Crossing Borders, Crossing Boundaries: The Role of Scientists in the U.S. Acid Rain Debate. By Leslie R. Alm. Westport, CT: Praeger. 2000. 160p. $58.00.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Leslie Alm presents what may be the best study yet produced on the acid rain policy debate, at least with regard to its scientific underpinnings. The book describes the evolution of the current U.S.-Canadian acid rain policy agreement and focuses on the role of scientists in the formulation and implementation of acid rain policy. Alm found that most natural scientists believe they have little influence on the policy process. He suggests they are not trained to understand policymakers, and policymakers are not trained to understand science. Both have a narrow focus that causes them to perceive selectively what the other is saying. As does Lynton K. Caldwell (Between Two Worlds: Science, the Environmental Movement, and Policy Choice, 1990), Alm informs us that scientists and policymakers operate in two totally different worlds using two different languages and two different time scales; this complicates the policy process.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".