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What The Hell is Science-Based Management?

As to the lawyers back a few posts, tort reform.

Good luck with that!
 
Good luck with that!
Yup - throw up our hands and blame the system. The system we voted to create and we vote to preserve.
 
I think it's pretty clear that science is a politically charged word, and I don't think folks are wrong about that.

That said, when it comes to wildlife management, I'm more thinking that "science-based" isn't a thing or at the very least is a confusing term. "Based" kind of implies that our management emanates from science, which isn't really correct. "Science-informed" is more accurate.

Doesn't make the role of scientists within wildlife management any less important, just clarifies that science is a tool that helps us get to a destination - the destination really being a goal or value that takes into consideration things outside of what we would typically classify as science, that itself also happens to be in flux. Dang complicated.


This thread is anecdotal proof that “science based management” as perceived by most of us has more to do with branding a desired management outcome than it does actually describing a particular methodology.

Maybe some social scientist will include this as a data point some day.
 
Dogmatic narrators counselor, the lot of them...I have the free will to pick up either end of the turd I wish.
While I would like to believe that you do, there is a fairly good argument that there is no free will at all, and that everything we do is the product of our environment, writ extremely large, and we are fated to futures while unable to predict them. Right down to this very sentence. It's an argument for philosophers, mathematicians, and physicists, in that order.
 
While I would like to believe that you do, there is a fairly good argument that there is no free will at all, and that everything we do is the product of our environment, writ extremely large, and we are fated to futures while unable to predict them. Right down to this very sentence. It's an argument for philosophers, mathematicians, and physicists, in that order.


Zoologists make awful Calvinists.
 
This thread is anecdotal proof that “science based management” as perceived by most of us has more to do with branding a desired management outcome than it does actually describing a particular methodology.

Maybe some social scientist will include this as a data point some day.
Perhaps we appoint delegates to narrow the meaning to two choices...and then we vote
 
While I would like to believe that you do, there is a fairly good argument that there is no free will at all, and that everything we do is the product of our environment, writ extremely large, and we are fated to futures while unable to predict them. Right down to this very sentence. It's an argument for philosophers, mathematicians, and physicists, in that order.
I'm getting an unpreventable repeat of mistakes vibe from your eloquence Brent.
 
Physics? Yes
Biology? Yes
Sociology? No...er, maybe

How about Ecology?
The study of biological interactions, which occur on a spectrum and not in absolution, a "science"(?) that can provide some correlations and potentially some causations, certainly used to describe relationships, including ones we're involved with.
 
Problem is that it is supposed to be collect/observe, hypothesize, test, conclude, repeat. Skipping hypothesis is what drives p-hacking and other back practices.
I guess my point is I agree, in some cases, but not all. Edison tried thousands of materials as filament in light bulb. I'm sure he didn't write out a hypothesis for each one, but he did measure his process to make sure he knew how long each burned. What you describe is more a statistical process. It seems Science is more than just that, I just wish I could describe it better. In some cases we want that, like FDA approving drugs, in other cases it is unnecessary.

I think the current anti-science movement is because our expectations are too high, ironically because of the successes of science. Example, my 10yr has a cold. I explained that we can test for things and prove what it isn't, and we have medicines that help alleviate the misery, but I can't stop a person from getting a common cold and having to endure her body's reaction to it. Obviously she found this less than satisfying, but that doesn't invalidate science. So yes, America is acting like a bunch of 10yr olds.
 
This thread is anecdotal proof that “science based management” as perceived by most of us has more to do with branding a desired management outcome than it does actually describing a particular methodology.

Maybe some social scientist will include this as a data point some day.
This is a point people will blow right by. It could have been made on the Dave Ramsey thread. People judge decisions based on outcomes even if that isn't how it should be. You can never convince someone who bought a winning lottery ticket that the purchase of the ticket was a bad economic choice from a statistical point of view. Same with the guy who stubbles into an elk and kills it. Even if 99% of the time the elk should have smelled him but didn't for some reason, trying to convince him to not walk the same path in the same scenario next year is pointless. Probabilities are thrown out once we beat the odds.
 
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