Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 137

flexible to inform risk-management decisions (NRC 2009), the importance of
uncertainty characterization and analysis will only increase. It should be noted
that the increasing importance of uncertainty analysis does not necessarily imply
increasing sophistication of computational methods or even increasing necessity
of quantitative uncertainty analysis. As discussed in Science and Decisions: Ad-
vancing Risk Assessment (NRC 2009), uncertainty analysis is a component to be
planned for with the rest of an assessment, and a simple bounding analysis or
qualitative elucidation of different types of uncertainties may be adequate if it
shows that a given risk-management decision is robust compared with compet-
ing options (NRC 2009).
Consistent and holistic approaches are necessary for characterizing and
recognizing uncertainty (in particular the various types of uncertainty, including
unquantifiable systems-level uncertainties, indeterminacy, and ignorance). Such
approaches would allow EPA to articulate the importance of uncertainty in light
of pending decisions and not become paralyzed by the need for increasingly
complex computational analysis. In addition, applying uncertainty analysis co-
herently in all EPA's arenas would ensure that a policy or decision is both ten-
able and robust (van der Sluijs et al. 2008) and would ensure that uncertainty
analysis is a means to an end and is designed with the end use in mind. Simi-
larly, uncertainty analyses that are billed as comprehensive but omit key sources
of uncertainty have the potential to be misleading or to lead to inappropriate
decisions about research priorities and interventions. Finally, EPA would benefit
from communicating uncertainty more effectively. Uncertainty is often mistak-
enly viewed as a negative form of knowledge, an indicator of poor-quality sci-
ence (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992). There is therefore a perception that ac-
knowledging uncertainty can weaken agency authority by creating an image of
the agency as unknowledgeable, by threatening the objectivity of “science-
based” standards, and by making it more difficult to defend itself in the face of
political and court challenges. However, reluctance to acknowledge uncertainty
can lead EPA to rely on tools and methods that cannot provide timely answers,
can push the agency to use point estimates to defend what are policy decisions
(see Brickman et al. 1985), and runs counter to the value of uncertainty analysis
in informing research and decision priorities.
OVERARCHING RECOMMENDATION
The committee has described the important emerging environmental issues
and complex challenges in Chapter 2 and the many types of emerging scientific
information, tools, techniques, and technologies in Chapter 3 and Appendixes C
and D. It is clear that if EPA is to meet those challenges and to make the greatest
possible use of the new scientific tools, its problems will need to be approached
from a systems perspective. Although improved science is important for EPA's
future, it is not sufficient for fully improving EPA's capabilities for dealing with
health and environmental challenges. Better economic analysis, policy ap-