Science and environmental policy: models without data are empty, but data without models are blind

摘要

In your last Farm Institute Insights newsletter, you wrote a piece arguing that there is an 'increasing reliance of policy-makers on modelling, rather than actual science, in making decisions in response to complex environmental challenges', and thatthis is an undesirable state of affairs. Modelling is not a replacement for science: it is a part of science. All scientific progress is built from the interplay between theory and data (as Albert Einstein knew well). In environmental science, models are where theory lives, and so they are a vital way of ensuring that scientific progress continues.