Environmental research in the environmental policy cycle

A recent article in this journal put forward an environmental research policy, organized around the environmental policy cycle The research policy concerned is flawed by a bias generally occurring in the philosophy of science, i e., the inability to include the normative science disciplines in the science and research concepts. This inability results in a biased environmental research effort. Almost all attention goes to physical science research in the problem-identification phase of the environmental policy cycle. Practice shows that it is wise to be more open-minded It may be more efficient to employ normative science research, directly productive for solving environmental problems, than to be able to identify these problems better and better This article describes and underpins a more comprehensive approach to environmental research and exemplifies typical research questions.