How the sausage is made: When public participation in science leads to decreased trust of scientific assessment

Since 2001, NOAA’s Cooperative Research Program has provided federally-funded opportunities for commercial fishermen and fishery scientists to work together to conduct scientific research. In addition to generating data to... [ view full abstract ]

Since 2001, NOAA’s Cooperative Research Program has provided federally-funded opportunities for commercial fishermen and fishery scientists to work together to conduct scientific research. In addition to generating data to improve fisheries decision-making, these projects are expected to facilitate learning between fishermen and scientists and increase the transparency of scientific assessments. These cooperative research projects also provide an ideal opportunity to evaluate the large-scale social outcomes associated with a set of diverse PPSR projects. Based on mail-out survey responses collected from commercial fishermen (N=271) and professional fisheries scientists (N=201) from the Northeast US, this study seeks to understand: (1) the current degree and type of fishermen participation in fisheries science and (2) how the degree and type of participation in science may influence trust of scientific assessment and shared beliefs between fishermen and scientists. Survey results indicate that 53% of the fishermen and 93% of the fishery scientists sampled collaborated in cooperative research. Of those that participate, both groups report that fishermen most often participate in the data collection phase (i.e. contributory projects) with fewer respondents collaborating in terms of data analysis (i.e. collaborative projects) or more steps of the scientific process (i.e. co-created). Analysis of the social outcomes associated with different degrees of participation indicated that as scientists increase in their degree of participation with fishermen, they tend to develop increasingly similar perceptions of ecosystem change to those of fishermen. By contrast as fishermen increase participation, their trust of scientific assessments, government scientists, and academic scientists tends to increase, however fishermen on the highest end of the participation spectrum report lower trust-levels, similar to those that do not participate. We suggest that this decreasing trust is related to fishermen exposure to the "sausage making" of science, including dealing with uncertainty and socio-cultural aspects, that may negatively influence trust in science.