Policy for science for policy: A commentary on Lambright on ozone depletion and acid rain

Scientists face increasing pressure to demonstrate how their work contributes to societal objectives. Likewise, policy makers proposing environmental policies are often asked to provide the scientific basis on which their proposals are based. These twin pressures are forcing a closer connection between science and policy. In our view, policy-for-science-for-policy is a recursive process of defining societal goals, using those goals to identify questions to be addressed by science, then relating the findings of science back to the original goals, and if necessary, revisiting the goals themselves. Any policy analysis that focuses solely on policy-for-science or on science-for-policy tells only part of the story. To illustrate the need tor and utility of a more integrative framework we critique a recent study of science and policy in the case stratospheric ozone depletion provided by W.H. Lambright in the September 1995 issue of Research Policy and in the process offer an alternative analysis. We find that the primary lesson of the ozone experience, supported in the case of acid rain, lies not in the conduct of research by government agencies or in the efforts of research managers to provide entrepreneurial leadership, but in the establishment of a healthy policy process a policy-for-science-for-policy-that connected scientists and decision makers in pursuit of a common goal. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.