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Background Virtually every decision within wildland fire management includes substantial ethical dimensions. As pressures increase with ever-growing fires, it is becoming increasingly important to develop tools for assessing and acting on the values intrinsic to wildfire management. Aims This paper aims to foster an applied ethics of wildland fire by bringing values to the forefront of wildland fire management debates, highlighting areas where ethical issues have been previously discussed, and providing a framework to assist in future discussion. Methods Through a literature review and collaborative thematic coding of a large set of ethical dilemmas, a list of ethical lenses was developed. Key results Five ethical lenses were generated from the thematic coding process: Epistemologies and Representation, Values and Priorities, Risk and Uncertainty, Power, and Metaethics. Conclusion The five lenses provide a framework to identify prospective ethical tensions in wildland fire decision-making, both within and cutting across categories. This framework provides a way of structuring future investigations into wildfire ethics, as well as a starting point for developing techniques to integrate community and stakeholder values. Implications Developing a field of applied ethics for wildland fire will help support decision-making, create space to more inclusively reflect and deliberate on values, and ensure that fire management best serves the public interest.

The internet is changing the way that knowledge is made and shared. Knowledge-making in face-to-face settings is being replaced by information gathering from remote sources, whose origins may be concealed but which can create an illusion of intimacy. Though remote communication is beneficial in many ways – modern societies would fail without it -- and though the tight boundaries of the face-to-face can be used for evil purposes such as criminal conspiracy, if the overall trend to remote communication continues unchecked, it could be disastrous for the future of democracy and the very idea of truth itself. Too much reliance on remote communication threatens the core institutions of democratic societies. We explain the change in technical detail, from a systematic analysis of the workings of the face-to-face to a high level setting-out of its dangerous political implications. The analysis includes field studies, reflexive examination, drawing on the wide experience of the authors, of the stickiness of the face-to-face in our own work and other institutions, and network analysis which explains the illusion of intimacy that can be generated inadvertently or maliciously. We look at the apparent effectiveness of techniques such as blockchain and the limits of their domain. New information is provided about the malicious use of disinformation by foreign powers. We dramatise the dangers to Western pluralist democracy through a personal accounting of the 2020 American election. By drawing out the special features of face-to-face interaction and its constitutive role in creating societies, with science as the icon, the book sets out an agenda for civic education that can protect democratic institutions from the erosion of pluralism and the facile abandonment of trustworthy expertise. The authors conclude by returning to the themes set out at the start of the book, namely the crucial role played by trust in modern societies and the importance of face-to-face interactions in reproducing that trust, and the democratic institutions in which it should be invested.

Technologies of anticipation – such as predictive analytics, forecasting, and modelling – offer appealing promises to those governing risk. While previous work has challenged notions that such tech...

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has resulted in a massive amount of global research on the social and human dimensions of the disease. Between academic researchers, governments, and polling firms, thousands of survey projects have been launched globally, tracking aspects like public opinion, social impacts, and drivers of disease transmission and mitigation. This deluge of research has created numerous potential risks and problems, including methodological concerns, duplication of efforts, and inappropriate selection and application of social science research techniques. Such concerns are more acute when projects are launched under the auspices of quick response, time-pressured conditions–and are magnified when such research is often intended for rapid public and policy-maker consumption, given the massive public importance of the topic.

Background. COVID-19 research has relied heavily on convenience-based samples, which—though often necessary—are susceptible to important sampling biases. We begin with a theoretical overview and introduction to the dynamics that underlie sampling bias. We then empirically examine sampling bias in online COVID-19 surveys and evaluate the degree to which common statistical adjustments for demographic covariates successfully attenuate such bias. Methods. We analysed responses to identical questions from three convenience and three largely representative samples (total N = 13,731) collected online in Canada within the International COVID-19 Awareness and Responses Evaluation Study (www.icarestudy.com). We compared samples on 11 behavioural and psychological outcomes (e.g., adherence to COVID-19 prevention measures, vaccine intentions) across three time points and employed multiverse-style analyses to examine how 512 combinations of demographic covariates (e.g., sex, age, education, income, ethnicity) impacted sampling discrepancies on these outcomes.Results. Significant discrepancies emerged between samples on 73% of outcomes. Participants in the convenience samples held more positive thoughts towards and engaged in more COVID-19 prevention behaviours. Covariates attenuated sampling differences in only 55% of cases and increased differences in 45%. No covariate performed reliably well. Conclusion. Our results suggest that online convenience samples may display more positive dispositions towards COVID-19 prevention behaviours being studied than would samples drawn using more representative means. Adjusting results for demographic covariates frequently increased rather than decreased bias, suggesting that researchers should be cautious when interpreting adjusted findings. Using multiverse-style analyses as extended sensitivity analyses is recommended.

Managing the COVID-19 pandemic—and other communicable diseases—involves broad societal uptake of vaccines. As has been demonstrated, however, vaccine uptake is often uneven and incomplete across populations. This is a substantial challenge that must be addressed by public health efforts. To this point, significant research has focused on demographic and attitudinal correlates with vaccine hesitancy to understand uptake patterns. In this study, however, we advance understandings of individual decision-making processes involved in vaccine uptake through a mixed-methods investigation of the role of timing in COVID-19 vaccine choices. In the first step, a survey experiment, we find the timing of vaccine rollout (i.e., when a vaccine becomes available to the respondent) has a significant impact on public decision-making. Not only is there a higher level of acceptance when the vaccine becomes available at a later time, but delayed availability is correlated with both lower levels of ‘desire to wait’ and ‘total rejection’ of the vaccine. In a second step, we explore associated qualitative data, finding that temporal expressions (i.e., professing a desire to wait) can serve as a proxy for underlying non-temporal rationales, like concerns around safety, efficacy, personal situations, or altruism. By identifying these patterns, as well as the complexities of underlying factors, through a mixed-methods investigation, we can inform better vaccine-related policy and public messaging, as well as enhance our understanding of how individuals make decisions about vaccines in the context of COVID-19.

On 7 July 2017, more than one hundred and seventy new wildfires1 were reported in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Declaring a state of emergency, the province continued to deal with new ...

Since the COVID-19 outbreak started in China, Chinese and Chinese looking East Asian Canadians have experienced more racist attacks, violence, and discrimination. In this article, we consider whether East Asian Canadians face a disproportionate mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and, if so, whether the increased levels of discrimination explain this differential impact. Analyzing data from a nationally representative survey we conducted in March and April, 2020, we indeed find that higher incidences of acute discrimination encountered by East Asian Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic explain their higher levels of mental health symptoms as compared to white Canadians. We call for a need to include mental health interventions and support designed specifically to address the needs of the East Asian Canadians in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scientific institutions are increasingly embracing values of inclusivity and public engagement, but how do these two dimensions intersect? Science festivals have rapidly expanded in recent years as an outgrowth of these values, aiming to engage and educate the public about scientific topics and research. While resources invested in public engagement by scientists, universities, and governments are admirable in principle; this study indicates that their ambition to broaden the reach of science may be going unrealized in practice. Using data from three major UK science festivals, we demonstrate such events are disproportionately reaching economically privileged and educated audiences already invested in science, as opposed to diverse and broadly representative samples of the general public. Our results demonstrate that these science festivals are falling short of their aims to make science accessible to a broad audience. There is a clear need for improved practices and on-going evaluation to ensure science festivals include those who are not already scientifically converted.

This chapter highlights four familiar case studies central to the development of interactional expertise. Essential types are summarized in a table and this chapter pays particular attention to potential asymmetrical knowledge transfer characteristics in each profile. It argues that accounting for this plurality of profiles is an important project both for improving the descriptive accuracy of accounts of interactional expertise and for ensuring that future research and normative projects understand the diversity of motivations among interactional experts. Further, it argues that attending to the diversity of motivations, situations, and experiences is relevant not only to interactional expertise but also to the study of expertise, collaboration, and socio-technical integration more broadly.

Introductory environmental studies and sciences (ESS) classes can be powerful and formative experiences for undergraduates. Indeed, instructors likely aspire towards influencing and enhancing the perspectives, analytical tools, and critical-thinking skills their graduates carry forward into careers in and beyond environment-related fields. This task, however, is doubly challenging: not only to meaningfully engage students with environmental issues but ideally also to think critically about the at-times competing ideologies and perspectives in ESS. This requires that courses be taught in ways that further critical thinking, develop metacognitive skills, and introduce students to a diversity of environmental discourses. In this paper, we present the results of a brief empirical survey of a small sample of North American ESS undergraduate programs. Using discussions of climate change as an example, we pay particular attention to the explicit goals, diversity of literature presented, and organization of the courses, using typologies e.g., Nisbet (Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Chang 5(6):809-823, 2014) to highlight the prevalence of particular environmental discourses and not others. We highlight a handful of promising practices and potential blind spots in the pedagogical design of these courses, while arguing for the importance of instructor reflection, iterative improvement, and further research into potential common weaknesses in ESS instruction.

Responsible innovation requires that scientific and other expert practices be responsive to society. We take stock of a variety of collaborative approaches to socio-technical integration that seek to broaden the societal contexts technical experts take into account during their routine activities. Part of a larger family of engaged scholarship that includes inter- and trans-disciplinarity as well as stakeholder and public engagement, we distinguish collaborative socio-technical integration in terms of its proximity to and transformation of expert practices. We survey a variety of approaches that differ widely in terms of their integrative methods, conceptions of societal context, roles, and aspirations for intervention. Taking a handful of “communities of integration” as exemplars, we then provide a framework for comparing the forms, means, and ends of collaborative integration. We conclude by reflecting on some of the main features of, and tensions within, this developing arena of practical inquiry and engagement and what this suggests for integrative efforts aimed at responsible innovation.

In this chapter, the authors focus on how SciStarter has developed a new digital infrastructure to support sustained engagement in citizen science, and research into the behaviors and motivations of participants. The new digital infrastructure of SciStarter includes integrated registration and contribution tracking tools to make it easier to participate in multiple projects, enhanced GIS information to promote locally relevant projects, an online personal dashboard to keep track of contributions, and the use of these tools (integrated registration, GIS, dashboard) by project owners and researchers to better understand and respond to the needs and interests of citizen-science participants. In this chapter, the authors explore how these new tools build pathways to participatory policymaking, expand access to informal STEM experiences, and lower barriers to citizen science. The chapter concludes with a design for a citizen-science future with increased access to tools, trackable participation, and integrated competencies.

The concept of interactional expertise – characterized by sociologists Harry Collins and Robert Evans as the ability to speak the language of a discipline without the corresponding ability to practice – can serve as a powerful way of breaking down expert/non-expert dichotomies and providing a role for new voices in specialist communities. However, in spite of the vast uptake of this concept and its potential to fruitfully address many important issues related to scientific expertise, there has been surprisingly little critical analysis of it. We seek to remedy this situation by considering potential benefits of interactional expertise and the ways in which the current conception can – and cannot – realize those benefits. In particular, we argue that interactional expertise hasn't reached its full potential for addressing who ought to be involved in scientific research and decision-making, largely owing to an unnecessarily restrictive way of operationalizing the concept. In its place, we offer a broader, more pluralistic account of interactional expertise – one that is in line with the original spirit of the concept, but also captures the diversity that we see as being an important aspect of interactional experts and the value they can bring to the table.