Sharon F. currently works for the Forest Service in land management. In the past, she worked in FS Research and Development, and with USDA extramural research at the agency now known as NIFA.FOR ADDITIONAL READING ON THE SUBJECT OF CONNECTING SCIENCE AND STAKEHOLDERS, SEE THIS SET OF PAPERS AND IN PARTICULAR THIS OVERVIEW (PDF).]
Roger asked me to give my thoughts on the recent GAO report “Forest Service Research and Development: Improvements in Delivery of Research Can Help Ensure that Benefits of Research are Realized.” It can be found here.
The report's main recommendation was that
"the Forest Service assess the effectiveness of recent steps FS R&D has taken to improve science delivery and take steps to ensure that individual performance assessment better balance the various types of science delivery activities." (from "what GAO recommends.")In their letter to Senator Reid, GAO states,
"FS R&D conducts basic research in a range of biological, physical, and social science fields and applies this knowledge to develop technologies and deliver science to federal and state land managers, industry private landowners and other entities."Not to be pedantic, but there seems to be a disconnect. If we go by the formal OMB definitions of basic, applied research and development
Basic research is defined as systematic study directed toward fuller knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and of observable facts without specific applications towards processes or products in mind. Basic research, however, may include activities with broad applications in mind.By using the terms "basic research" and "science delivery" it seems as if they are using what I call the conveyor belt model for bringing science to management. Under this model, scientists determine what research is needed, design it, fund it, publish papers and set the results on the conveyor belt- the user's job is to pick it up and use it. According to this model, all that needs to be done is to focus on the conveyor belt, reward scientists for putting research on the belt, and everything will be fine.
Applied research is defined as systematic study to gain knowledge or understanding necessary to determine the means by which a recognized and specific need may be met.
Development is defined as systematic application of knowledge or understanding, directed toward the production of useful materials, devices, and systems or methods, including design, development, and improvement of prototypes and new processes to meet specific requirements.
Unfortunately, much research designed without the input of users is not framed in a way to be particularly useful to them. Busy practitioners know exactly what is useful and what is not. So they may disregard most of what comes down the belt.
I have been in multiple meetings over multiple years where the same phenomenon occurs. Users are rounded up (the usual suspects) and asked what we want. If people really cared, this would be an ongoing conversation at many organizational levels and approached systematically. There is a section in the GAO report "Increased Stakeholder Involvement in Setting Research Agendas," but the distinctions of "users" are not clear; for example, universities are also discussed as "stakeholders." If researchers think different things are interesting (or easy to get funded, or more likely to get published) than do practitioners, it is likely that university and FS researchers would tend to be on one side, and practitioners on the other. So mixing in other researchers as "stakeholders" tends to dilute the practitioner vote.
At land grant institutions, the USDA developed a model of research, extension and education. Under that model, people who wanted research knew who they should talk to- professors, the Dean of the school, for example. Extension folks had to go out and talk to real users and communication went both ways (at its best). Students were linked to the real world through extension activities and people.
Through time, less of that funding has been available, due to the ideological hegemony of the "investigator- initiated competitive grant is best" worldview, which can have the result of research "of the scientists, by the scientists, and for the scientists." This may be a good approach for basic science, but not when a problem calls for clear stakeholder involvement in framing and design and a variety of alternative approaches.
If research is funded by other agencies (e.g. NSF, NOAA) with scientist-based criteria, it is putting the scientists between a rock and a hard place to ask them to produce research that's relevant and used. Redesigning the science delivery conveyor belt won't help if no users are standing at the other end.
7 comments:
Sharon,
I suspect Roger would argue that the conveyor belt mentality is not limited to FS research, but is alive and well in generating research knowledge for policy.
I guess I'm not clear on what you'd like to have happen. Would recommitting to the extension model, or some version of it, be sufficient to get the users back to the conveyor belt? Or do we really need to construct new connections between researchers and practitioners?
(And, just to be a bit broader in analysis, do other fields, like science policy, need to do something similar?)
The age old conundrum.
Knowledge for the sake of knowledge or knowledge for some purpose.
We seem to teeter-totter between favoring applied science and research science.
30 years ago any second year engineering student could design a theoretical automobile that got 100+ MPG. We still can't figure out how to build such a vehicle at a price anyone could possibly afford. It would appear the 'applied sciences' are being neglected.
My preference is enabling technology and product developement. I think the that academic research needs to get away from how do I fund PhD candidates etc and focus on what society needs.
David B.
Great questions! I think the same model applies to technology development and science policy, so will use both interchangeably.
Here’s what I would like to have happen. First, we need a more disciplined approach to what is basic and what is applied. If basic is basic, then use scientist panels, but don’t put in your proposal that the work is policy relevant. If the research is applied or policy relevant, then it should be funded through a process in which the questions are framed by practitioners, policy-makers and the public, and the most relevant disciplines to that framing are used. As it works today, there is no common framing, and practitioners (or policy makers) find different snippets of research that do not fit into a coherent whole. Or people who disagree politically pull together different snippets in different ways to reinforce their agendas.
So, for an example, outside of “forest world”, let’s take the question of “what energy sources should we use in the time gap before renewable?” Natural gas is cleaner and better for GHG’s, yet people who live near gas wells are worried about contaminated water and other impacts. How much research do we have on that important question? How can we possibly compare the environmental impacts of gas and coal, as well as the economic and social when we have different puzzle pieces of research that don't fit together? How can we trust that anyone is objective about this- industry, academia- without having a more public process of vetting questions, alternative approaches, and developing research designs where the pieces are designed to fit together to help inform a decision. Also, I would argue that for research designed to inform major policy decisions, QA/QC and free and transparent publications and comments should be required. Once on a very mundane question with management implications, I asked a researcher “where is your QA/QC?” and she said “we couldn’t afford to do it.” I said I didn’t think I could afford to spend taxpayers' dollars on something without QA/QC.
As to extension, within that community there is an entire, excellent literature on what is called “technology transfer”. The extension model is based on people. What I see today is getting away from people, to websites, and drive-by tech transfer where practitioners go to meetings in which researchers talk but there is no real chance for researchers to listen.
So let’s do a thought experiment on extension for decarbonizing energy. First, extension agents would be out talking to people- what is working for you in solar, in wind, for your woodstove. You could have the equivalent of the “master gardeners” program for energy so that everyone has someone free, with real world experience, and no particular corporate agenda, that they can talk to about energy. Then there would be a formal mechanism for these folks to be feeding back to researchers and industry about what is working and what isn’t and why.
The research, education, extension model transformed American agriculture- it has the potential to transform American energy.
All we need to do is to engage the users of technology in the funding decisions and design of research.
Academia and basic research has become a series of semi-independent states that exist largely apart from and have little understanding or respect for the larger society that makes them possible and sustains them. There clearly needs to be academic freedom, but what we have now is starting to go off the rails.
Sharon,
I have no idea that drawing brighter lines between basic and applied will do anything to reduce or eliminate these problems:
"As it works today, there is no common framing, and practitioners (or policy makers) find different snippets of research that do not fit into a coherent whole. Or people who disagree politically pull together different snippets in different ways to reinforce their agendas."
I'm in favor of having the extension model modified and applied to other fields, as it encourages conversations with researchers and practitioners about what's out there and what's needed in terms of research information. I think this could be augmented by people combing through existing research with an eye towards potential applications (which I think is a bit different than what extension agents typically do). Because a drawback to pushing use-relevance considerations to strictly applied research is a reduction in the incentive to scan basic research output for uses that may not have been foreseen (or could not have been foreseen).
Sort of an aside - what do you think of the idea of use-inspired basic research Donald Stokes put in "Pasteur's Quadrant"
I think there are directed research programs (typically funded via contracts rather than grants, though I'm not sure about percentages) that might address some of your concerns as well.
David- Sorry I am so late to respond, missed this.
I ordered Pasteur's Quadrant - will have to take a look.
Here is one of the closest examples that come to mind in terms of an approach that involves practitioners, and it is funded via grants, the Joint Fire Science Program http://www.firescience.gov/index.cfm
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