SO WHAT? DO YOU BELIEVE IT? WAS IT FAIR?: PRODUCING SALIENT, CREDIBLE AND LEGITIMATE SCIENCE

In the crucible of contentious environmental decision making, efforts historically try to "get the science right". Resources are devoted to making the science more credible: conducting better assessments, funding better studies, and engaging better experts. Scientists and policy makers alike are often dismayed when such an approach fails — the issue remains contentious and solutions remain out of reach. For scientists, credibility is the coin of the realm, and "getting the science right" is of the utmost importance. But in a politically charged context, other attributes of science are critical if the science is to be used by decision makers. From this perspective, the salience of the science and the legitimacy of the science has as much, if not more weight, than whether the science is right or not. As this is increasingly understood, we are witnessing an ascendancy of joint fact-finding, co-production, mediated modeling and other collaborative efforts that bring scientists and decision makers together to construct shared understanding and policy options. In this presentation, we will explore the case of water management in the U.S. Great Plains in the last 2 decades and focus on 3 aspects of the process of producing and employing scientific and technical information: 1. The process evolution: Evolution to mediated co-production of scientific outputs brokered by a "boundary organization", an organization that mediates between the boundaries of science and management, and across boundaries from national to local levels. 2. Why the outcome was better: This process resulted in products that were viewed as salient, legitimate and credible by a wider audience (and by an audience that was critical to management decisions.) 3. How/why the process change led to the improved outcomes: The process encouraged iterated dialogue, the development of trust, and the sharing of essential expertises between technical experts (of varying types) and decision makers across levels. Ultimately, the analytic exercises answered the questions about which decision makers cared (salience), followed rules and norms that satisfied issues of technical competence and linked large scale models by USGS to local scale data collected by local management agencies (credibility), and followed a process that was transparent and inclusive (legitimacy).