| The central problem animating my dissertation is how to justify environmental health research. The demand for the justification of environmental health research arises from three main conditions: scarce resources, the need to safeguard the integrity of the scientific enterprise, and the imposition of risk [on participants]. To meet this demand, environmental health research must satisfy a set of normative epistemic and ethical requirements. Most efforts to explicate the requirements of justified research have focused on the ethical requirements, resulting in the comparative neglect of the epistemic requirements.;The central objective of my dissertation is the articulation and defense of the epistemic requirement of uncertainty for justified environmental health research. Broadly understood, the requirement of uncertainty holds that, to be justified, research must be designed and conducted to reduce or resolve uncertainty by generating evidence that makes a contribution to the body of scientific knowledge. Research that does not address uncertainty, whether because the uncertainty does not exist or because the study lacks the capacity to generate the evidence needed to reduce or resolve the uncertainty, does not satisfy the requirement and is therefore unjustified.;First, I argue that neither the research ethics nor environmental health risk assessment literature has much to contribute to the development, explication, and operationalization of this requirement. I then explicate and operationalize the requirement of uncertainty, arguing that environmental health research is justified only if it is designed to reduce or resolve [scientific] uncertainty about pathways and endpoints with respect to an environmental health question of interest. Finally, I use two case studies, one involving research investigating the effectiveness of a biosolids compost amendment in reducing the risks of lead-contaminated soil and the other the question of whether to continue research on the relationship between mobile phones and brain cancer, to demonstrate how my account of the requirement of uncertainty can be used to ensure that environmental health research meets the demand for justification. |
