Tropical deforestation: Does researchers' direct engagement with decision makers yield more policy impact and what are trade-offs with scientific independence?

Recent publications are critical about the impact that forest governance research has on halting tropical deforestation. They suggest more engagement of scientists with decision-makers in order to increase research impact. But current theories of science communication point out that engagement with decision-makers and independence of researchers occur at the expense of each other, which is an impediment to analytical science. In our commentary we compile how the authors of recent publications deal with this dilemma and pose the question if possibly enhanced impact can justify or necessitate more engagement. We show that the assumption whereas more impact can be generated through more direct engagement is mostly based on essays, comments, or reviews and hardly on empirical findings. In a Special Focus we therefore use the existing data set of (Karcher et al., 2021) for a first quantitative empirical evaluation on the subject and show that more direct engagement is not necessarily related to more impact. We conclude that more specific empirical research is needed that comparatively assesses researchers' independence for different modes of engagement. This needs to consider different policy contexts and levels as well as stages of research projects and should rely on standardized measures to evaluate their success. For the moment, we provide a number of recommendations that can help to navigate the dilemma between engagement and independence. They include awareness raising within the scientific community, clear and transparent specification of the different roles that researchers can play, links with independent scientific reviewers, diversification of funding sources, and consideration of power and interests of policy-makers which can be study objects and research partners at the same time.