Sainath Suryanarayanan is at it again, attempting to steer the focus of bee research away from facts and towards some sort of "socio-ecological approach" as he calls it. How this can do anything but further muddy the water escapes me. Maybe you can figure it out. He writes:

> Amidst ongoing declines in honey bee health, the contributory role of the newer systemic insecticides continues to be intensely debated.Scores of toxicological field experiments, which bee scientists and regulators in the United States have looked to for definitive causal evidence, indicate a lack of support. 

(that is, scientists have been unable to prove neonics cause colony collapse, as beekeepers have been contending for the last decade)

> I argue that contemporary field studies of honey bees and pesticides are underpinned by a "control oriented" approach, which precludes a serious investigation of the indirect and multifactorial ways in which pesticides could drive declines in honey bee health. 

(here he proposes that they are just looking in the wrong way, hence cannot find the correct answer)

> I suggest an alternative socio-ecological systems approach, which would entail in situ studies that are less concerned with isolating individual factors and more attentive to the interactive and place-based mix of factors affecting honey bee health.

(so, we substitute a non-scientific or anti-scientific approach to discover the truth which scientific studies have been unable to discern)

> Regulators and university bee scientists in the U.S. have looked to field experiments as a more definitive source of causal evidence of the link between newer systemic insecticides and the ongoing honey bee declines. Such field experiments to investigate the links between honey bee health and the newer systemic insecticides are designed to isolate individual factors and their direct, causal roles. This focus on experimental control occurs at the cost of understanding the ecological complexity in which honey bees and beekeepers operate.

(real world tests don't cut it)

> While vanEngelsdorp et al's BIP Initiative recognizes the importance of context to beekeeping and honey bee health, their view of context is relegated to an economic one. There is no doubt that the costs of managing honey bee colonies constitute a significant "bottom-line" concern for commercial beekeepers.

(folks are too focused on making a living and keeping the bills paid to understand what's going on)

> A socio-ecological systems approach to field studies of honey bee health would seek to shed light on how multiple factors across social, historical and ecological contexts interact to influence ongoing patterns of honey bee health. It would involve humanistic researchers versed in analyzing the complicated interplay between cultural norms, governmental policies, and fact and artifacts in scientific and non-scientific fields

(this part is untranslatable, especially the adj. "humanistic". No idea of an equivalent word. But according to him, they - whomever they are - would be far better at explaining these complicated issues they know nothing about than the current experts in the field who are too narrowly focused on subjective things like "facts and data").

Suryanarayanan, S. (2013). Balancing Control and Complexity in Field Studies of Neonicotinoids and Honey Bee Health. Insects, 4(1), 153-167.

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