Editorial

As is said each time on our masthead, CONSEQUENCES endeavors to provide reliable assessments of practical concerns related to the national and international consequences of changes in the global environment. Since what is known is never complete and often uncertain, how much trust can one place in a published assessment, given the differences of opinion that inevitably exist among even the most qualified of Nature's interpreters? How do you maximize reliability in a world of uncertainty and personal views?

It may interest some readers to know the recipe that we try here.

CONSEQUENCES commissions every article, guided by the counsel of a distinguished Scientific Editorial Board and based on our perception of what the interested public might want to know. In identifying candidate authors we solicit advice from a broad span of those who do research on the subject. The manuscript that is first submitted undergoes an initial revision through a collaboration between its author and the Editor, for completeness and to bring what is said to a level that we think easily read by both technical and non-technical readers. This revised draft is then critically examined and commented upon by expert reviewers who are selected to represent an appropriate spectrum of opinion. Differences of opinion among authors and reviewers are adjudicated here, and the resulting version, now many months in the making, is subjected to a final review by the twelve members of the Editorial Board. These and the earlier reviewers provide technical advice to the authors and Editor, who bear ultimate responsibility for the accuracy and balance of any opinions that are expressed. When printed, each article will have spent the better part of a year in repeated composition and review, and not all will make it to the end.

As I write these words there are fifteen future articles for CONSEQUENCES at one stage or another of this long process. In addition to the three described on the back cover, they include, among others, review assessments dealing with biodiversity loss, earthquakes, invasions of plant and animal species, world hunger, a follow-up on population, and one that asks where all the songbirds have gone. We hope you will want to read them all.

John A. Eddy
Editor