Scientific Evidence in Regulation and Governance

通过获取尽可能好的科学知识，加强公共决策。 该项目使用强大的新信息和分析工具来理解和改进科学如何在不同的联邦决策领域中使用。 该项目的核心是开发第一个大规模的公开数据库，将具体政策与具体科学来源联系起来，从而可以进行跨时间、决策领域和科学学科的比较。 该数据库更好地阐明了监管影响评估的基础，揭示了科学是如何呈现给政策制定者的，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。该项目的重点是美国联邦监管机构有义务进行监管影响分析（RIA），以评估重大监管的预期成本和收益，以：1）描述科学研究在监管决策中的使用模式; 2）识别科学研究的特征，使其对政策制定者或多或少有用;（3）利用研究与政策之间联系的具体实例，对科学政策网络进行逆向工程，并了解监管政策制定者何时以及如何利用科学研究。该项目大大增进了关于科学研究与决策之间关系的知识。本研究构建的数据库的广度和特异性为许多重要的总体问题提供了见解，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？立法监督是否影响监管机构对科学研究的使用？倡导团体和利益团体在规范决策中利用科学研究方面发挥什么作用？主要的研究资助者是否促进了与决策问题相关的科学成果？该项目为理解公共决策中的研究用途提供了大量新的贡献。总体而言，该项目的结果提供了一个全面的评估的作用，在政治，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连接发挥。更广泛的影响：联邦监管机构建立旨在提高人类和生态系统的健康，经济竞争力，政府职能和其他监管领域的具体法规。现有最佳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决策者使用，以改善其对科学的利用，供研究供资机构了解决策者最常使用的研究以及存在的重要差距，并可供有兴趣确定决策过程中使用的科学证据和其他证据的质量和数量的组织和公众成员使用。 该数据库还向研究科学研究与公共决策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决策的领域。最后，该项目将以两种方式直接使监管政策制定者受益。首先，获取尽可能好的科学为监管决策提供了合法性。 第二，该项目包括与监管机构官员进行实质性互动，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.