Inadvertent Advocacy

Abstract

Policy advocacy is an issue regularly debated among conservation scientists. These debates have focused on intentional policy advocacy by scientists, but advocacy can also be unintentional. I define inadvertent policy advocacy as the act of unintentionally expressing personal policy preferences or ethical judgments in a way that is nearly indistinguishable from scientific judgments. A scientist may be well intentioned and intellectually honest but still inadvertently engage in policy advocacy. There are two ways to inadvertently engage in policy advocacy. First, a scientist expresses an opinion that she or he believes is a scientific judgment but it is actually an ethical judgment or personal policy preference. Second, a scientist expresses an opinion that he or she knows is an ethical judgment or personal policy preference but inadvertently fails to effectively communicate the nature of the opinion to policy makers or the public. I illustrate inadvertent advocacy with three examples: recovery criteria in recovery plans for species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, a scientific peer review of a recovery plan for the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's definition of threatened. In each example, scientists expressed ethical judgments or policy preferences, but their value judgments were not identified as such, and, hence, their value judgments were opaque to policy makers and the public. Circumstances suggest their advocacy was inadvertent. I believe conservation scientists must become acutely aware of the line between science and policy and avoid inadvertent policy advocacy because it is professional negligence, erodes trust in scientists and science, and perpetuates an ethical vacuum that undermines the rational political discourse necessary for the evolution of society's values. The principal remedy for inadvertent advocacy is education of conservation scientists in an effort to help them understand how science and values interact to fulfill the mission of conservation science.

Credibility and advocacy in conservation science

“…As Alagona (:1365) put it, “everybody seems to think credibility is a good idea…. But exactly what credibility is remains the subject of considerable confusion.” Various pairings of the term, such as scientific credibility (Costanza :459; Wilhere :40), professional credibility (Gill :22), and agency credibility (Rutberg :33), contribute to the confusion. Occasionally, the literature defines credibility as believability or as inspiring trust (Blockstein ; Nelson & Vucetich ; Ruggiero ; Yamamoto ).…”

The effects of lead agency, nongovernmental organizations, and recovery team membership on the identification of critical habitat for species at risk: insights from the Canadian experience

“…Arguably two of the three court challenges that clarified the Canadian federal government's duty to implement SARA were possible only because the presence of independent scientists on recovery teams ensured transparency and accountability, i.e., team members vigorously opposed agency censorship of scientific content, which would have been difficult without independent representation on recovery teams. Although independent scientists may also harbour biases that favour conservation goals (Wilhere 2012), the consistent rulings against government policy interpretations indicate that inflation of conservation objectives by independent scientists beyond the scope and intent of SARA legislation was not an issue.…”

Beyond Advocacy: Making Space for Conservation Scientists in Public Debate

“…Disclosure of one's (relevant) personal history is complicated in the context of multi‐authored papers in ecology and may not be necessary to the same extent. But some degree of personal reflection will help avoid the advocacy by stealth discussed by Pielke and others (Pielke Jr ; Wilhere ). As a starting point, ecologists may ask: What is the research culture in my lab (e.g., dominant methodologies and analysis techniques) and how has this affected me? Who is funding my research, and how has their value system influenced me? What are my own personal values (e.g., I value grasslands) and prior beliefs (e.g., grasslands are threatened) and how do they influence my methodological choices and interpretations? …”