I have been reading "Technically sound and politically achievable? A taxonomy of knowledge types and their influence on governance in three South-East Asian countries? by Arnaldo Pellini, Maria Dolores Alicias, Nguyen Thi Thu Hang and Palmira Permata Bachtiar. It is a background note from the Overseas Development Institute.
I would point out that this taxonomy is supplementary to other taxonomies, such as UNESCO's ISIS Thesaurus and the USAID Thesaurus.
The purpose of the paper is to make research better used in the policy making process. As I think of the issues in American policy making over issues such as climate change and educational reform, it occurs to me that an important part of the taxonomy would classify the individuals who accept various kinds of information and those who reject it. So too would be some kind of index of the credibility of the information. Thus we have information put forth by supporters and by those who deny that anthropogenic climate change is occurring, and politicians that will believe one or the other set of information but not both; some of the evidence put forward is from crackpots, some is serving economic interests, and some is from exhaustive, peer reviewed science.
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