Call for Papers—GSA and AGU 2011 Fall Meetings
The Union of Concerned Scientists has organized symposia at the fall meetings of the Geological Society of America and American Geophysical Union. We are seeking abstracts for four sessions and wanted to encourage members of the UCS Science Network to consider presenting.
If you are attending or interested in attending either meeting, please review the sessions below and consider submitting an abstract.
If you decide to submit, or if you have questions at any time, please contact Michael Halpern at UCS.
Geological Society of America 2011 Annual Meeting
October 9-12, 2011
Minneapolis, MN
Support for Scientific Integrity and Scientists in an Age of Public Scrutiny (#209)
Description: Science is increasingly politicized and scientists are subject to unprecedented public attention. We will explore attempts to codify strong government scientific integrity standards, improve access to government data and scientists, and neutralize attacks on scientists.
Rationale: As science is increasingly misused for political reasons, scientific integrity in government has become an important public policy issue in recent years. Science has been manipulated, suppressed, and distorted on contentious issues such as the environmental impact of new energy extraction technologies, climate change, mountaintop removal mining, oil drilling risk assessments, and toxic contamination of public lands. Meanwhile, many public figures are escalating attacks on scientists. For example, members of Congress who are hostile to scientific discovery have pledged to drag scientists into hearings to justify their research. And talk radio hosts and bloggers attack individual scientists and encourage their listeners to go after them. At the same time, government and independent entities are working to codify strong scientific integrity standards within government, increase access to taxpayer funded research and experts, and better equip scientists to defend their work and their personal safety from increasingly virulent attacks. The Obama administration created an Open Government Initiative, aimed at giving the public meaningful access to government data, and has issued scientific integrity guidelines that federal agencies are required to adopt by late spring 2010. Individual scientists and their societies are exploring how to publicly neutralize their adversaries and better serve as a resource for media and policymakers. In this context, we will explore questions of how to support scientists and scientific integrity. How has the Obama administration progressed in improving scientific integrity in the policy-making process? How has access to government data changed? What are the best ways to manage research, data, model output, and email exchanges with colleagues so that they can stand up to public scrutiny? How can those funding and managing research, as well as the scientific societies who represent them, develop discipline-specific guidance and tools for scientists to turn to both in times of crisis and as a means to keep the public fully informed about current scientific knowledge?
Click here to submit an abstract for the GSA meeting. Click on our session title, “209. Support for Scientific Integrity and Scientists in an Age of Public Scrutiny,” and then fill out the submission form.
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2011
December 5-9, 2011
San Francisco, CA
SESSION ONE
Shapers of the Debate: What Happens to Science in the Hands of Stakeholders
Description: Policy-relevant scientific information passes through many hands and often changes as a result. The private sector, politicians and other decision makers, think tanks and other non-governmental organizations all have stakes in the climate debate and hence a use for climate science. Journalists, educators, and scientists all have a responsibility as stewards and creators of climate science. This symposium will bring together a diverse group of these stakeholders and their research to help climate scientists understand where climate science is vulnerable to being misrepresented and how to more effectively play a meaningful role in debates beyond the scientific community.
SESSION TWO
Scientific Uncertainty: A Multidisciplinary Assessment
Description: Scientific uncertainty has been used to distort and undermine scientific knowledge. Decision makers, corporate leaders, and the general public can have a very different understanding than scientists of both what scientific uncertainty is and what acceptable levels of uncertainty might be. The use of uncertainty to discredit the science used by those on opposite sides of arguments has become a mainstay of political and private sector discourse. This session will bring together experts in scientific uncertainty and its communication to demonstrate its widespread use in many arenas, and to address how scientists can best communicate scientific uncertainty to minimize its power to sow doubt where in fact near certainty may lie.
SESSION THREE
B:25 Controls on Nitrogen Losses from Managed Landscapes
Description: Evidence of the drive to control nitrogen (N) pollution includes the just-released European Nitrogen Assessment and the development of management protocols for agriculture under California’s climate protection law. As most reactive N originates in managed landscapes, we require understanding where these landscapes are leaky vs. retentive, and what interventions reduce N losses. Research in agricultural landscapes has addressed the influence of cropping systems, hydrology management, and fertilizer type and application on N losses. In urban landscapes, research on the fate of N in lawns, N deposition near roads, and N removal by storm water retention basins and debris dams in streams has contributed policy-relevant knowledge.
Click here to submit an abstract for an AGU session. If you are not an AGU member and need one to sponsor your submission, please contact please contact Michael Halpern at UCS.
