Risk Analysis, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01554.x

Celebrating Three Decades of Public Policy-OrientedInterdisciplinary Research

Michael Greenberg and Karen Lowrie∗

1. INTRODUCTION

On January 1, 1970, the United States took a gi-ant step toward modern environmental science andmanagement when President Richard Nixon, feelingpressure from presidential rivals Democrats HenryJackson and Edmund Muskie, signed the NationalEnvironmental Policy Act. Emulated in over 100countries, NEPA soon was followed by more than adozen worker-, air-, land-, and water-protection lawsthat acknowledged that industrialized nations had se-rious public health and environmental risk problems.In 1971, President Nixon declared war on cancer, aset of diseases hypothesized to be associated with en-vironmental exposures.

In 1970, Drs. Robert (Bob) Cumming, CurtisTravis, and Elizabeth (Betty) Anderson, the firstthree editors of Risk Analysis, An International Jour-nal, were already deeply involved in human andenvironmental-risk-related issues. They recognizedthat the challenges implied by these laws and regu-lations required more knowledge than any single dis-cipline offered; interdisciplinary research and com-munication would be essential. We celebrate threedecades of Risk Analysis, An International Journal byrecalling its creation and growth through the eyes ofDrs. Cumming, Travis, and Anderson. This editorialdoes not intend to describe all the details that a histo-rian would want to see. We strongly recommend thearticle written by Kimberly Thompson, Paul Deisler,and Richard Schwing in 2005 for a comprehensiveand yet concise presentation of the developmentof the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) and theJournal.(1)

2. ROBERT CUMMING, 1981–1983

Pleased to be contacted for this celebratory arti-cle, Dr. Cumming, with obvious enthusiasm, recalled

∗Address correspondence to Karen Lowrie; klowrie@rutgers.edu.

Robert Cumming

the sequence of events that led to the founding ofthe Journal and the Society. Dr. Cumming, then agenetic toxicologist in the Biology Division of theOak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and nowa book publisher, became the first editor, the interimfirst president of SRA, and the convener of the adhoc group that created both the Journal and the So-ciety. Dr. Cumming started thinking about an inter-disciplinary risk-related journal during the mid 1970s.The more he traveled nationally and internationally,the more the idea made sense. Speaking at confer-ences in the United States, Stockholm, Vancouver,Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and other locations, he rec-ognized that his peers were frustrated by the lack ofaccess to ideas outside of their own discipline. Some,he told us, pointed to instances when their researchwould have benefited by crossing disciplines. Collec-tively, they urged Dr. Cumming to create a journaldedicated to interdisciplinary risk analysis.

Dr. Cumming acknowledged Lars Ehrenbergof the University of Stockholm in particularfor enthusiastically supporting the idea. Morton

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Mendelson of Lawrence Berkeley National Labora-tory also particularly urged Dr. Cumming to “stoptalking about the idea and do something about it.”

Dr. Cumming credits Robert Tardiff of the Na-tional Academy of Sciences with working closelywith him to host a series of five meetings at theNational Academy of Sciences between October 1,1979 and June 3, 1981 that created the SRA and theJournal. The ad hoc group called for a journal withbiomedical, engineering, policy, and social sciencessections, and it reasoned that a society had to be cre-ated both to protect the quality of the science pub-lished in the journal and to control the rights to usethe scholarship. In other words, they were unwillingto trust the scholarship to the vagaries of a commer-cial publisher. Dr. Cumming noted that these deci-sions implied two risks: (1) traditional disciplinaryjournals would siphon off papers (that was and isstill the case), and (2) university-based departmentswould undervalue articles published in an interdisci-plinary journal (less of a problem today than 30 yearsago).

The new Risk Analysis journal and SRA hadfew resources. Dr. Cumming noted that: “My wifeand daughter stamped envelopes for us.” ORNLpermitted Dr. Cumming to do the work, but somecolleagues were less than enthusiastic about him de-voting time to an interdisciplinary effort rather thanconcentrating on building their disciplinary group.

As the editor of the new Journal, he recruitedpapers and used editorials to stimulate controversiesand interest among a highly educated and diverseset of scientists. The first editorials in 1981 were en-titled “Is Risk Assessment a Science?”(2) and “Re-flections on Decisions, Options, and Risks.”(3) Botheditorials were deliberately provocative, as theywould still be today. For example, after posing thequestion “Is risk assessment a science?” Dr. Cum-ming concluded that “risk assessment is not a scienceper se. It cannot demand the certainty and complete-ness of science. It must produce answers becausedecisions will be made, with or without its inputs”(p. 1). Dr. Cumming then went on to discuss thequality of data in risk analysis, the need to inte-grate across disciplines, concerns about the creationof instant experts, and the possible abuse by interestgroups. Any one of these issues is as likely to provokea heated discussion today as it was three decades ago.

Plenum was selected from among four possiblepublishers because Alexander Hollaender, a memberof the ad hoc group, had experience with and trustedPlenum to produce a worthy product. In short, the ad

hoc group did everything from debating the defini-tion of risk to designing the cover of the Journal. Dr.Cumming noted: “I recall picking the maroon colorfor the cover to distinguish it from other journals.”

Dr. Cumming recognized that interest in riskanalysis crossed the oceans. Initially, he had hopedto team with Lars Ehrenberg to create an interna-tional group on both sides of the ocean. But in thosedays the oceans were difficult barriers to overcome.Notably, 38 people attended at least one of the adhoc committee meetings. One was from Japan andtwo were from Europe. All the others were from theUnited States, and indeed 23 of the 38 worked alongthe northeast coast between New York City andWashington, DC. These data confirmed Dr. Cum-ming’s observation that the Journal and Society “hadto build around a cluster of experts in North Americain order to create a critical mass for an annual meet-ing in the United States.” Reflecting over the span of30 years, he concluded: “I thought the idea of a jour-nal was a good idea at the time. I still do.”

3. CURTIS TRAVIS, 1983–1998

Dr. Curtis Travis was a group leader working onrisk assessment at ORNL when he started helping

Curtis Travis

Dr. Cumming. “I had some secretarial assistance, Dr.Cumming didn’t. In 1983, Dr. Cumming decided thatI should take over the Journal.” Dr. Travis estimatesthat he spent about 10% of his time and that his sec-retary spent about a third of her time on the Journalduring those early years.

Dr. Travis’s major concern was that the Jour-nal might not survive. “We struggled to meet our

Celebrating Three Decades of Public Policy-Oriented Interdisciplinary Research 9

minimum 250 page agreement with Plenum. We hadto increase the number of quality articles to movethe Journal to a sound financial basis.” Dr. Travis re-members working with Richard Burk (Executive Di-rector of the SRA) to have brochures printed andthen passing them out at technical meetings. Dr.Travis estimates that it sometimes took six monthsto get an initial review of an article (today it averagesabout three months), and sometimes he was the onlyreviewer. Authors were required to submit three pa-per copies, and all of the editorial work was done ona typewriter (computers were not in general use atthe time) and through the mail. “We had paper filesthat were color-coded by status. Oak Ridge staffedall the mailing and paid for the postage. The Soci-ety had very limited resources and so paid nothing.Sometimes, as you can imagine, we were swamped.”

Submissions began to increase. The first volumein 1981 has 302 pages. By 1990, the total had dou-bled to 637 pages and the contract with Plenum wasrenegotiated to increase the royalties the Society re-ceived to $50,000 per year, and to publish the Journalsix times a year, an increase from four. In 2001, only afew years after Dr. Travis stepped down, the numberof pages exceeded 1,000 for the first time. We are nowclose to 2,000 pages a year and we publish monthlyissues.

Dr. Travis enthusiastically recalled receiving pa-pers about “hot topics” of the day, including en-vironmental risk assessment and chemical risks,hazardous waste management, environmental andoccupational cancer risk, low-dose extrapolation, andpolicy-relevant methodology papers. He called forand received more papers on the theoretical founda-tions of risk analysis, and he tried to obtain more en-gineering papers but with mixed success (still the casetoday). Yet, the biggest boost was when the socialsciences became interested. Dr. Travis noted: “Riskcommunication didn’t really even exist when I be-came editor. It was a trickle at first, which slowlygrew, and then exploded during the late 1990s. TheJournal started receiving many papers on risk com-munication and risk perception.”

Looking back over the 30 years of the Journal,Dr. Travis recalls times when he received virtually nosubmissions from foreign authors, and no papers ontopics like food safety and other current hot topics.He cites his biggest accomplishments as placing theJournal on sound footing and watching it become in-ternationally recognized. Characterizing the growthof the Journal as “remarkable,” Dr. Travis predictsthat the next big wave will be to combine publishing

with social networking, and expects the Journal to in-terface with Facebook and Twitter in some capacity.

4. ELIZABETH ANDERSON, 1999–2008

Dr. Betty Anderson was not surprised when RaeZimmerman, who was heading the search committee

Elizabeth Anderson

for the new editor, approached her about the editor-in-chief (EIC) role. As a member of the ad hoc com-mittee, Dr. Anderson had served the SRA in manycapacities since its creation, including as its president,and she understood the importance of a high-qualityjournal for the Society. Her objectives for the Journalwere as follows:

(1) To make the Journal a “flagship journal” inthe field.

(2) To expand the editorial staff, including theappointment of a managing editor and threearea editors, which eventually became six bythe end of her tenure, and now stands at nine.

(3) To maintain the balance between health, engi-neering, and social sciences and remain opento the idea of expanding into other relatedtopics.

(4) To put the Journal on a good business footing.(5) To shorten the time from manuscript submis-

sion to publication, if accepted, with the initialtarget set at six months.

Dr. Anderson also insisted on a competitive bidprocess for a new publisher. She and the SRA Coun-cil chose Blackwell Publishing, which among other

10 Greenberg and Lowrie

things provided an enhanced financial return to theSociety. As the number of pages expanded, the Jour-nal started using electronic web-based submissionand manuscript management systems, which were es-sential for growing the Journal.

When asked to comment on the relationship be-tween public policy and the Journal’s publications,Dr. Anderson remarked that the Journal typically re-ceived a “leading paper” about a critical topic, oftenrelated to public policy, which would be followed by acritique, and a rapid expansion of papers on the topic.Dr. Anderson illustrated this with some key paperspublished in 1999, her first year as EIC:

• H. Christopher Frey and David Burmaster—paper on uncertainty analysis;(4)

• Edward Calabrese et al.—paper on horme-sis;(5)

• Suresh Moolgavkar—paper on biological mod-eling;(6)

• Paul Slovic—paper on trust;(7)

• John Garrick and Stan Kaplan—paper on ra-dioactive waste management.(8)

The sudden appearance of numerous articles ona single subject posed a challenge for Dr. Anderson,who noted the need “to maintain the balance acrosstopics, so that the Journal would not be overwhelmedby one or two areas.” Whereas she received many pa-pers in the social sciences (Michael Greenberg cantestify to that fact as the former social science AreaEditor), the Journal received relatively few papers inengineering. Dr. Anderson also began to slowly at-tract more international papers, and she noted that itwas a challenge to bring these papers up to requiredstandards of scholarship and writing.

Dr. Anderson recalls trying to anticipate allof the areas in which Risk Analysis, An Interna-tional Journal became a leader. Nuclear waste dis-posal was one such area. The Journal published keymanuscripts that tracked the steady succession ofanalysis on the topic. Even though not resolved todate, some of our key contributions have been inthe area of nuclear waste management and nuclearpower, and we continue to publish important con-tributions on the subject, including papers by JohnAhearne, John Garrick, Richard Meserve, WarnerNorth, and Arthur Upton. She anticipated manyother leading areas and enthusiastically discussed thecontributions of the Journal to dose-response mod-eling, uncertainty analysis, food contamination, eco-logical risk assessment, microbial analysis, and publicperceptions of risk.

Dr. Anderson is particularly proud of the specialcollections, such as the one that followed the 9/11 at-tacks, and referred to this issue as evidence that theJournal can “contribute” to current policy debates.When asked where the field is heading, she noted thatwork needs to be done to fill gaps in the health field,in particular because the field is moving away fromwhole animal studies and into a set of specific celltests (see, e.g., the April 2009 issue). Clearly, therewill be a need for more of this as the TSCA (ToxicSubstances Control Act of 1976) is reauthorized. Shepointed to needs for the testing of pharmaceuticalproducts and medical devices and in the fields of foodsafety and nutrition. On the engineering side, Dr.Anderson noted that products such as automobilesor processes like deep-sea drilling have “complex riskassessment components” that need further scientificanalysis. Finally, public perception and risk commu-nications will continue to be a key part of all of publicpolicy issues. Dr. Anderson concluded that the next10 years will be exciting with “lots of fertile ground”for those in risk analysis.

5. MICHAEL GREENBERG AND KARENLOWRIE, 2008+

We became EIC and Managing Editor, respec-tively, in 2008. Guided by conversations with the pre-vious editors, presidents of the Society, members ofthe council, and by a survey of the readers, we de-veloped a plan and strategic priorities, including in-creasing the variety of publication formats and ex-panding press coverage of newsworthy articles. Ourprimary intent is to continue to build Risk Analy-sis, now published by the newly merged companyWiley-Blackwell, in its role as the flagship interdis-ciplinary journal in the risk field by publishing high-quality, cutting edge research that is widely cited. Wenow publish about 2,000 pages year, spread acrossall of the subspecialties of SRA as represented byour Area Editors. Our Area Editors are amazingpeople, devoting their time not only to managingover 400 paper submissions a year but also creatingtheme issues, which we know from our readers arepopular.

In just a few years, we have become a lead-ing journal in publishing papers about food-relatedrisks and about terrorism in all its facets. Other ac-complishments during our short tenure include pub-lishing our first review paper, appointing our firstnon-North American Area Editor, and openly so-liciting papers from the non-English-speaking world

Celebrating Three Decades of Public Policy-Oriented Interdisciplinary Research 11

with a great deal of success. All of these efforts areconsistent with the strong foundation constructed byDrs. Cumming, Travis, and Anderson. Please keepsending us your papers, reviewing papers, and send-ing us your suggestions and comments.

REFERENCES

1. Thompson K, Deisler P Jr, Schwing R. Interdisciplinary vision:The first 25 years of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA),1980–2005. Risk Analysis, 2005; 25(6):1333–1386.

2. Cumming R. Is risk assessment a science? Risk Analysis, 1981;1(1):1–3.

3. Cumming R. Reflections on decisions, options, and risks. RiskAnalysis, 1981; 1(2):97–99.

4. Frey HC, Burmaster D. Methods for characterizingvariability and uncertainty: Comparison of bootstrap simula-tion and likelihood-based approaches. Risk Analysis, 1999;19(1):109–130.

5. Calabrese E, Baldwin L, Holland C. Hormesis: A highly gen-eralizable and reproducible phenomenon with important im-plications for risk assessment, Risk Analysis, 1999; 19(2):261–281.

6. Moolgavkar S, Luebeck EG, Turim J, Hanna L. Quantitativeassessment of the risk of lung cancer associated with occu-pational exposure to refractory ceramic fibers, Risk Analysis,1999; 19(4):599–611.

7. Slovic P. Trust, emotion, sex, politics and science: Surveyingthe risk assessment battlefield. Risk Analysis, 1999; 19(4):703–710.

8. Garrick BJ, Kaplan S. A decision theory perspective on thedisposal of high-level radioactive waste. Risk Analysis, 1999;19(5):903–913.