I gave a keynote presentation at Carolinian Canada's Ecosystem Recovery Forum at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Hamilton, Ontario, asking, "Why Don't Ecologists Get More Respect?"
https://caroliniancanada.ca/events/2014-ecosystem-recovery-forum
1. Why don’t ecologists get
more respect?
Dawn R. Bazely
Biology Department, York University,
Toronto
Wed 29 Oct 2014, Carolinian Canada Ecoystem Recovery
Forum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Hamilton, ON, Canada
http://bit.ly/13muPEZ
2. “If you want advice on how to save the
planet don’t walk into an ecology
department.”
Hugh Possingham (Ecologist & co-developer of MARXAN software)
March 2009, Fenner Conference on the Environment, Australia
5. “Today the world’s major unsolved
challenges all revolve around
science. By the 2012 election
cycle, at a time when science is
influencing every aspect of modern
life, anti-science views from
climate-change denial to
creationism to vaccine refusal have
become mainstream.”
Shawn Otto in Fool Me Twice
6. Why don’t people listen to
ecologists?
• The science is too difficult?
• Ecologists are terrible communicators?
• We talk about depressing doom & gloom
scenarios?
7. Only 18% of Americans have
actually met a scientist
8.
9. Council of Canadian Academies
report: Science Culture: Where
Canada Stands 2014
http://www.scienceadvice.ca/en/asse
ssments/completed/science-culture.
aspx
10.
11. Ecologists need help with
• Understanding:
• How science feeds into policy…
• How policy is different from politics
• We need social scientists!
14. Policy Defined
“A policy is typically described as a
principle or rule to guide decisions and
achieve rational outcome(s). The term is
not normally used to denote what is
actually done, this is normally referred to
as either procedure or protocol”
Wikipedia
22. Interdisciplinary collaborations
• Are not all equal
• science academics + NGOs +
government bureaucrats (multiple
stakeholder groups)
• ≠
• collaborations between science
academics and different kinds of
academics from the social sciences and
humanities
23. Uncomfortable & not for
everyone!
• Not all academics share the same goals
• e.g. Political Ecologists offer a critique that
includes the “science agenda” and ecologists
24. Benefits of interdisciplinary
collaborations are still unclear
• Science of Team Science research asks IF
& HOW collaboration generates novel,
innovative, transdisciplinary solutions
• Previously, there’s been little rigorous
assessment
25. My world for 7 years!
Drolet, D. 2014. Meet 5 academics who have switched disciplines
mid-career. University Affairs, February 12. (that’s me…)
38. “get a meeting with the minister”
I explained to Donna
Cansfield (Minister of
Natural Resources) in
2009 that science was
being swept aside and
that forest health, as
assumed under various
acts (eg ORM) was
declining via lack of action
39. Participate beyond science eg.
Ontario’s Human-Wildlife Conflict
Advisory Group
• Provides advice and support to the
implementation of the “Strategy for
Preventing and Managing Human-
Wildlife Conflicts in Ontario” and
“Strategy for Preventing and Managing
Human-Deer Conflicts in Southern
Ontario””.
• notes from first meeting June 2009
45. Acknowledgements
• Norwegian Research Council, for Leiv
Eiriksson Mobility Fund support.
• International Polar Year, Government of
Canada 2006-11.
• Harvard Forest, Harvard University, for a
Charles Bullard Fellowship 2011-12
• For opportunities to get outside of the
science box into the science-policy-politics
space