Making Better Use of Scientific Knowledge: Separating Truth from Justice

One major reason that scientific information is not often effectively applied in the formation of social policy is that available methods for coping with the uncertainty in scientific judgments are overlooked. Application of such methods is as necessary as reducing uncertainty through the acquisitio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPsychological science Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 80 - 87
Main Authors Hammond, Kenneth R., Harvey, Lewis O., Hastie, Reid
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA Cambridge University Press 01.03.1992
SAGE Publications
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Bullets
Certainty
Dams
Judgment
Methodological Problems
Observational research
Policy Making
Polygraph testing
Public policy
Science
Scientific Knowledge
Signal detection theory
Social Policy
Value judgments
Values
Weather
Weather forecasting
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Summary:One major reason that scientific information is not often effectively applied in the formation of social policy is that available methods for coping with the uncertainty in scientific judgments are overlooked. Application of such methods is as necessary as reducing uncertainty through the acquisition of more knowledge for these methods result in the more effective use of knowledge already at hand. Furthermore, failure to cope with uncertainty through explicit, analytical methods results in failure to separate fact (truth) from value (justice), which in turn results in wasted knowledge and unnecessary dispute. We present four concrete examples of how such circumstances can be avoided.
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ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00002.x