Critical Shortcoming Research Articles

The Human Dimension in Conservation Biology Curricula in Developing Countries

The social sciences and humanities are essentially absent from most conservation biology or wildlife management courses in the developing world. This is a critical shortcoming because of human dependence on natural resources within protected areas and the escalating conflicts between humans and wildlife and between local communities and state agencies over access to resources. We call for increased input from the social sciences and the humanities in conservation biology and wildlife management curricula in the developing world. We suggest some materials and methods that should ideally be a part of such curricula.

A new method for site suitability analysis: The analytic hierarchy process

A critical shortcoming of methods that are reliant upon the judgment of experts to determine site suitability is noted. The article introduces a new method, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with which error in judging the relative importance of factors in site suitability analysis can be both detected and corrected. The proposed approach is illustrated with an example to show how the AHP frames the site evaluation problem and can aid in decision making involving multiple criteria, factor diversity, and conditions of uncertainty. The article concludes by suggesting the potential application of the AHP in public choice decisions involving complex, controversial, and conflictual site selection processes.

A Technique for Quantifying Fire Behavior in Grassland Fire Ecology Studies

A Technique for Quantifying Fire Behavior in Grassland Fire Ecology Studies

A modified Dutch Book Argument

A unifying strand in the debate between objectivists and subjectivists is the thesis that a man's degrees of belief ought to obey the axioms of the probability calculus. This paper is concerned to reconstruct the argument most widely employed in support of this thesis the Dutch Book Argument (DBA). We first note a critical shortcoming in the usual presentation of the DBA; we then introduce a general principle of rationality as the basis for a modification that overcomes this shortcoming; and, finally, we argue that the modified DBA is immune from certain further objections that might be or have been advanced to the DBA.