Science informing Policy – a health warning for the environment

The development of mutual understanding between scientist and policy maker of the role of scientific evidence in informing policy is critical to effective environmental management. A higher profile and greater media coverage such engagement might provide are potentially good things for environmental science and scientists. The value of original research needs greater appreciation by those who might pay for it (tax payers, donors). Truly novel and groundbreaking research should be widely and accurately reported using skilled journalism to explain often complex issues to a lay readership or viewing audience. But, along with these positives there are potential negatives when scientists or vested interest groups compete for attention to promote one piece of research as more important or interesting than another.Communicating science to a wider audience is already something of an industry. Many publishers now seek to gain media coverage for individual papers and summarize the findings of key papers in dedicated sections of their journals to broaden their impact. Of course, where there is commercial interest there will always be selective relationships between scientists and those that might seek to exploit the results. Many organisations provide a service for those who wish to translate their outputs and increase their impact in a commercial setting (e.g. healthcare [5]). Putting commercial interests to one side, there are many situations in which collective (rather than selective) scientific evidence should be used for the collective good of society; public health and environmental management are perhaps two examples. Unfortunately, in contrast to public health, there is no widely adopted mechanism in environmental management to facilitate this process.Whilst we recognise that the translation of environmental science into policy is not a simple linear process [6] and that there are many other factors that influence policy decisions, there are also cases where science ha