The Role of Scientific Information in Environmental Decisions

What is science? (sources: NZ report, law article): peer review, replication

Background: Lexicon of Risk

Course mechanics topics:
- what does it mean to "work together but turn in your own work"? (It doesn't mean turning in identical work. Does mean discussing, working out problems, writing them out yourself & ensuring that you put your own work into it. Objective is for you to learn & the only way to learn this stuff is to do it.
- academic honesty
- due dates - NO late assignments. Due at XX:00, either hardcopy in mail box or electronic submission. I prefer hard copy submissions of homework and project assignments. I will only accept electronic submissions if all of the material is in one file and ready to print out without formatting, opening additional spreadsheets in a workbook, etc. This may mean that you'll need to convert everything to a single pdf or insert screen-shots into a word document, etc. Or just print the multiple files out yourself, staple them together and hand them to me.

NEXT TIME: Make sure you carefully step through an example like radon (or an example from a former group project) where you describe the decision context, specify a decision maker and decision alternatives, discuss fundamental & means objectives, indicate that means objectives should be the headings for the consequences matrix & talk about how to measure them, and start discussing what the means objectives depend on (what are the sources of uncertainty in those outcomes?)

Options: do a little part of the radon example every day to illustrate the topic of the day; try to create some in-class group exercises where the students do each of the above steps (one at a time) and we discuss the outcomes from a couple of groups.

Mechanics: Describe how to do problem sets. Write out all information. Work through problem showing all work...

EMV, mini-max, maxi-min

utility

discounting (mention page in Clemen)

Return to topic: What is scientific information?

Elicit: cautionary tale from Ruckelshaus et al 2002 (Pac salmon wars) regarding an over reliance on such "data"

assign groups, discuss working in groups, hand out assignment for Group Project Proposal

Pielke Ch 7: nice description of sources of uncertainty for prediction/modeling

SUGGESTION FOR NEXT TIME: Make this a day about analyzing sources & implications of uncertainty in a decision analysis. Highlight a variety of ways to examine this (returning to previous in-class examples if possible):
- calculate EV for a variety of different specified values of an uncertain quantity (radon example, looking at cost of different alternatives given a range of different concentrations of radon)
- Jenny Bagby's tornado diagrams
- work through example of what it means to change the trade-off weights in the consequences function and see what impact they have on the decision (make the point that it may be possible to change these weights quite a bit and not have the decision change - students probably default to assumption that decision is very sensitive to all uncertain quantities
- put it all together by showing a decision w/ a variety of significant uncertain quantities, only some of which are important

Lempert et al. 2004 (predict-then-act vs. assess-risk-of-policy) - don't work so hard to put probs on chance outcomes; evaluate robustness of response strategies instead. Q: what would assess-risk mean? What would it entail? Are there any examples? Pose as an alternate in extremely difficult/uncertain cases.

Objectives for group meetings:

• decision with clear alternatives
• tree structure
• payoff function

Additional topic (here or April 27):

• sources of scientific info (for students in this class, policy analysts, Congress...): journal articles, assessments (IPCC, National Asst), Congressional briefings, NRC, NAS reports, Washington State Academy of Science, technical advisory groups (Ruckelshaus et al 2002 - Pacific salmon wars - TRT). Dean article from NYT.
• evaluating scientific info: journals now require dislosure policies, but agencies don't (Michaels & Monforton: 345)

Used to be: " Preferences, Perception, Prediction"

Kahneman, D. and A. Tversky. (1982) The psychology of preferences, Scientific American January: 136-142.

Slovic, P. (1987) Perception of Risk, Science 236: 280-285.

Nicholls, N. (1999) Cognitive Illusions, Heuristics, and Climate Prediction, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 80(7): 1385-1397.

Fischoff, B. (1994) What forecasts (seem to) mean, International Journal of Forecasting 10: 181-189.

GUEST: Beth Bryant (JD), Research Associate, School of Marine Affairs

"Negotiating the Interface of Science and Law in Environmental Regulation"

Schuck, P. H. (1993) Multi-culturalism redux: Science, law, and politics, Yale Law and Policy Review (11 Yale L. & Pol-y Rev. 1).

Doremus, H. (2004) The purposes, effects, and future of the Endangered Species Act's best available science mandate, Environmental Law Spring (34 Envtl. L. 397).

Note: Much of the length of these articles is due to the voluminous footnotes, which you can safely ignore.

Background: undergrad?, MMA (SMA), JD (UW). ID perspective.

Topics:

• negotiating scientific/legal burdens of proof
• culture clash b/t law and science ("The Science Charade in Toxic Risk ...")

LAST YEAR'S READINGS:

Jasanoff, S. (1996). The dilemma of environmental democracy. Issues in Science and Technology online 13(1).

Attitudes about science:

• Steel et al. (2004) "The role of scientists in the environmental policy process: a case study from the American west"
• credibility/salience/legitmacy;

New roles:

• co-production/collaborative workshops
• Adaptive mgmt (Wisconsin definition)
• Lempert et al. 2004 (predict-then-act vs. assess-risk-of-policy) - don't work so hard to put probs on chance outcomes; evaluate robustness of response strategies instead. Q: what would assess-risk mean? What would it entail? Are there any examples? Pose as an alternate in extremely difficult/uncertain cases.