Making decisions in the 21st century: Scientific data, weight of evidence, and the precautionary principle

2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 2505-2513 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Burger
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Weight Of Evidence ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Data Gaps ◽  
Public Policy Decisions ◽  
Active Substances

Traditionally, science has progressed by slow steps involving the accumulation of studies showing particular effects, leading eventually to a general consensus. However, with increasing development and industrialization, environmental problems have escalated faster than the ability to collect sufficient data to form clear consensus among scientists. Since managers require scientific information to make decisions about management, regulation, and public policy, the gap has been partially filled by two approaches: weight of evidence and the precautionary principle. I suggest that both are useful for making decisions about endocrine active substances, although few papers in the refereed literature link the precautionary principle with endocrine active substances. As with most public policy decisions, these involve an iterative process whereby scientific inquiry must continue to fill data gaps, and to determine if the decisions made by these processes are still appropriate and protective of human and ecological health. The precautionary principle is most useful when it continues to inform and help direct research to fill data gaps in our understanding of environmental problems, such as the effect of endocrine active substances on endocrine disruption.

Alcohol Use during Pregnancy: What Is the Risk?

1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 375-379
Author(s):  
Joel J. Alpert ◽  
Barry Zuckerman
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Alcohol Use ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Alcoholic Beverages ◽  
Women Of Childbearing Age ◽  
Childbearing Age ◽  
Common View ◽  
Public Policy Decisions

Alcohol use during pregnancy now is believed generally to be a serious risk to the health of the fetus. As a result, women of childbearing age are urged to avoid, if not to eliminate, alcoholic beverages from their diet. This increasingly common view states that, because there is no known safe threshold for alcohol use, abstinence is the safest road to travel. Clearly, this important recommendation, symbolized by the labeling of alcoholic beverages as dangerous during pregnancy, should be based upon the best available scientific data. The report that women metabolize alcohol differently than men and that a smaller amount (compared with men) produces a higher blood level only emphasizes the need to quantify the risk of drinking during pregnancy.1 Scientific information is needed to make the best possible clinical, public health, and public policy decisions. This paper reviews what is known about the risk of alcohol for the well nourished woman who drinks two or less alcoholic beverages (drinks) per day while pregnant. Our conclusion is that there is no measurable or documented risk from this level of drinking during pregnancy. Therefore, by urging well nourished pregnant women to abstain from alcoholic beverages, we may be turning our attention away from negative health behaviors of far greater danger than consuming a glass of wine or its alcoholic equivalent.

The Relevance of Trust

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inmaculada de Melo-Martín ◽  
Kristen Intemann
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Epistemic Trust ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
Public Policy Decisions ◽  
Scientific Phenomena

This chapter offers a brief overview of the importance of epistemic trust and the relevance that scientific institutions and practices have in promoting or undermining warranted public trust. Epistemic trust is crucial for the production of scientific knowledge, the ability of the public to make sense of scientific phenomena, and the development of public policy. Normatively inappropriate dissent is more likely to take hold and erroneously affect people’s beliefs and actions in a context where the trustworthiness of scientists is called into question and where there is an excessive reliance on scientific information when it comes to assessing policy decisions. Thus, finding ways to facilitate and sustain warranted epistemic trust, as well as increasing understanding of the proper role of science in public policy decisions can help mitigate the negative impact of dissenting views.

Using Research Evidence to Inform Public Policy Decisions

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 412-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Moseley ◽  
Harold Kleinert ◽  
Kathleen Sheppard-Jones ◽  
Stephen Hall
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Research Evidence ◽  
State Level ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Large Scale Data ◽  
Drive State ◽  
Public Policy Decisions

Abstract The application of scientific data in the development and implementation of sound public policy is a well-established practice, but there appears to be less consensus on the nature of the strategies that can and should be used to incorporate research data into policy decisions. This paper describes the promise and the challenges of using research evidence to inform public policy. Most specifically, we demonstrate how the application of a large-scale data set, the National Core Indicators (NCI), can be systematically used to drive state-level policy decisions, and we describe a case example of one state's application of NCI data to make significant changes to its Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities waiver. The need for continued research in this area is highlighted.

scholarly journals The Precautionary Principle: Its Use Within Hard and Soft Law

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
René von Schomberg
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Genetically Modified Organisms ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Management Measures

The precautionary principle in public decision making concerns situations where following an assessment of the available scientific information, there are reasonable grounds for concern for the possibility of adverse effects on the environment or human health, but scientific uncertainty persists. In such cases provisional risk management measures may be adopted, without having to wait until the reality and seriousness of those adverse effects become fully apparent. This is the definition of the precautionary principle as operationalized under EU law. The precautionary principle is a deliberative principle. Its application involves deliberation on a range of normative dimensions which need to be taken into account while making the principle operational in the public policy context. Under EU law, any risk management measures to be adopted while implementing the precautionary principle, have to be proportionate to ensure the chosen high level of protection in the European Community.This article will illustrate the established practice concerning the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment and how the principle is implemented under hard law. The article also provides an outlook on what this may imply for the relative new case of nanotechnology and the use of precautionary principle within the context of soft law (use of codes of conduct).

Precautionary principle and endocrine active substances

2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 2515-2519 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. D. Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Organic Pollutants ◽  
Persistent Organic Pollutants ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Trade Barrier ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
European Trade ◽  
Active Substances

The precautionary principle has been central to many of the debates concerning the appropriate approach to the threat posed by endocrine active substances (EASs). This newly emerging principle has been applied to issues as diverse as persistent organic pollutants and the European trade barrier on beef from hormone-treated cattle.

Precautionary principles: a jurisdiction-free framework for decision-making under risk

2004 ◽  
Vol 23 (12) ◽  
pp. 579-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo F Ricci ◽  
Louis A Cox ◽  
Thomas R MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Quantitative Risk Assessment ◽  
Decision Making Under Risk ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Qualitative Risk Assessment ◽  
New Information

Fundamental principles of precaution are legal maxims that ask for preventive actions, perhaps as contingent interim measures while relevant information about causality and harm remains unavailable, to minimize the societal impact of potentially severe or irreversible outcomes. Such principles do not explain how to make choices or how to identify what is protective when incomplete and inconsistent scientific evidence of causation characterizes the potential hazards. Rather, they entrust lower jurisdictions, such as agencies or authorities, to make current decisions while recognizing that future information can contradict the scientific basis that supported the initial decision. After reviewing and synthesizing national and international legal aspects of precautionary principles, this paper addresses the key question: How can society manage potentially severe, irreversible or serious environmental outcomes when variability, uncertainty, and limited causal knowledge characterize their decisionmaking? A decision Rational choice of an action from among various alternatives-requires accounting for costs, benefits and the change in risks associated with each candidate action. Decisions under any form of the precautionary principle reviewed must account for the contingent nature of scientific information, creating a link to the decision/response models to the current set of regulatory defaults such as the linear, non-threshold models. This increase in the number of defaults is an important improvement because most of the variants of the precautionary principle require cost-defined as a choice that makes preferred consequences more likely-analytic principle of expected value of information (VOI), to show the relevance of new information, relative to the initial (and smaller) set of data on which the decision was based. We exemplify this seemingly simple situation using risk management of BSE. As an integral aspect of causal analysis under risk, the methods developed in this paper permit the addition of non-linear, hormetic dose-analytic solution is outlined that focuses on risky decisions and accounts for prior states of information and scientific beliefs that can be updated as subsequent information becomes available. As a practical and established approach to causal reasoning and decision-making under risk, inherent to precautionary decision-making, these (Bayesian) methods help decision-makers and stakeholders because they formally account for probabilistic outcomes, new information, and are consistent and replicable. benefit balancing. Specifically, increasing the set of causal defaults accounts for beneficial effects at very low doses. We also show and conclude that quantitative risk assessment dominates qualitative risk assessment, supporting the extension of the set of default causal models.

scholarly journals Environmental Management: the Precautionary Principle and Null Hypotheses

1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Goodall
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
The Precautionary Principle

A recent paper (Calver et al. 1999) exemplifies an approach to environmental problems which, though common, is often inappropriate, and may indeed be counterproductive in confrontational situations. An examination seems called for.

Towards scientific contributions in applying the precautionary principle: an example from southwestern Australia

1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 63 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Calver ◽  
J. S. Bradley ◽  
I. W. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Statistical Power ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Jarrah Forest ◽  
Precautionary Approach ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Contemporary Management ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Quantitative Definition

Scientific suspicion of the widely stated precautionary principle is based largely on confusion as to procedures for incorporating scientific data into a philosophical-political process. Here we take published guidelines on applying the precautionary principle and illustrate how they allow scientific input to the question of whether or not current multipleuse forestry takes a precautionary approach to conserving threatened or vulnerable marsupials in the jarrah forest of Western Australia. The scientific input involves (i) identification of outcomes in similar situations elsewhere in Australia, (ii) selection of indicator species for monitoring based on predictions made on the basis of (i) above and published accounts of the species' biology, and (iii) a prescription for monitoring/experimentation that includes a quantitative requirement for a probability of detecting impacts based on statistical power analysis. On the standards suggested, contemporary management falls short of a quantitative definition of precaution that involves adherence to measurable standards.

Differing perspectives on the use of scientific evidence and the precautionary principle

2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 2543-2545 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Burger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
European Community ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Assessment Process ◽  
Weight Of Evidence ◽  
Uncertainty Factors ◽  
The Precautionary Principle

Different governments and agencies are approaching the use of scientific evidence, weight of evidence, and the precautionary principle in different ways. The European community has used the precautionary principle in situations where the consequences are great, data are unavailable or will be costly (in terms of money and time) to obtain, or data are difficult or impossible to obtain. Other countries, such as the United States, have a risk assessment process that has built-in safety or uncertainty factors which are themselves precautionary. Risk management decisions can be made on the basis of adequate studies, risk assessment, weight-of-evidence approaches, and the application of the precautionary principle. While weight of evidence has been used in the United States for increased research funding and regulator action with respect to some chemicals that are hormonally active, the European community has applied the precautionary principle.

UNDERSTANDING THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE AND ITS THREAT TO HUMAN WELFARE

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Sterling Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
The Past ◽  
Novel Technology

Over the past three decades, the Precautionary Principle (PP) has become popular in discussions of public policy, especially in relation to health and environmental policy. Though there are a number of different versions of the principle, the genesis of the idea is that it is better to be safe than sorry. In terms of public policy, proponents of the PP argue that being safe means that, if there is a possibility of harm from a new activity or novel technology, even if the scientific evidence concerning the harm is absent or uncertain, precautionary actions should be taken. In one version or another, the PP has been incorporated into a number of laws and treaties. Yet arguments for the PP are unconvincing, the PP itself is vague and when enacted in law, results in arbitrary regulations that pose a threat to human welfare. As a result, the PP should be rejected as a basis for public policy.

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