Environmental Evidence Synthesis

This course on 3 credits is given as part of the Environmental Science Graduate Studies at Lund University and the research school ClimBEco.  

Last day to apply was 15 September 2019

Course Syllabus NMV001F-Eng

Contact: Ullrika Sahlin 

1^st of .October – Theme Philosophy of Research in Environmental Science and Social Sciences

All lectures are given in Lundmarksalen                              

11 – 12 Environmental Science – Ullrika Sahlin, Lund University Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, and Henrik Thoren, Philosophy, Helsinki University

12 – 13 Environmental Psychology – Maria Johansson, Environmental Psychology, LTH

Common lunch

14 – 15 Social science – Lars Harrysson, School of Social Work

15 – 16 Sustainability science and transdisciplinary – Barry Ness, Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS)

2^nd of October – Theme More perspectives on Philosophy of Research in Empirical and Computational Sciences and Interdisciplinarity

All lectures are given in Lundmarksalen

9 – 10 Physics – Leif Lönnblad, Department of particle physics

Coffee

10:30 – 11.30 Philosophical perspectives on computer models when used for policy or as evidence – Wendy Parker, University of Durham (via link)

11:30 – 12 Models and scenarios: know thy assumptions – Markku Rummukainen, Lund University Centre for Environmental and Climate research

Fix your own lunch

13.00 – 15 Natural science – Per Lundberg, Department of Biology

15 – 16 Interdisciplinarity Research – Miles MacLeod, University of Twente, Netherlands

3^rd of October – Interdisciplinarity and self-reflection

Biskopshuset/Bishops house

9 – 11 Interdisciplinary – Miles MacLeod och Henrik Thoren

11 – 11.30 My experience of going interdisciplinary – Maria von Post BECC postdoc

11.30 – 12 The Pufendorf Institute work towards interdisciplinary research – Ann-Katrin Bäcklund Director of the Pufendorf Institute

Common lunch

13 – 15 Student self-reflection – discussions in groups and reporting back

Examination

Active participation at lectures and seminar and an individual paper/report of self-reflection considering at least one of the themes.

Instructions for self-reflection: Is my research interdisciplinary? How can it be interdisciplinary? What advantages/disadvantages or barriers/drivers would come from making it more interdisciplinary? Refer to the course literature (at least one of the essays in Humprey or Sayer). 2-3 pages of text sent to ullrika.

Literature

Chalmers, Alan F. What is this Thing Called Science? Buckingham: Open University Press  1999.

Humphreys, Paul. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science. Oxford University Press 2016.

Parker, Wendy S (2017). Environmental Science: Empirical Claims in Environmental Ethics. In The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics. Gardiner, Stephen & Thompson, Allen Oxford University Press. 27-39.

Sayer, Andrew. Realism and Social Science. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: SAGE 2000.

Öberg, Gunilla. Interdisciplinary environmental studies – a primer. Wiley-Blackwell 2011.

Extra material from the Social Science lecture

Gabriel Abend, The meaning of ‘theory’, Sociological Theory 26:2 June 2008

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9558.2008.00324.x

Discussion about Alfred Kinsey

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.93.6.894

Introduction to Erwin Goffmans book “Presentation of self in everyday Life”

http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/6714/6875653/readings/MSL_Goffman_Presentation.pdf

One of many interesting papers by Ellinor Ostrom:

https://ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/929-utopias-2018/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Ostrom-Polycentric-systems-for-coping-with-collective-action-and-global.pdf

Gunvor Andersson after seven out of nine rounds of interviews in a long term study  “Foster children: a longitudinal study of placements and family relationships”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-2397.2008.00570.x

On February 21-22nd 2019 we, the research group Uncertainty and Evidence Lab, attended the International Conference on Uncertainty in Risk Analysis jointly organised by BfR and EFSA. It was special with a conference focussing on uncertainty as opposed to treatment of risk or on applications. 

Ullrika and Scott Ferson had a workshop the day before the conference. 

It is possible to view talks from the conference on Youtube. Ullrika’s talk is on Youtube.

On Feb 6th Ullrika Sahlin and Scott Ferson debated two alternative ways to quantify epistemic uncertainty in scientific assessments – precise and bounded probability. In simple terms, subjective precise probability is the measure for epistemic uncertainty in classical Bayesian inference, while subjective bounded (imprecise, approximative) probability is a measure for epistemic uncertainty in a generalisation of Bayesian infernce allowing for sets of probabilities. The generalisation of Bayesian inference is sometimes called Robust Bayesian inference. Bounds on probability can be derived in other ways as well.

Professor Scott Ferson have a lot of experience in using precise and bounded probability. He is also a well known workshopier.

Photo. Caroline Morais 

Scott and Ullrika had a discussion/battle for students at the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty Centre for Doctoral Training – University of Liverpool. The quantification of epistemic uncertainty by precise or bounded probability was approached by challenge problems. Solutions to these will be published in due time. 

As the writer of this post, I, Ullrika, give my view on this. I think that precise probability is sometimes disregarded as a measure for epistemic uncertainty for wrong reasons or could be done better. I am often unsure of how the quantification of bounded probability is done in assessments. Propagation of bounded probability is sometimes faster than a 2-dimensional Monte Carlo simulation (separating aleatory and epistemic uncertainty), and provide conservative ouptut which can be used in a tiered risk assessment. 

With a background in Bayesian inference, I am open for embrasing the bounded probability as a measure for epistemic uncertainty, which can be useful in situations when the assessors judge precise probability as not enough to fully characterise epistemic uncertainty. By comparing these two measures for epistemic uncertainty we can strenghten the understanding of them and in a longer perspective the quantification of uncertainty in scientific assessments.

On February the 7th 2019 Ullrika Sahlin gave a seminar at the FRAM Centre for Future Chemical Risk Assessment and Management Strategies in Gothenburg. 

FRAM youtube channel

Ullrika gave an snapshot of recent debates around the developments of management of uncertainty and evidence with a focus on scientific assessments. What standards for management of uncertainty are asked for today and in the future?

Risk analysis is a field which for a long time has been focusing on managing uncertainty. There are not only many sources to uncertainty, but also different types of uncertainty and ways to characterise them. Principles for risk analysis are useful for scientific assessments in general, especially when there is an aim to evaluate the impact of uncertainty due to lack of knowledge on the conclusions of an assessment. It can be to rely on empirical evidence as well as expert knowledge and data generated by models. Lately, the strengths in underlying evidence has become part of the characterisation of uncertainty. Managing uncertainty and evidence according to standards requires resources and experts on uncertainty. Who will provide these resources and where do these experts come from?

Bayes@Lund 2019 – a Mini-conference on Bayesian Methods at Lund University, 7th of May, 2019

You are welcome to participate in the sixth edition of Bayes@Lund! The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers and professionals working with or interested in Bayesian methods. Bayes@Lund aims at being accessible to researchers with little experience of Bayesian methods while still being relevant to experienced practitioners. The focus is on how Bayesian methods are used in research and in the industry, what advantages Bayesian methods have over classical alternatives, and how the use and teaching of Bayesian methods can be encouraged. (see last year’s conference for what to expect).

The conference will take place at Lund University, Sweden on the 7th of May 2019 starting at 9.00 and ending at 17.00. It will include contributed talks and invited presentations. This year we are more than pleased to have Sharon Bertsch McGrayne as an invited speaker. She is the author of the The Theory That Would Not Die, the bestselling book that describes the rise and fall and rise again of Bayesian statistics.

For more information and how register, please see the conference web site.

Call for Presentations

We invite you to submit a talk or short tutorial to Bayes@Lund 2019 on a topic related to Bayesian methods in research as well as in a non-academic context, including, but not restricted to:

·  Case studies. Have you used Bayesian methods in your work? Describe
what you did, and how it worked out.

·  Method development. Are you developing novel Bayesian methods or
software that you want to share?

·  Teaching Bayes. Do you have experiences teaching or introducing
Bayesian methods? What were the challenges, and do you have any
useful tips?

Each accepted speaker is given 20 minutes and, as the audience will be highly heterogeneous from different disciplines and from within and outside academia, the talk is expected to be accessible and engaging for a multidisciplinary audience.

Alternatively, short tutorials are 10/20/30 minutes long tutorials where you introduce the audience to a tool, package or methodology you find useful. It doesn’t need to be something you’ve developed, just something you want to show the audience!

For more information on how to submit a talk proposal please see here.

We hope to see you there!

All best,
The committee
Ullrika Sahlin, Rasmus Bååth, Alex Holmes, and Jakob Lavröd

Societal trust and confidence in scientific assessments are influenced by uncertainty. A key feature of scientific assessments is therefore the treatment of uncertainty.

On January 24th 2019 the Uncertainty and Evidence Lab was involved in a workshop with the aim to introduce uncertainty and some methods to treat uncertainty in scientific assessments. The workshop was held at Durban Techincal University, South Africa. It was facilitated by Ullrika Sahlin, Lund University, and Dr Gordon O’Brien, the University of Mpumalanga. The focus was on quantitative methods to treat uncertainty in models, illustrated by findings related to the communication of uncertainty. Case-studies were taken from environmental sciences.

The workshop was attended by researchers from different disciplines.