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Errecart, Jacqueline

Natural Resource Planning Program

2005

M.S.

Both scientists and policy makers desire scientific information to inform policy on all fronts, however both groups voice frustration that "in recent decades the production of scientific knowledge seems to have outrun its effective use by society." (Pielke 1997, 255). This research focuses on the dynamics of the science-policy nexus of acid deposition policy in Vermont. It examines approaches to scientific information in acid deposition decision-making in four settings judicial, legislative, management, research), and how decision makers assigned credibility to information in arenas where values are acknowledged and arenas where values are muted. This research fills an important gap in the science-policy literature by comparing how decision makers in varied policy settings interact with scientific information on the same issue. Twenty-seven acid deposition decision makers were purposively selected based on involvement with acid deposition issues and participated in interviews designed to assess their approaches to scientific information. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed based on emergent themes and themes in the science-policy literature. Additional data were gathered from documents. This analysis focused on communication channels, the types of information considered useful, and processes for deciding how much information was sufficient for making a decision. It also examined how definitions of 'credible' information are constructed within each arena, through the themes of uncertainty, politics and conflict, and the trustworthiness of information.
This research shows that science does matter in policy decisions, but policy makers are not necessarily using information in the ways scientists expect, and they are not using science uniformly across policy arenas. It also reveals fundamental differences between scientists and decision makers, such as scientists' emphasis on finding the missing pieces of current knowledge and decision makers' focus on the completeness of current knowledge. These findings suggest that opportunities exist to better integrate science with policy, by strategically connecting decision makers in arenas not currently well connected to the science, by tailoring research products to specific decision-making audiences, and by assigning responsibility for synthesizing basic research to make it useful for policy. This research also looked at how information credibility differed in contexts where values are acknowledged as compared to contexts where values are muted. It found that the process of assigning credibility affected what information was persuasive in a decision making process, that the values orientation of an organization was an important factor in how pre-existing beliefs affected the absorption of new knowledge, and that the hidden nature of how information credibility was assessed perpetuated conflict and locked participants into pre-existing information. This research suggests that the process of constructing credibility should become more explicitly acknowledged, and that because science does not speak for itself in a policy-making process the usefulness of science could be increased through the involvement of scientists.