This paper is a draft of a paper that attempts to introduce the key concepts of the curriculum. The paper aims to be about 1,500 to 2,000 words and seeks to serve as a supporting document to the other materials.
On the Accountability of Interdisciplinary Environmental Science Researchers to Non-Research Communities
Introduction
Interdisciplinary environmental science fields apply methods from different social and natural sciences disciplines to better understand topics such as biodiversity and fresh water availability. Currently, courses and programs are offered in interdisciplinary environmental scienceat many universities. The topics addressed in interdisciplinary environmental sciences are often of practical concern to many people, such as how to regulate water use, how to understand biodiversity as a goal of conservation, how to adapt to climate change, how to understand what farming practices are sustainable, and so on. In this way, researchers are accountable to non-research communities. That is, researchers in interdisciplinary environmental science courses are doing work that impacts people’s lives. This relationship between researchers and non-research communities raises ethical questions about how interdisciplinary environmental science should influence policy-makers, how non-researchers should participate, if at all, in scientific research, and whether researchers should be concerned with how their research methods “harm” non-human animals and ecosystems.
This paper contends that interdisciplinary environmental science programs (IESPs) should accordingly reflect the above relationships in their curricula. More particularly, we contend that IESP students must be capable of answering four questions that reflect the range of normative issues facing interdisciplinary environmental scientists:1) Will theytake advocacy positions in policy debates? 2) Should they influence which risks receive the most attention by policy-makers? 3) Will they respectnon-scientist experts, such as hunters and birders, as sources of reliable knowledge in scientific research? 4) Will they see value in ecosystems beyond their utility for humans?How a scientist answers these questions is tied to implicit assumptions or explicit judgments about the nature of his or herprofessional accountability to non-research communities. While practitioners of the disciplines involved in IESPs will have diverse answers to these questions, or may not have considered these questions at all, part of IESP education should include the opportunity for self-reflection and dialogue among students about how they understand their accountability to non-research communities.
In this essay, we make the case for four different kinds of accountability: 1) the appropriate role of scientists as advisors of policy-makers; 2) how scientists interact with the policies relevant to their work; 3) how seriously researchers should consider impacts of their research on non-humans; 4) how risks should be communicated to policy-makers.These four areas differ from responsible conduct in research (RCR). Recently expanded due to a 2010 U.S. legislative mandate, RCR refers primarily to ethical standards governing the conduct of research, such as managing conflicts of interest or protecting human subjects (Tuana, 2010). As noted by Tuana (2010, p. 479), “RCR issues…are far too limited to provide a basis for scientists and engineers to appreciate the full range of ethical issues they face.” RCR cannot prepare graduate students to make informed decisions about how their roles as scientists can impact their societies. We will suggest thatIESP curricula should feature activities through which students engage in dialogue about the potential differences and crossover in ethical assumptions about the impacts of their research beyond the process of research.
Risk
Though riskgenerally refers to the probability of being harmed, it can also be understood as a quantitative estimation of harm; humans, though, often evaluate risks non-mathematically. For example, someone might fear flying much more than driving though serious injury is more probable in the former (Stern and Fineberg 1996). Scientists working in interdisciplinary environmental science may have the opportunity to communicate risks to policy-makers in ways that shape policies that impact society, yet they may disagree about how to do so. Consider the regulation of nanotechnology, which has emerged as an ongoing source of disputes regarding how to assess and respond to potential risks.Biochemists, pathologists, and related experts may emphasizethe chemical and biological plausibility of health impacts(Cattaneo et al. 2010). Academics interested in Ethical-Legal-Social Issues, such as sociologists and geographers, may focus on the culturally or socially informed perceptions of risk (Douglas 2000) or on thought experiments, including implausible or speculative ones; attention to these perceptions and thought experiments supports the development of desirable or undesirable scenarios that help illuminate important features of ethical import (Rasmussen, Ebbesen, and Andersen 2012).An important study of a range of scientists concluded that “most upstream scientists,” which include engineers, chemists, physicists, and materials scientists, “do not think nanotechnologies pose new or substantial risks, while most downstream scientists,” which include toxicologists, epidemiologists, and other public health scientists, “are worried that they may pose new, unforeseen, and possibly substantial risks” (Powell 2007). While RCR training might prepare IESP students to protect human subjects from health risks when testing new materials, managing risk (conceptually and practically) requires training beyond the scope of typical university RCR training.
Non-human impacts
Environmental scientists across the disciplines have different ways of conceiving how their research impactsthe interests of non-humans organisms,such as animals and plants,and collectives, such as biota, landscapes, and ecosystems. Here “interests”refers to values such as the desire to continue living, the desire to reproduce, and the desire to ensure the safe propagation of the species. In some cases, scientists may feel that the interests of certain non-humans matter even when they are considered apart from human interests.Certain IESPs addresslandscape-scale conservation issues, and include sciences such as wildlife and plant biology, environmental management, and climate science (Austen 2011). Integrating these sciences requires negotiating a number of differences concerning how impacts on non-humansshould figure into research. Consider the issue ofthe Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate experiment by oceanographers. Some biologists disagreed with the research because of their predictions of how it would interfere with the acoustic transmission of marine mammals that are already threatened by human activities. By contrast, the oceanographers focused on the importance oftheir work for climate change research(Sarewitz 2004). Researchers who work with animals often must comply with RCR codes for the treatment of animals as research subjects. However, in the case just described, the issues raised by the biologists were not resolved by RCR codes and had more to do with the assumptions researchers bring about which impacts on non-humans are acceptable.
Expertise
Scientific disciplines are founded uponassumptions about the nature of credible evidence and knowledge, who counts as an expert, and what kinds of advice scientific experts in that discipline should provide to scientists in other disciplines and tonon-scientists, especially policy-makers. Across disciplines, what makes knowledge credible is that it emerges from an empirical process that is sanctioned by the standards of a particular science. Experts qualify as such whenthey have met criteria that establish them as competent practitioners inan area of science. Experts are also positioned to offer advice to non-experts, from consumers to policy-makers.Climate scientists, for example, are often inclined to see indigenous knowledge regarding climate as valuable insofar as it provides observational information, but those observations are seen as having empirical weaknesses since they are often based on the oral tradition(Williams and Hardison 2013; Arctic Climate Impact Assessment 2004). By contrast, cultural geographers, anthropologists and other social scientists often see indigenous knowledge as far more credible, seeing it as a source of knowledge that is equal to science in many respects(Pierotti and Wildcat 2000).In terms of expert advice, some fields may be comfortable doing research that directly supports a particular policy option, whereas others may see their research as providing a range of options for policy-makers. Assumptions about expertise and expert advice typically precede the development of research projects, which means that they fall outside of RCR.
Policy Constraints
Individual environmental scientists must make decisions, whether explicit or implicit, about how they will interact with the policy constraints surrounding their work. Policy constraints include everything from the informal conventions of one’s discipline (e.g., statistical significance standards)(Brosi and Biber 2008) to local and national regulations, such as The Endangered Species Act. Some environmental scientists arguefor “more active participation by scientists in matters of policy”(Nelson and Vucetich 2009, 10-11), while others claim that greater participation by scientists can only make matters more complicated (Sarewitz 2004). Consider the case of interdisciplinary research on geoengineering approaches such as solar radiation management (SRM), i.e., releasing airborne particles to shade the earth’s surface (Keith et al., 2010).Robock points out that SRM research undermines current efforts to create greenhouse gas mitigation policies by giving the impression that climate change can be solved simply, and furthermore that scientists might lack “moral authority” to pursue research that would intentionally reshape the global climate (Robock, 2008).Keith et al. (2010)argues thatscientists must influence the processes that will lead to funding SRM research because the failure of international climate change mitigation negotiations means that we should be prepared in the future to deploy geoengineering (Preston 2012). At the same time, a group of social scientists argue that scientists should not influence what research policy makers should fund. RCR might help students understand how to ethically carry out their chosen research project, but it will do little to help them decide when to pursue or abandon research facing current or potential policy constraints.
References
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