Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The role of ecological expertise in policymaking is evolving. In fields such as engineering or medicine, longestablished professional standards guide the application of expertise in public decisionmaking. Professional ecologists, however, participate in decisionmaking in variable and changing ways. Some function as technicians, providing factual information used by decisionmakers; others as detectives, drawing attention to some previously unrecognized problem; and still others as advocates, adducing information designed to support a particular position.
Carpenter et al. (Mon,) studied this question.