From the Editors

摘要

How trustworthy is advice to policy makers based on regulatory science and risk assessment, and when can it be trusted enough to help resolve conflicts among stakeholders? The first two articles in this issue address these questions, which are crucial for the practical value of risk analysis. Calow starts by acknowledging that, like other people, "Scientists are fundamentally biased... They are protective of their own ideas and funding." He highlights the important differences between research science, which typically seeks to advance knowledge and to test and then refine, extend, or refute theories describing how the world works; and regulatory science, which typically seeks to apply existing knowledge to support decisions. He argues that risk assessments that explicitly address value-relevant outcomes, such as the human health and environmental impacts caused by exposures and the costs of reducing them through regulations, can help risk assessors to serve as "honest brokers," clarifying the probable consequences of alternative decisions or policies without advocacy. Conversely, inviting scientists to make judgments based on surrogates such as molecular markers and cell responses to exposures invites "stealth advocacy," in which the scientists' own values affect their advice and the weights they assign to different pieces of evidence. Consistent with the recommendations of the U.S. National Research Council "Silver Book" (2009) and the EU Opinion on improving risk assessment (2013), encouraging ongoing dialogue between risk management and risk assessment to assure that protection goals and risk assessment results are formulated in terms of value-relevant endpoints that support cost-benefit analysis and explicit tradeoffs can help to promote the "honest broker" role for risk scientists.