Scientific Evidence in Regulation and Governance

通过获得尽可能好的科学知识来加强公共政策的制定。该项目使用强大的新信息和分析工具来了解和改进科学是如何在不同的联邦决策领域使用的。该项目的核心是开发第一个大规模的、公开可用的数据库，该数据库将特定的政策与特定的科学来源联系起来，允许跨时间、决策领域和科学学科进行比较。该数据库更好地阐明了监管影响评估的基础，揭示了如何向政策制定者展示科学，并为科学研究人员及其资助者提供了现实世界政策影响的具体证据。这个项目的重点是监管影响分析(RIA)，美国联邦监管机构有义务制作这些分析来评估主要法规的预期成本和收益，以：1)描述在监管决策中使用科学研究的模式；2)确定使其对政策制定者或多或少有用的科学研究的特征；以及3)利用研究与政策联系的特定实例来反向设计科学-政策网络，并了解监管政策制定者何时以及如何利用科学研究。智力优势：该项目大大促进了对科学研究与政策制定之间关系的了解。通过这项研究构建的数据库的广度和特异性，为许多重要的首要问题提供了见解，例如：监管机构在面临特别引人注目的政策决策时，是否会更多地利用科学研究？立法监督是否会影响监管机构对科学研究的使用？倡导和利益团体在形成在监管政策制定中利用科学研究方面发挥了什么作用？主要的研究资助者是否促进了与决策问题相关的科学的产生？该项目为理解研究在公共政策制定中的使用提供了实质性的新贡献。总体而言，该项目的结果全面评估了政治、政策和科学领域的重要行为者在促进科学研究和规则制定之间的联系方面所发挥的作用。广泛影响：联邦监管机构制定旨在提高人类和生态系统健康、经济竞争力、政府职能和其他监管领域的具体法规。现有最好的科学是有效规则制定的重要组成部分。该项目产生的公共使用的在线数据库可供政策制定者用来改进其对科学的使用，研究资助机构可用来了解政策制定者最常使用的研究以及存在重大差距的地方，以及对确定决策过程中使用的证据--科学证据和其他证据的质量和数量感兴趣的组织和公众成员。该数据库也向研究科学研究和公共政策制定之间关系的学者开放。该项目帮助科学家和监管机构确定更好的研究或沟通可以改善政策制定的领域。最后，该项目有望在两个方面让监管政策制定者直接受益。首先，获取尽可能好的科学知识为监管政策的制定提供了合法性。其次，该项目包括与监管机构官员进行大量互动，以更好地了解他们确定适当科学的方法，并加强他们在决策中的科学应用。

Public policymaking is enhanced through access to the best possible science. This project uses powerful new information and analytical tools to understand and improve how science is used across disparate federal policymaking arenas. Central to the project is the development of the first large-scale, publicly available database that connects specific policies to specific scientific sources, allowing comparisons across time, policymaking domains, and scientific disciplines. This database better illuminates the basis of regulatory impact assessments, reveals how science is presented to policymakers, and provides scientific researchers as well as their funders with concrete evidence of real-world policy impact. This project focuses on regulatory impact analyses (RIAs), which US federal regulatory agencies are obligated to produce to assess anticipated costs and benefits of major regulations, to: 1) describe the patterns of scientific research use in regulatory decisions; 2) identify characteristics of scientific research that make it more or less useful to policymakers; and 3) utilize specific instances of research-to-policy connections to reverse engineer science-policy networks, and understand when and how regulatory policymakers make use of scientific research.Intellectual Merit: This project substantially advances knowledge regarding the relationships between scientific research and policymaking. The breadth and specificity in the database constructed with this research provides insights regarding many important overarching questions, such as: Do regulators draw upon scientific research more heavily when faced with particularly high profile policy decisions? Does legislative oversight influence the use of scientific research by regulators? What roles do advocacy and interest groups play in shaping the use of scientific research in regulatory policymaking? Do major research funders facilitate the production of science that is relevant to policymaking problems? The project offers substantial new contributions to understanding research use in public policymaking. Overall, the results of this project provide a comprehensive assessment of the role that important actors in the political, policy, and scientific spheres play in facilitating connections between scientific research and rulemaking.Broader Impacts: Federal regulators establish the specific regulations intended to enhance human and ecosystem health, economic competitiveness, government functions, and other regulatory domains. The best available science is an important component of effective rulemaking. The public-use, online database produced by this project can be used by policymakers to improve their use of science, research funding agencies to understand which research is most used by policymakers and where important gaps exist, and organizations and members of the general public interested in identifying the quality and quantity of evidence--scientific and otherwise--used in the policymaking process. The database is also openly available to scholars studying the relationship between scientific research and public policymaking. The project helps scientists as well as regulatory agencies identify areas where better research or communication can improve policymaking. Lastly, the project is poised to directly benefit regulatory policymakers in two ways. First, accessing the best possible science provides legitimacy for regulatory policymaking. Second, the project includes substantial interactions with regulatory agency officials to better understand their methodologies for identifying appropriate science and to enhance their application of science to policymaking.