PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE ... WATER RESOURCES AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

摘要

I once met a water resources policy maker who confided great frustration with water resources scientists. This person was tired of receiving what was thought to be nonanswers to questions about water related problems that faced her organization. Since I, as a scientist, had often answered engineers in my office with the response "Well, it depends" only to see the frustration on their faces, I heard in the policymaker's words a reflection of their distress. Because the nature of AWRA is multidisci-plinary, and because we pride ourselves in facilitating communication and understanding between the water resources professions, it may be appropriate to explain why it may seem scientists often avoid giving definitive answers. The answer lies in the Scientific Method, a reawakening of which could reproduce a renaissance of thought in our culture today. The first week in a Science major's curriculum includes the basic framework for successful understanding of their future subject of study: the Scientific Method. This method for increasing objectivity when studying the natural world forms the basis of every real science course a student experiences, and will even serve in a career and in life itself, where the search for unbiased truth is becoming as rare as the Hawai's alectryon tree (look it up!).