierra Club.
I picked this up from Nick Smith’s Newsletter (sign up here)
Emphasis added by myself as follows:
1) Brown Text for items NOT SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation. 2) Bold Green Text for items SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.
3) >>>Bracketed Italics for my added thoughts based on 59 years of experience and review of a vast range of literature going back to way before the internet.<<<
“Proforestation” is a relatively new term in the environmental community. The Sierra Club defines it as: “extending protections so as to allow areas of previously-logged forest to mature, removing vast amounts of atmospheric carbon and recovering their ecological and carbon storage potential.” >>>Apparently, after 130 years of existence, the Sierra Club still doesn’t know much about plant physiology, the carbon cycle or the increased risk of calamitous wild fire spread caused by the close proximity of stems and competition driven mortality in unmanged stands (i.e. the science of plant physiology regarding competition, limited resources and fire spread physics). Nor have they thought out the real risk of permanent destruction of the desired ecosystems nor the resulting impact on climate change.<<<
Not only must we preserve untouched forests, proponents argue, but we must also walk away from previously-managed forests too. People should be entirely separate from forest ecology and succession. >>>More abject ignorance and arrogant woke policy based only on vacuous wishful thinking.<<<
Except humans have managed forests for millennia. In North America, Indigenous communities managed forests and sustained its resources for at least 8,000 years prior to European settlement. It is true people have not always managed forests sustainably. Forest practices of the late 19th century are a good example. >>>Yes, and the political solution pushed on us by the Sierra Club and other faux conservationists beginning with false assumptions about the Northern Spotted Owl was to throw out the continuously improving science (i.e. Continuous Process Improvement [CPI]). The concept of using the science to create sustainable practices and laws that regulated the bad practices driven by greed and arrogance wasn’t even considered seriously. As always, the politicians listened to the well heeled squeaky voters. Now, their arrogant ignorance has given us National Ashtrays, destruction of soils, and an ever increasing probability that great acreages of forest ecosystems will be lost to the generations that follow who will also have to cope with the exacerbated climate change. So here we are, in 30+/- years the Faux Conservationists have made things worse than the greedy timber barons ever could have. And the willfully blind can’t seem to see what they have done. Talk about arrogance.<<<
Forest management provides tools to correct past mistakes and restore ecosystems. But Proforestation even seems to reject forest restoration that helps return a forest to a healthy state, including controlling invasive species, maintaining tree diversity, returning forest composition and structure to a more natural state.
Proforestation is not just a philosophical exercise. The goal is to ban active forest management on public lands. It has real policy implications for the future management (or non-management) of forests and how we deal with wildfires, climate change and other disturbances.
We’ve written before about how this concept applies to so-called “carbon reserves.” Now, powerful and well-funded anti-forestry groups are pressuring the Biden Administration to set-aside national forests and other federally-owned lands under the guise of “protecting mature and old-growth” trees.
In its recent white paper on Proforestation (read more here), the Society of American Foresters writes that “preservation can be appropriate for unique protected areas, but it has not been demonstrated as a solution for carbon storage or climate change across all forested landscapes.”
Proforestation doesn’t work when forests convert from carbon sinks into carbon sources. A United Nations report pointed out that at least 10 World Heritage sites – the places with the highest formal environmental protections on the planet – are net sources of carbon pollution. This includes the iconic Yosemite National Park.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes active forest management will yield the highest carbon benefits over the long term because of its ability to mitigate carbon emitting disturbance events and store carbon in harvested wood products. Beyond carbon, forest management ensures forests continue to provide assets like clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and economic activity.
>>>(i.e. TRUE SUSTAINABILITY)<<<
Forest management offers strategies to manage forests for carbon sequestration and long-term storage.Proforestation rejects active stewardship that can not only help cool the planet, but help meet the needs of people, wildlife and ecosystems. You can expect to see this debate intensify in 2023.
At times like these, we must anchor to our core values, particularly safety. In PL 5, the reality is we are resource limited. The core tenet of the Forest Service’s fire response strategy is public and firefighter safety above all else…
At this time, for all of these reasons, managing fires for resource benefit is a strategy we will not use. In addition, until further notice, ignited prescribed fire operations will be considered only in geographic areas at or below PL 2 and only with the approval of the Regional Forester after consulting with the Chief’s Office.
What I think is missed in the fire scientists’ letter is consideration of the judgment call about what we call in collaborative work “going slow to go fast” or how building trust early on by going slow can accelerate support and movement forward in the future. Again, to my mind, that’s not a question (go slow or go fast at this point in time at this geographic scale) that fire science can tell us; in fact, I don’t think that any social science discipline can tell us one specific answer. Thought experiment: suppose economists claimed to speak for “science”? Or political ecologists? Indeed, there are more disciplines around today than you can shake a charred branch at, many of whom claim authority for their view of “science.”
Here’s the way I would ask the key question the Chief faces “Given current 2021 conditions, what is the best thing to do, with firefighter and public safety primary, to also give the FS the best chance of being able to manage WFU and PBs in the future?”. It’s ultimately a people/land/resources judgment call that we have experts and experienced people hired, trained, and selected to make. Of course, there’s a science piece to the puzzle, but it’s one of many pieces. And any particular discipline is one of many science pieces. Just in the fire sciences, there are people who study communities and prescribed fire, scientists who study firefighters, and so on. Even if you had a panel with all those disciplines represented (some kind of interdisciplinary EPA-like Science Advisory Board) you would need to include management science.. which has its own body of literature on the role of intuition in decision-making. Here’s just one review of that literature. So we can’t even pick one social science discipline that can claim unique authority to what “science” says to help address the “what to do” question.
Here’s one experience that may have influenced Coloradans. The North Fork fire was a prescribed burn that got out of control, and apparently is having a long term effect on acres treated by the State. This story is from Colorado Public Radio (CPR).
Burning authority
In March of 2012, the Colorado State Forest Service was managing a prescribed fire southeast of Conifer. The winds picked up on a hot and dry day, which started the Lower North Fork Fire. It killed three people, and destroyed nearly two dozen homes.
Colorado State Forester Mike Lester said the event was traumatic for many — agency staffers included.
“A lot of really good people really felt like their life’s work was tarnished in some way,” Lester said. “And it was unfair because they applied the techniques at that point in time we thought were the right ways to do it.”
An independent review of the fire found no individual at fault. But victims criticized the review and wanted change. A bill was passed, which ended the state forest service’s authority to do prescribed burning. The agency’s fire unit employees were moved to the Division of Fire Prevention and Control.
Lester doesn’t think that the Colorado State Forest Service needs that authority reinstated.
“We would be happy to assist, but as far as taking the lead role again, there’s no point in that because [the Division of Fire Prevention and Control] does prescribed fire.”
But the division is burning a lot less. Permit data from the state shows that Fire Prevention and Control burns about an eighth of the acreage each year that the Colorado State Forest Service once did.
Mike Morgan, the division director, said drier conditions fueled by climate change, including Colorado’s persistent drought, makes burning challenging.
“And the more homes we get in the areas where we would typically consider using fire as a tool, the more risk or hazard there is associated with using fire as a tool to do that,” Morgan said.
But federal agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service, are still conducting prescribed burns. Morgan said since the land they manage is further away from homes, it makes it easier for the federal agency to use fire as a tool. And that’s why the state has turned to more manual thinning, like the logging project on Gould Mountain.
My bold. And Joe Duda’s point of view:
But former deputy state forester Joseph Duda doesn’t think that’s enough. Duda, who retired last year, wants to see the Colorado State Forest Service’s authority to burn reinstated.
“You’ve taken an important tool out of the toolbox,” Duda said. “When the tool is necessary, you’ve basically tied a hand behind their back.”
While Mike Morgan with fire prevention and control cites climate change and a growing number of people and developments crowding into wildland areas as reasons to do less burning, Duda sees those as the reasons to do more.
“How are we better off if we’re doing less management?” Duda said. “Clearly we’ve had warmer and drier, more drastic conditions. The time now isn’t to do less forestry, it’s to do more forestry.”
Duda said Colorado’s forest service is one of the only state forest services that can’t conduct prescribed burns. That also means the agency is not allowed to burn piles of thinned trees and brush for wildfire mitigation on private land.
“The state forest service is the forestry agency for private landowners, that’s a significant ownership. There’s six and a half million acres or so of private forest lands in Colorado,” Duda said.
While the State Forest Service is blocked from conducting prescribed fires, they haven’t stopped showing their support for its use. The agency’s latest Forest Action Plan calls for more of it in Colorado, which at this point is all the agency can do.
Karen Budd Falen was the Deputy Solicitor for Parks and Wildlife in the Department of Interior for three years, and she left with the rest of the Trump administration, capping off a notable career in opposing public lands. She appears to come by that view honestly, being raised on a Wyoming ranch and representing ranchers as an attorney (including the Bundys). She reflects in this short piece on her legacy of changing the Endangered Species Act regulations and National Environmental a Policy Act regulations to promote more “local control” (as well as with the Land and Water Conservation Fund).
I take issue with her arguments in both cases that the laws the regulations implement (ESA and NEPA) were intended to allow social and economic considerations to play the role she has provided for them. These statutes are both clearly aimed at the “natural environment,” and not local “custom and culture.” Remarkably, she appears to admit that, “the listing of a species should be based only on science,” but then she has made it harder to do that with various changes in the ESA implementing regulations (which go beyond those she describes here in relation to critical habitat).
My fundamental disagreement with her and those she represents concerns this statement (and I suspect it may be a reason for differing opinions on this blog):
In my view, local elected officials should have more sway on issues directly affecting them than someone from midtown New York who has never faced the realities of making a living from the land.
The major gloss-over here is that endangered wildlife and federal lands don’t belong more to local people and their elected officials. Her view that local interests should have more influence is not supported by either of these laws, and it is not the view held by most of the people that these resources do belong to. Should the Biden administration not reverse these regulations, courts will have another opportunity to slap down the misinformation from her, and organizations she has worked for like the Mountain States Legal Foundation, that has led to ideas like “county supremacy” limiting how national forests are managed.
As some may have been following, we had an initiative in Colorado to reintroduce wolves. It was voted in; the vote was fairly close and mostly urban counties voted for wolves to be reintroduced on the Western Slope. Here’s the process, but the decision was made by initiative and the hearings and input are about “how” and not “if”. And Governor Polis recently challenged the commission to get the wolves here ahead of the schedule voted on in the initiative.
“I think next year is that sweet spot where you have plenty of time, you get a plan out this fall, you socialize it, we’ll be able to do in-person meetings this fall, the COVID thing will be out so you’ll be able to do listening sessions, there will be comments on the plan, it will be refined, amended probably early the following year,” Polis said. “We can get it done. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has risen to this challenge time and time again.”
Proposition 114 directs the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to:
Develop a plan to reintroduce and manage gray wolves in Colorado by December 31, 2023, on designated lands west of the Continental Divide;
Hold statewide hearings about scientific, economic, and social considerations;
Periodically obtain public input to update the plan; and
Use state funds to assist livestock owners in preventing conflicts with gray wolves and pay fair compensation for livestock losses.
According to RMEF (which I grant, is not an unbiased source, “CPW addressed wolf introduction in 1982, 1989, 2004 & 2016 and opposed an introduction each time.”). Note for those not following this: wolves are coming into Colorado on their own. In this case, the Sierra Club thought using an initiative process when the CPW (wildlife experts or not?) was against it was OK.
At the time, Greg Walcher, former director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources wrote in an op-ed:
Savor the irony of the Sierra Club’s website boasting, “For the first time, Coloradans – not politicians, not bureaucrats – We, The People, may decide whether to reintroduce gray wolves to Colorado.”
In other words, one of the harshest groups that insists politics has no place in wildlife management, now dismisses wildlife professionals as nothing more than “bureaucrats,” whose flawed judgment must be overruled by the political process. Now, who is declaring war on scientists?
BUT in Wyoming, Angus Thuermer of WyoFile has an interesting story today on wildlife feedgrounds and a new legislative initiative.
The bill establishes a transparent process for what would be a high-impact decision affecting more than just wildlife, said lead sponsor and cattleman Rep. Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale). “I want to make sure this is a discussion with all agencies that are involved,” he said
“Let’s call it a multi-species decision,” Sommers said, noting that feedground closures would impact stockgrowers. “That’s not just a Game and Fish issue.”
Wyoming’s Sierra Club chapter director called the measure “a pretty terrible idea.”
The bill is “a classic case of legislators trying to micromanage in areas where they have no expertise,” said Connie Wilbert, Wyoming chapter director of the group. “They’re not wildlife experts, they’re not wildlife disease experts — nor is the governor.”
Note that in this case, the decision making process will be open with affected parties weighing in.. arguably more democratic with more opportunities for the relevant sciences to be brought to bear, than a non-open initiative process.
Sidestepping science?
Any recommendation to close a feedground today would likely find its way to the governor’s desk in any case, Sommers said. The bill creates a process for “all to be heard” before “the big dog decision-maker makes the call,” he said.
“I think it rises to the level of having a more thorough process,” Sommers said of elk feedground closures. “It just increases public participation” and provides “a clear decision-making tree.”
For Wilbert, the measure sidesteps science.
“The Legislature doesn’t like the information they’re getting from the scientists and wildlife experts,” she said, “and they think they can do a better job. They’re politicizing an issue that shouldn’t be politicized.”
CWD has arrived in a feedground herd and urgent action is necessary, she said.
“I’m really disappointed in this approach,” she said. “We should leave wildlife management to wildlife management experts and it should be based on the best available science.”
I’d argue that the “best available science” can’t be known without an open process, without different disciplines (including social sciences) weighing in, and without practitioner,Tribal and local on-the-ground knowledge also being taken into consideration.
There’s been discussion about Covid and the practical problems associated with deferring to scientists for policy decisions. In this piece in in the Financial Times by Jemima Kelly, we see some common themes from our forest policy world.
The Conditional and Contested Nature of Scientific Information
But scientists aren’t robots, every one of whose utterances must be treated as an absolute dispassionate truth; they are complicated, messy, biased humans like the rest of us.
The phrase “following the science” would perhaps be better expressed as “following the scientists”. Or, maybe (given that they don’t all agree) “following some scientists — particularly the ones whose views align with my own”.
Even if its practitioners were able to leave their personal opinions, ambitions and prejudices aside, “the science” shouldn’t be thought of as static or complete — particularly when it comes to something as new and rapidly evolving as Covid-19. “Science works as an extremely human process of incremental and argumentative development,” says David Spiegelhalter, professor of public understanding of risk at Cambridge university. “All areas of science are contested, and that’s quite right, because there’s so much uncertainty.”
***** The Silverback Scientist Effect
It’s easy to see how this state of play has come about; we live in a society that rewards certainty, where whoever shouts their opinion loudest seems to get the most traction. “The ability to state strong opinions with total conviction is more highly valued than typical characteristics of scientists — the ability to study, think, and reach less certain but more useful conclusions,” says Martin Walker, a director at the Center for Evidence-Based Management.
Many epidemiologists and other scientists have built up impressive social media followings during the pandemic, putting them firmly in “celebrity” territory. The more they opine self-assuredly on what government should be doing, the more their voices are amplified with likes, retweets and media coverage.
When it turns out that confident statements of fact are actually just opinions, and when other scientists respond with opposing ones, it all starts to get rather confusing. Government messaging suddenly changes and the general public is expected to pretend we haven’t noticed. Trust in both politicians and scientists ebbs, leading to a situation in which potentially harmful conspiracy theories can thrive.
“It is quite reasonable that scientists might have opinions, but . . . as soon as a scientist is recommending a particular action to be taken, they are stepping outside their scientific knowledge,” says Prof Spiegelhalter. “That should be . . . clearly distinguished from when they’re communicating their science.”
(This reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story about (Dr.) Tom Mills, former PNW Station Director at the Forest Service, who supposedly asked scientist authors to remove all the “shoulds” from an assessment document).
If You Ask Scientists From Different Disciplines, They May Have Different Perspectives
These acronyms seem fitting somehow — the sagacious epidemiological modellers telling us to remain shut up indoors, and the angry economists and psychologists shouting back: “You will cripple British businesses! You will cause misery!”
Lord Blunkett is quite serious. “There needs to be a recovery group that is trying to take a much broader view than just a scientific and health perspective, critical as that is, incorporating advice on alternative damage to both people and societal well being,” he says, quoting a phrase often attributed to Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill: “‘Scientists should be on tap, but not on top’ — I agree with that.”
I too am with Churchill, and I wonder whether Haaland over-simplified the message (the medium of Tweeting is not great for complexity) or whether her beliefs are more nuanced. Hopefully, that will come up in the nomination hearings.
Here’s one of a similar, although more ideological, bent from Ross Douthat in the New York Times on Sunday.
In the interests of “how I would change what I wrote in the past given the 2020 fire season”, I remembered a series of posts from 2010 (many readers were not with us then) called Science Situations That Shout Watch Out. Here’s a link to 1-3, there is also 4, when scientists speak for nature 5 Sleight of Science, 6 and 7 Warm Lake Fire Excerpts. Looking back, they are almost identical to some of the discussions we’re having today re fuel treatments. For new readers, we also did a series on “Why We Disagree About Fuel Treatments” that you can search for in the search box.
Situation 3. When Scientists Frame the Issue. This is a situation that occurs more frequently than desirable, and is actually the source of unnecessary tension between scientists and managers. Here is the way this dysfunctional cycle operates. First, there is a pot of money, to be distributed through a competitive process with a panel of other scientists. A scientist writes a proposal with a certain framing (e.g., fire protection of people and their communities is the same as protecting houses). Since none of the communities involved are at the table, and the framing sounds plausible to the other scientists, the proposal is funded. Then the scientist does the work. When they hear about the research results, managers then ignore the results, or only partially use them, because the results aren’t relevant to their framing of the issue. The last step of the cycle is that the managers are accused of “not using the best available science.” I have seen this cycle play out many times.
The scientific evidence is clear that the only effective way to protect structures from fire is to reduce the ignitability of the structure itself (e.g., fireproof roofing, leaf gutter guards) and the immediate surroundings within about 100 feet from each home, e.g., through thinning of brush and small trees adjacent to the homes (www.firelab.org–see studies by U.S. Forest Service fire scientist Dr. Jack Cohen)
In this case, the difference in framing is as simple as it’s not about the structures- it’s about the fact that people don’t want fire running through their communities. It is about all kinds of community infrastructure, stop signs and power poles, landscaping, fences, gardens, trees and benches in parks, people and pets and livestock having safe exits from encroaching fires. It is about firefighter safety and about conditions for different suppression tactics. That’s why fire breaks of some kinds around communities (not just structures) will always be popular in the real world.Of course, people don’t actually fireproof their homes either in the real world. “How can we best keep wildfires from damaging communities and endangering people” would be a more complex, but more real framing of the question. Note that one scientific discipline can’t provide the answer to this framing- there are elements of fire science, community design, fire suppression practice, sociology, political science and economics.
I think my bolded statement stands the test of time. Check out this link from Newsweek where you can see the before and after of communities in Oregon from satellite photos.
Since fires happened in California, and can be blamed on anthropogenic climate change, (as of summer 2020) we no longer have to debate that Bad Things Can Happen with Wildfires. We’ve only added more- problems with air quality, bad chemicals being released, damage to power infrastructure (possibly located in “the backcountry”) and so on. Looking back, I think we would have had much more helpful scientific information if in fact stakeholders had framed the issue and determined relevance- then written up an RFP. And yes, I appreciate greatly the efforts of the Joint Fire Science Program (see link in the image above). I also wonder why folks think it’s better to have splintered by agency (USDA NIFA, FS, USGS, NSF) and investigator-driven research than a coordinated and focused approach, with stakeholder involvement in prioritization and design.
In fact, if any grad students are interested, it would be fascinating to look at funded wildfire studies across agencies, develop a landscape of the different topics (from physical fire models to social studies of landowners). I see a potential committee of stakeholders, scientists and research administrators developing recommendations to 1) stop duplication, 2) fund gaps and 3) have practitioners and stakeholders interrogate the utility of each study. And maybe for communities, we don’t need more research as much as sharing of best practices. But researchers might not arrive at that conclusion on their own. That’s why I think we need to rethink our institutions and decision-making processes.
We started with an introduction to PNS or post normal science a few weeks ago, here, when we were talking about climate science and different ways of developing and using scientific expertise. Coronavirus, though, has caused an upwelling of scientific activity by different disciplines, combined with a vast array across the world of real-time policy decisions at all spatial and temporal scales. So it’s interesting to compare and contrast these problems and solutions with how we use science in our own humble and much-less-urgent world (forests). The image above is on best available scientific information (BASI) as in the Handbook for the development of Forest Plans.
Experts have voiced growing frustration over the UK government’s claim that it is “following the science”, saying the refrain is being used to abdicate responsibility for political decisions. They also raised concerns that the views of public health experts were being overlooked, with disproportionate weight given to the views of modellers. “As a scientist, I hope I never again hear the phrase ‘based on the best science and evidence’ spoken by a politician,” Prof Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, told the Guardian. “This phrase has become basically meaningless and used to explain anything and everything.”
Hmm. Different disciplines disagree on what is “best” (most relevant).. but in addition, there are even disagreements within disciplines (in their case, different modeling centers). Sounds like us, although those are seldom covered in the press.
However, Sridhar and others argued that scientific views on these topics could be wide-ranging and dependent on a scientist’s field of expertise. The diversity of scientific views was apparent in March when case numbers were rising rapidly but the government chose not to ban mass gatherings or introduce wide-reaching physical distancing. World Health Organization advice, and what we’ve learned from lots of previous outbreaks in low- and middle-income countries, is that the faster you move at the start, the better, because it’s exponential growth,” Sridhar said. “In public health, a test, trace and isolate campaign would’ve been where your mind first went.” Instead, she said, the government appeared to be basing policy on the presumption of a binary choice between two scenarios, played out in computer models, of either eradicating the virus or it becoming endemic.
“What we’re not talking about in the same formal, quantitative way are the economic costs, the social costs, the psychological costs of being under lockdown,” he said. “I understand that the government is being advised by economists, psychiatrists and others, but we’re not seeing what that science is telling them. I find that very puzzling.” Woolhouse said that while it was understandable that saving lives was the top priority, the idea of doing this at any cost was naive. “With any disease there is a trade-off. Public health is largely about that trade-off. What’s happening here is that both sides of the equation are so enormous and so damaging that the routine public health challenge of balancing costs and benefits is thrown into incredibly stark relief. Yet that balance has to be found.”
Balancing trade-offs..sounds like us, in fact it sounds a bit like NEPA Section 2. “encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man.” But also at this level, which discipline and tool you pick or leave out has ramifications. Is this an entirely scientific judgment? Or is there a different meta-science discussion of “what scientific tools should we use”? Otherwise, policy-makers get what’s on offer, which seems kind of random for important decisions.
Others expressed concern about the lack of transparency around the evidence affecting decision-making. “We don’t know who sits on Sage [the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies], we see very little of the papers that go to Sage,” said Prof Sheila Bird, the former programme leader of the Medical Research Council’s biostatistics unit at the University of Cambridge. “That scientific underpinning is not evident.”
Sridhar said the failure to fully consider the perspectives of experts beyond epidemiology may have contributed to misguided decisions. Models appear not to have factored in the role of hospital staff shortages, which may have diverted attention from the urgent need for adequate personal protective equipment, she said.
The concept of shielding the most vulnerable “looks beautiful” in models, she said, but in reality care homes are facing major outbreaks and multigenerational households are struggling to isolate the vulnerable. “You can’t take these people out of the system and isolate them as if they were a data point on a graph,” she said.
“There’s a real problem if you have a collection of people from the same background, the same field, the same institutions; that can lead to blindspots and groupthink,” Sridhar added. “Diversity is clearly important for better decision-making.”
Our business is generally not urgent, nor life and death. So we have time to “do it right”. And there are things that practitioners know (hospital staff shortages?) that may not be obvious to scientists doing research at universities. So here we have it. How best to put it all together for decisionmakers?
What is your favorite example of a decision in which you felt that all the relevant scientific disciplines and practitioners were brought to bear on a policy or management issue in an open and transparent way? It doesn’t matter for these purposes if the decision at the end was made with a political or even partisan political lens, I’m interested in the actual process of developing shared information and open dialogue, between disciplines and between scientists, natural resource professional/practitioners, knowledgeable local folks, and other stakeholders.
Also, FYI Stephanie Lepp of Infinite Lunchbox sent a link to this video, which is an introduction to PNS and Coronavirus.
Here are a few quotes from an article in Issues in Science and Technology, called “How not to lose the COVID-19 Communications War”:
Accurate scientific information is key for meaningful public debate and decision-making. And correctives to misinformation provide instant gratification during an otherwise unpredictable and potentially long-term crisis that so far has not provided scientists and policy-makers with a lot of success stories. Organizations such as the US Federal Emergency Management Agency and the World Health Organization can quickly implement myth-busting and rumor-control websites with the reasonable hope of staving off a more widespread problem down the road.
However, as the COVID-19 “infodemic,” as WHO calls it, escalates, those communicating scientific information are at risk not only of oversimplifying the misinformation problem itself but also of failing to recognize and address other factors that complicate efforts to communicate effectively about COVID-19. In particular, the seductively simple directive to be “accurate,” which lies at the heart of science communication, obscures the reality that accuracy is a tenuous notion during a crisis such as this, in which uncertainty reigns. Science that was considered correct at the outset will likely turn out to be incorrect or incomplete, making it difficult to draw a bright line between misinformation and science that is legitimately contested. Further, just as the public health questions that arise during a pandemic go far beyond numbers such as death rates to include matters of social inequity and ailing health care infrastructure, the communication issues that complicate an infodemic are much broader than the mere existence of falsehood.
and
In the midst of this accelerated crisis, it is virtually impossible to determine which sets of “facts” are most relevant for making trade-offs required for effective action. Focusing narrowly on “accuracy” in COVID-19 communications can thus obscure the reality that many of the possible choices are rightfully guided not by utilitarian calculus but by values and relationships whose importance is independent of science altogether. In the scope of COVID-19, policy choices require myriad decisions likely to create both harms and benefits that are themselves unevenly distributed. For example, as society increasingly allows automated and intrusive surveillance measures to enforce social distancing protocol, how will it be determined whether such efforts have been “worth it”? Prevention by surveillance will cost a great deal in terms of civil liberties, but by acting in haste, society may overestimate its value or fail to ensure clear exit strategies after the pandemic