Bias in the development of health and ecological assessments and potential solutions

ABSTRACT

The effectiveness and credibility of environmental decisions depend on the information provided by scientific assessments. However, the conflicting assessments provided by government agencies, industries, and environmental advocacy groups suggest that biases occur during assessment processes. Sources of bias include personal bias, regulatory capture, advocacy, reliance on volunteer assessors, biased stakeholder and peer review processes, literature searches, standardization of data, inappropriate standards of proof, misinterpretation, and ambiguity. Assessors can adopt practices to increase objectivity, transparency, and clarity. Decision-makers, managers of assessors, and institutions that commission assessments can adopt other practices that reduce pressures on assessors and reduce opportunities for expression of the personal biases of assessors. Environmental assessment should be recognized as a discipline with its own technical and ethical best practices.

KEYWORDS:

• bias
• ethics
• environmental assessment
• risk assessment
• peer review
• data quality

Acknowledgments

We thank Beth Owens, Scott Wesselkamper, and Annette Gatchett for their helpful comments and thank participants in the National Center for Environmental Assessment, Cincinnati, Science Meetings for lively discussions of these issues. The views expressed in the article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The authors declare that this work received no support other than the salaries provided by their employer and they have no conflicts of interest.