Dr. Bob Lackey is a professor of fisheries science at Oregon State University. In 2008, he retired after 27 years with the Environmental Protection Agency’s 350-person national research laboratory in Corvallis. He served as Deputy Director, Associate Director for Science, and other senior science leadership positions. Since his first fisheries and wildlife job as an undergraduate student mucking out raceways in a trout hatchery, he has worked on various environmental and natural resource issues from multiple positions in government and academia. His professional assignments involved diverse and politically contentious issues, but he mainly operated at the interface of science and policy. He has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles and reports, authored many more for general audiences, and is a fellow of the American Fisheries Society and the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists. Dr. Lackey has long been an educator, having taught at five North American universities, and currently teaches a graduate course in ecological policy at Oregon State University. Canadian by birth, he is now a U.S.-Canadian dual-citizen living in Corvallis, Oregon.
Too often, however, scientific information presented to the public and decision-makers is infused with hidden policy preferences. Such science is termed normative, and it is a corruption of the practice of good science.