There are several seminal papers that are relevant to science and decision-making in natural resources related fields (i.e., conservation biology, ecology, fisheries and wildlife). I strongly encourage graduate students to review the articles cited below.
Box, G.E.P. 1979. Robustness in the strategy of scientific model building. Pages 201- 236 In R.L. Lauer and G.N. Wilkinson, editors. Robustness in statistics. Academic Press. New York, NY.
Burnham, K. and D.R. Anderson. 2001. Kullback-Leibler information as the basis for strong inference in ecological studies Wildlife Research 28:111-119.
Chamberlin, T.C. 1890. The method of multiple working hypotheses. Science 15: 92 (reprinted in 1965).
Demming, W.E. 1975. On probability as a basis for action. The American Statistician 29: 146-152.
O'Connor, R.J. 2000. Why ecology lags behind biology. The Scientist 14:35.
Platt, J.R. 1964 Strong inference. Science 146:347-353.
Popper, K.R. 1990. Science: conjectures and refutations. Pages 104-110 in P. Grim, ed. Philosophy of Science and the Occult. SUNY Press, NY.