A fundamental obstacle to more effective management of uncertainty in wicked policy problems is a collective failure during policy debates to recognize that our values and interests not only shape the way we look at science and expert advice, but that they also drive disagreement over how problems should be identified, prioritized, and responded to. The sooner these values can be openly debated, I argue, the sooner competition between goals and priorities can be resolved, thereby allowing disputes over uncertainty in competing specialist advice to be overcome. Science will then be able to concentrate on the task of how best to achieve, as opposed to expecting it to somehow determine, what is politically acceptable.