Science policy: uncertainty in science
Interesting working paper published by the LSE Grantham Institute entitled Scientific Uncertainty: a user's guide.
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Filtered on Author (John Jackson), Taxonomy term (climate change), Date (Aug 2011).
Biodiversity science USA: the National Ecological Observatory Network
Article in Nature on the launch of NEON in the USA - The National Ecological Observatory Network, funded by NSF. Only just starting, but worth looking at the site and their science strategy. /....More
Number of Grand Challenges identified:
- Climate Change: Understanding and predicting climate variability, including directional climate change and its impacts on natural and human systems
- Land Use: Understanding and predicting changes in land use and land cover that are critical to biogeochemical cycling, ecosystem functioning and services, and human welfare.Invasive Species: Understanding and forecasting the distribution of biological invasions and their impacts on ecological processes and ecosystem services.
- Biogeochemistry: Understanding and predicting the impacts of human activities on the Earth’s major biogeochemical cycles.
- Biodiversity: Understanding the regulation of biological diversity and its functional consequences for ecosystems.Ecohydrology: Understanding and predicting changes in freshwater resources and the environment.
- Infectious Diseases: Understanding and predicting the ecological and evolutionary aspects of infectious diseases and of the interactions among pathogens, hosts/receptors, and ecosystems.
Science Policy: review of BBC science coverage
The report and response on the impartiality of BBC coverage of science has been published - commissioned by the BBC Trust. Interesting reading overall, with a conclusion of a high quality of coverage, but areas for improvement. In broad terms there is a need to improve the appropriate weight given in terms of the scientific consensus (where this exists) in areas of controversy - so how pro and con views on human-induced climate change are given. A lot of detail and case studies over a particular time period in evidence. One slight oddity is that it does not appear that wildlife/nature programming is considered as science: perhaps this is because the scientific basis is not explicit to the layperson?