Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Scientists Need (scientists + need)
Selected AbstractsCan Administrative Measures Resolve a Political Conflict?PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2008Albert H. Teich The current controversy over the politicization of science by the Bush administration is, by definition, a political controversy. As such, it must be addressed by political measures as well as the administrative strategies that Dr. Lambright suggests. The administration's actions go beyond the bounds of "business as usual" and reflect the interests of its powerful constituencies, as well as the unease of many citizens with some scientific and technological advances. Scientists need to engage these citizens and take their concerns into account in order to build trust between the scientific community and the public, as well as to impede unscrupulous politicians from distorting scientific information to suit their purposes. [source] Assessing environmental risks of transgenic plantsECOLOGY LETTERS, Issue 2 2006D. A. Andow Abstract By the end of the 1980s, a broad consensus had developed that there were potential environmental risks of transgenic plants requiring assessment and that this assessment must be done on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the transgene, recipient organism, intended environment of release, and the frequency and scale of the intended introduction. Since 1990, there have been gradual but substantial changes in the environmental risk assessment process. In this review, we focus on changes in the assessment of risks associated with non-target species and biodiversity, gene flow, and the evolution of resistance. Non-target risk assessment now focuses on risks of transgenic plants to the intended local environment of release. Measurements of gene flow indicate that it occurs at higher rates than believed in the early 1990s, mathematical theory is beginning to clarify expectations of risks associated with gene flow, and management methods are being developed to reduce gene flow and possibly mitigate its effects. Insect pest resistance risks are now managed using a high-dose/refuge or a refuge-only strategy, and the present research focuses on monitoring for resistance and encouraging compliance to requirements. We synthesize previous models for tiering risk assessment and propose a general model for tiering. Future transgenic crops are likely to pose greater challenges for risk assessment, and meeting these challenges will be crucial in developing a scientifically coherent risk assessment framework. Scientific understanding of the factors affecting environmental risk is still nascent, and environmental scientists need to help improve environmental risk assessment. [source] The importance of rapid, disturbance-induced losses in carbon management and sequestrationGLOBAL ECOLOGY, Issue 1 2002David D. Breshears Abstract Management of terrestrial carbon fluxes is being proposed as a means of increasing the amount of carbon sequestered in the terrestrial biosphere. This approach is generally viewed only as an interim strategy for the coming decades while other longer-term strategies are developed and implemented , the most important being the direct reduction of carbon emissions. We are concerned that the potential for rapid, disturbance-induced losses may be much greater than is currently appreciated, especially by the decision-making community. Here we wish to: (1) highlight the complex and threshold-like nature of disturbances , such as fire and drought, as well as the erosion associated with each , that could lead to carbon losses; (2) note the global extent of ecosystems that are at risk of such disturbance-induced carbon losses; and (3) call for increased consideration of and research on the mechanisms by which large, rapid disturbance-induced losses of terrestrial carbon could occur. Our lack of ability as a scientific community to predict such ecosystem dynamics is precluding the effective consideration of these processes into strategies and policies related to carbon management and sequestration. Consequently, scientists need to do more to improve quantification of these potential losses and to integrate them into sound, sustainable policy options. [source] Learning about Power: Development and Marginality in an Adult Literacy Center for Farm Workers in ZimbabweAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2000Blair Rutherford In this article, we critically examine the rise and fall of an adult literacy center that we helped establish for farm workers during the course offieldwork on a commercial farm in Hurungwe District, Zimbabwe. We raise questions about the emerging conventional wisdom in the anthropology of development and postcoloniality more broadly that characterizes development primarily as a mechanism to impose Western agendas and control targeted peoples. Our tale of the "Night School" suggests that anthropologists and social scientists need to pay attention to the power relations of development and the varied hierarchies and arrangements "in the margins" of development that cross-cut wider interventions and relations of rule. [development, discourse, power, Zimbabwe, postcolonialism, gender, race, ethnography] [source] The New Bureaucracies of Virtue or When Form Fails to Follow FunctionPOLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 2 2007Charles L. Bosk As the prospective review of research protocols has expanded to include ethnography, researchers have responded with a mixture of bewilderment, irritation, and formal complaint. These responses typically center on how poorly a process modeled on the randomized clinical trial fits the realities of the more dynamic, evolving methods that are used to conduct ethnographic research. However warranted these complaints are, those voicing them have not analyzed adequately the logic in use that allowed the system of review to extend with so little resistance. This paper locates the expansion in the goal displacement that Merton identified as part of bureaucratic organization and identifies the tensions between researchers and administrators as a consequence of an inversion of the normal status hierarchy found in universities. Social scientists need to do more than complain about the regulatory process; they also need to make that apparatus an object for study. Only recently have social scientists taken up the task in earnest. This paper contributes to emerging efforts to understand how prospective review of research protocols presents challenges to ethnographers and how ethnographic proposals do the same for IRBs (Institutional Research Boards). This essay extends three themes that are already prominent in the literature discussing IRBs and ethnography: (1) the separation of bureaucratic regulations,policies,and procedures from the everyday questions of research ethics that are most likely to trouble ethnographers; (2) the goal displacement that occurs when the entire domain of research ethics is reduced to compliance with a set of federal regulations as interpreted by local committees; and (3) the difficulties of sense making when ethnographers and IRB administrators or panel members respond each to the other's concerns. [source] | |||||||||||||