Update of Research Statement

This isn't what I promised in the last post, but it's an update of something!

First, I am interested in the reliability of risk assessment methods in dealing with uncertainty. Specifically, I am focused on the reliability of such methods in population viability analysis. "Population viability analysis" is a term that includes many kinds of risk assessment methods, which typically purport to measure either the probability distribution over the time to (quasi-)extinction or the cumulative probability that some population becomes (quasi-)extinct within some time frame. Currently, Bayesian frameworks for population viability analysis are on the rise, and I am interested in the reliability of such systematic approaches to population viability analysis, Bayesian or otherwise. I am also interested in a logically prior question to the question about the reliability of such methods: what is the proper "target" of conservation, and hence, population viability analysis? Second, and at a much more abstract level, I am interested in theory structure, and, in particular, the inferentialist or algorithmic structure one finds in, for example, conservation biology. In my dissertation work, I plan to work on these two sets of problems. Finally, I am also interested in decision making under uncertainty and looking at theory structure in other sciences such as, say, economics. In the interest of scope, however, such topics will most likely have to be relegated to post-dissertation work.