By definition from the
Merriam-Webster dictionary, advocacy is the act or process of supporting a
cause or proposal. I argue that scientists should be advocates for policy
making. In doing so, they can influence policies that shape science, such as
funding decisions. According to Chan (2008), scientists are “obligated to step
well beyond research and even recommend particular solutions to policy goals.”
The key word in the following statement is recommendation. My argument doesn’t
mean that scientists themselves should be the ones formulating or creating the
actual policy. That would be the job of a politician or policy maker. Instead, scientists
should be advocators because “politicians and government institutions either
misrepresent or ignore scientific findings and conclusions” (Karr, 2006) and
the purpose of science in policies should be to inform policy-makers about the relevant
science for an issue they are considering, once again only recommending
specific policy outcomes. Scientists hold the unique information that is
important to relay to the public.
Others may disagree that scientists
shouldn't be advocates because they can be subjective in interpreting their
results, but I have an explanation that works against that idea. Most, if not
all, scientific articles that are published in popular journals can only be
published after number peer edits from others who were a part of the study
being reviewed. If any misconception, biased, or subjective tone or information
is portrayed, an editor will immediately reject the article and ask for
revisions. However, if it passes one editor, it then has to be reviewed by
another, this is not always the case, but it happens frequently. By the time an article gets published, it has
been reviewed numerous times by non-objective scientists in the same field as
the researcher publishing the piece.
Conservation biology is a growing
field that has not been very developed and difficult to grasp because it can be
a very dense field. With its popularity increasing, it is important that the
public understands the science behind the findings. Who better than the scientist
to interpret their results to the general public in a way that is both comprehensible
and can lead to implications that lead to conservation? Research
is typically funded by vast sums of money that goes to academic and government research,
so the information that is produced in labs or by scientists is for the public.
The public owns this information. It is their tax dollars that are helping fund
these projects. However, reviewing scientific articles has been made very
difficult for the general public because most journals require a fee in order
to review the articles published. It is no wonder that the public relies on
news stations and reporters to relay scientific information and implications of
their results. A con that I foresee with news reports is that they leave out
critical information. They themselves make scientific findings subjective. This
is why we need scientists that are advocators because if we don’t have assertive
people, the general public will be given the wrong information and then influenced
to vote for a policy that won’t even be beneficial to the ecosystem or problem
at hand.
So I ask, if this be the case, who is more
biased or subjective, a scientist trying to advocate correct information or a
news reporter that relays incorrect information? If scientists didn’t advocate,
we would have evidence out there that is incorrect or not plausible. It would
be deceit. I then ask, what would be the point of doing research if a scientist
wasn’t allowed to communicate or recommend solutions the proposed problems?
Scientists publish and write about their research in order to communicate to
others. However, science is a subject that is not easily understood by everyone, like policy makers. Therefore,
it is an obligation of a scientist to follow up that their research is being
conveyed in the correct manner. That may appear biased or unethical or probably
shouldn’t be the job of the scientist to do, but it also isn’t the role of a
policy maker to just implement a policy about a conservation issue that they
didn’t research themselves or understand.If a scientists can keep an open mind and separate the role of a scientist from the role of an advocator, I believe this will be beneficial in constructing good and accurate policies.
