While environmental science, and ecology in particular, is working to provide better understanding to base sustainable decisions on, the way scientific understanding is developed can at times be detrimental to this cause. Locked-in debates are often unnecessarily polarised and can compromise any common goals of the opposing camps. The present paper is inspired by a resolved debate from an unrelated field of psychology where Nobel laureate David Kahneman and Garry Klein turned what seemed to be a locked-in debate into a constructive process for their fields. The present paper is also motivated by previous discourses regarding the role of thresholds in natural systems for management and governance, but its scope of analysis targets the scientific process within complex social-ecological systems in general. We identified four features of environmental science that appear to predispose for locked-in debates: (1) The strongly context-dependent behaviour of ecological systems. (2) The dominant role of single hypothesis testing. (3) The high prominence given to theory demonstration compared investigation. (4) The effect of urgent demands to inform and steer policy. This fertile ground is further cultivated by human psychological aspects as well as the structure of funding and publication systems.

中文翻译：

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未能达成不同意见对于环境科学有效影响政策制定至关重要

虽然环境科学，特别是生态学，正在努力为可持续决策提供更好的理解，但发展科学理解的方式有时可能不利于这一事业。锁定的辩论往往是不必要的两极分化，并可能损害对立阵营的任何共同目标。这篇论文的灵感来自于一个无关的心理学领域的辩论，诺贝尔奖获得者大卫卡尼曼和加里克莱恩将似乎锁定的辩论变成了他们所在领域的建设性过程。本文也受到先前关于阈值在自然系统管理和治理中的作用的论述的启发，但其分析范围通常针对复杂社会生态系统中的科学过程。我们确定了环境科学的四个特征，这些特征似乎容易引发锁定辩论：（1）生态系统的强烈依赖环境的行为。(2)单假设检验的主导作用。(3)重视理论论证对比调查。（四）迫切要求告知和引导政策的效果。人类心理方面以及资助和出版系统的结构进一步培育了这片沃土。