Applying scientific knowledge to confront societal challenges is a difficult task, an issue known as the science–practice gap. In Ecology and Conservation, scientific evidence has been seldom used directly to support decision‐making, despite calls for an increasing role of ecological science in developing solutions for a sustainable future. To date, multiple causes of the science–practice gap and diverse approaches to link science and practice in Ecology and Conservation have been proposed. To foster a transparent debate and broaden our understanding of the difficulties of using scientific knowledge, we reviewed the perceived causes of the science–practice gap, aiming to: (i) identify the perspectives of ecologists and conservation scientists on this problem, (ii) evaluate the predominance of these perspectives over time and across journals, and (iii) assess them in light of disciplines studying the role of science in decision‐making. We based our review on 1563 sentences describing causes of the science–practice gap extracted from 122 articles and on discussions with eight scientists on how to classify these sentences. The resulting process‐based framework describes three distinct perspectives on the relevant processes, knowledge and actors in the science–practice interface. The most common perspective assumes only scientific knowledge should support practice, perceiving a one‐way knowledge flow from science to practice and recognizing flaws in knowledge generation, communication, and/or use. The second assumes that both scientists and decision‐makers should contribute to support practice, perceiving a two‐way knowledge flow between science and practice through joint knowledge‐production/integration processes, which, for several reasons, are perceived to occur infrequently. The last perspective was very rare, and assumes scientists should put their results into practice, but they rarely do. Some causes (e.g. cultural differences between scientists and decision‐makers) are shared with other disciplines, while others seem specific to Ecology and Conservation (e.g. inadequate research scales). All identified causes require one of three general types of solutions, depending on whether the causal factor can (e.g. inadequate research questions) or cannot (e.g. scientific uncertainty) be changed, or if misconceptions (e.g. undervaluing abstract knowledge) should be solved. The unchanged predominance of the one‐way perspective over time may be associated with the prestige of evidence‐based conservation and suggests that debates in Ecology and Conservation lag behind trends in other disciplines towards bidirectional views ascribing larger roles to decision‐makers. In turn, the two‐way perspective seems primarily restricted to research traditions historically isolated from mainstream conservation biology. All perspectives represented superficial views of decision‐making by not accounting for limits to human rationality, complexity of decision‐making contexts, fuzzy science–practice boundaries, ambiguity brought about by science, and different types of knowledge use. However, joint knowledge‐production processes from the two‐way perspective can potentially allow for democratic decision‐making processes, explicit discussions of values and multiple types of science use. To broaden our understanding of the interface and foster productive science–practice linkages, we argue for dialogue among different research traditions within Ecology and Conservation, joint knowledge‐production processes between scientists and decision‐makers and interdisciplinarity across Ecology, Conservation and Political Science in both research and education.

中文翻译：

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理解生态和保护科学实践差距原因的概念框架

应用科学知识来应对社会挑战是一项艰巨的任务，这个问题被称为科学与实践的差距。在生态与保护领域，尽管呼吁生态科学在为可持续未来制定解决方案方面发挥越来越大的作用，但科学证据很少直接用于支持决策。迄今为止，已经提出了科学与实践差距的多种原因以及将生态与保护领域的科学与实践联系起来的多种方法。为了促进透明的辩论并扩大我们对使用科学知识的困难的理解，我们回顾了科学实践差距的感知原因，旨在：（i）确定生态学家和保护科学家对这个问题的观点，（ii）评估这些观点随着时间的推移和跨期刊的主导地位，(iii) 根据研究科学在决策中的作用的学科对其进行评估。我们的评论基于从 122 篇文章中提取的描述科学与实践差距原因的 1563 个句子，以及与八位科学家就如何对这些句子进行分类的讨论。由此产生的基于过程的框架描述了科学 - 实践界面中相关过程、知识和参与者的三个不同观点。最常见的观点认为只有科学知识应该支持实践，感知从科学到实践的单向知识流，并认识到知识生成、传播和/或使用中的缺陷。第二个假设科学家和决策者都应该为支持实践做出贡献，通过联合知识生产/整合过程感知科学与实践之间的双向知识流动，由于多种原因，这种知识很少发生。最后一种观点非常罕见，并且假设科学家应该将他们的结果付诸实践，但他们很少这样做。一些原因（例如科学家和决策者之间的文化差异）与其他学科共享，而另一些原因似乎是生态学和保护所特有的（例如研究规模不足）。所有确定的原因都需要三种一般类型的解决方案中的一种，这取决于因果因素是否可以（例如不充分的研究问题）或不能（例如科学不确定性）改变，或者是否应该解决误解（例如低估抽象知识）。随着时间的推移，单向视角不变的优势可能与循证保护的声望有关，并表明生态学和保护方面的辩论落后于其他学科的趋势，即双向观点将更大的角色赋予决策者。反过来，双向视角似乎主要限于历史上与主流保护生物学孤立的研究传统。所有观点都代表了对决策的肤浅看法，没有考虑到人类理性的限制、决策背景的复杂性、模糊的科学与实践界限、科学带来的歧义以及不同类型的知识使用。然而，从双向角度来看，联合知识生产过程可能允许民主决策过程，对价值观和多种科学用途的明确讨论。为了拓宽我们对界面的理解并促进生产科学与实践的联系，我们主张生态学和保护领域不同研究传统之间的对话，科学家和决策者之间的联合知识生产过程以及生态学、保护和政治科学之间的跨学科研究和教育。