Advocacy Rights
I think that it is a good idea to advocate change in a paper and in fact I think it would be a mistake to forgo advocating policy change as a result of research preformed. If a discovery is made that uncovers a danger people should know that a change needs to happen to prevent this danger. Two weeks ago in class we discussed some of the scientists who were studding the effects of global warming and how they were treating some of their published papers. Many of these scientists pushed for a reformation of our energy systems to help reduce the emission of green house gasses, and did so in the conclusion of their research papers. This presents an interesting hole in the desire to advocate a position through science.
There is this idea that science is to be kept pure and unbiased and in so doing we will be able to find the truth of a situation strictly from what we observe and not a fabrication created by bias. So by placing a suggested course of action behind a paper filled with data and scientific conclusions we may in fact taint the validity of the science preformed in the experiment. This, in my personal opinion, is pure crap. All this does is require the researcher to write a second paper to re-explain the findings of their research and then tack on a conclusion to the end of their second paper. It would make more sense to me if the researcher were allowed to present their data, explain that data, and suggest what should be done with that data. There are naturally difficulties with this method as well but in the true spirit of science I think that for the best result, the simplest method is the best.