| How "default options" should be used in health risk assessment divides the risk analysis profession. Some argue that these should be "hard": set by policy, generally biased to be "health protective" and requiring a substantial body of evidence to replace by decision-specific alternatives. Others argue that they should be science-based, identified by consensus of the professional community, replaced by whatever decision-specific information may be available to the analyst. This paper shows that both positions have validity, and that both are incomplete. Each kind of construct has a useful role to play, but in different kinds of decisions. Because the two are different, we suggest giving them different names, "default option" being assigned to the... |
