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Opasnet aims at science-policy revolution

The failure of the Copenhagen climate meeting showed that the current ways of policy-making do not work. Despite the work of thousands of researchers to collect and synthesise scientific information, and thousands of politicians working hard to develop policies about an urgent issue, the result was only a statement of good will and funding commitments. What went wrong?

I believe that there was a major gap between scientific information and its use in policy. In Copenhagen, the countries tried to make international policy as if it was a matter of mutual agreement. It is not. It is not even a matter of majority vote. If the mankind takes the +2 °C target seriously, there are huge numbers of policies that simply are insufficient to reach that target, including the one that was agreed on in Copenhagen. In contrast, there are dauntingly few policies that actually would lead to the target and would be implementable in the real world.

It is a scientific, not so much political, effort to find those effective policies. We should see potential policies as scientific hypotheses. Everyone is encouraged to develop new hypotheses about good policies and gain merit for this. Then, as a joint effort, we should attack these hypotheses with scientific evidence and aim to show that they do not help us to reach the target. Only those that stand up against attacks are worth further consideration. Those who fail should be abandoned immediately. This is how science works at its best.

Thus, we should bring this scientific approach to the policy arena. We should also bring politicians to the scientific arena, with their potential policies and questions. And thirdly, we should bring the citizens into this open discussion to tell, what our targets should actually be. Researchers should give their valuable time and capacity in the service of policy analysis. Politicians should accept that there can be normative policy analysis, which is limiting their degrees of freedom in developing policies. And citizens should understand that their political pressure is needed to make things move forward faster. The climate challenge is too urgent to rely on standard administrative rate of change.

This is the science-policy revolution. Combine the potential policies with the current scientific understanding, and apply the scientific method to separate poor and good policies based on value judgements by politicians and the citizens. All this should be done by immediately sharing all relevant information to be used and evaluated by everyone. Opasnet is a web workspace for performing all the work described above. Opasnet itself is also a series of research questions and hypotheses, and it is under continuous scrutiny. You are welcome to bring information to or attack any proposed methods or policy assessments you find.

We, as the Open Assessors' Network, respect your contributions, and we believe that the future generations will, too. But if you want really to gain merit, focus on issues with scarcity. Bring in information about poorly known issues rather than well-known ones. Attack hypotheses if there are plenty of competing ones rather than the only one standing up. If there is only one hypothesis, it is better to develop new ones instead. This is simply because Opasnet is practically oriented, and its outcomes will be applied in the real world as soon as possible. If the only hypothesis is truly a non-working one, we will find it out in practice very soon anyway.

Anyone can solve common problems. Opasnet is the web workspace for solving them by you, and by us together.

Jouni Tuomisto, founder of Opasnet

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Information about Opasnet

Opasnet is a wiki-based website for helping decisions about human health, and environmental factors affecting it. The website collects, synthesises, and distributes people's values and scientific information. We believe that all wise decision-making is based on expressing our values about what the really important things are, and understanding how the decision actually affects those things. This is why we need both values and science.

Opasnet welcomes anyone who wants to promote science-based decision-making in any field. We are actively working on climate change, and participants are welcome. Originally, the developers of this workspace came from the environmental health, i.e. a research field that studies the impacts of environment on human health. Therefore, you can find assessments about e.g. health impacts of air pollution or persistent pollutants in fish.

Frequently asked questions about Opasnet
Basic information about the workspace: Opasnet | Open assessment | Open Assessors' Network
Ongoing projects: Climate change, cities, and emission trade (ET-CL) | Burden of disease in Finland (Seturi)
Previous workshops (including lectures): Open assessment workshop 2009 | Kuopio Risk Assessment Workshop 2008
Presentations: Open assessment and metal risks |
- Presentations in Finnish: Climate change and health - Ilmastonmuutos ja terveys | Open assessment - Avoin arviointi | Frameworks for risk assessment - Riskinarvioinnin viitekehyksiä
Information about page protection

Why to use Opasnet in an assessment project?

You can avoid many problems related to data scarcity and ownership: A key problem is always lack of data. Sometimes data really does not exist, but much more often partner(s) have some relevant information about the topic. However, they don't want to give all the data to the project but instead analyse them themselves and only give selected results later. Don't accept this, because if the data is not good for the purpose, you will find it out too late. Instead, agree in the beginning that the project only works with data that can be put to Opasnet (i.e., released to open scrutiny and use). Problems with data will be identified early, giving time to fix them.
You can do parallel work and avoid delays: Most calendar time is typically spent on waiting for one partner to get a particular thing done, and only then others can start working. This is serial thinking and it is slow. Instead, things should be done in parallel so that all existing information is given out immediately even if preliminary. Then all parts of an assessment can be worked on at the same time and iteratively updated as other parts improve. The variable structure helps in this.
You can follow the work and give merit to right people: Define "project work" in a clever way: only work with information in Opasnet is considered project work, and any other work is just preliminary (until the information is released). If the whole project happens in Opasnet, it is easy to see, who has contributed to what, and what the impact has been. See e.g. Contribution scores.
You can use Opasnet for stakeholder involvement and dissemination: Read more e.g. on Participating in assessments or Open participation.

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How can you participate?

We can only help policy-making if a large group of people participate in the work. Find your own ways to contribute and act!

Participate in our end user evaluation
Get acquainted: read Welcome to Opasnet
Browse through the website and read about active assessments.
Tell about Opasnet to anyone who might use its information and guidance.
Tell about Opasnet to anyone who might contribute to it.
Collect specific information (you may even be paid!)
Participate in polls (you don't need to be logged in).
Get a user account for editing: Login and register (Please use your full name)
Give comments about any page and any content. Be bold! (You need to be logged in)
Provide original or modelled data into the Opasnet base.
Create and edit variables or whole assessments or studies.
Make a peer review of a page.
Become a moderator of a page.
Read about Opasnet technical policies