Public Dialogues with Science: some complications from the case of nanotechnology

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Public Dialogues with Science some complications
from the case of nanotechnology

• Science Communication Conference
• 24-25 May 2004
• Professor Brian Wynne
• ESRC Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects
  of Genomics, CESAGen
• Lancaster University

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Reinventing the deficit model as a supposed
cause of public mistrust

• Public deficit of
• understanding of scientific knowledge (eg, non-GM
  tomatoes also contain genes)
• trust in science more info, transparency, or
  explanation, will restore trust (via
  understanding our motives)
• understanding of scientific process science
  cannot give certainty nor zero-risk (Bob May
  2000)
• understanding that pure science has no
  ethical/social responsibility for its
  applications or impacts
• all suggest public responses are emotional,
  dependent and epistemically empty
• do not question our scientific-institutional
  culture

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Different types of uncertainty

• Risk Know the effects, and the odds
• Uncertainty know effects, not their odds
• Ignorance Don't know the relevant effects (what
  questions to ask in RA?)
• Indeterminacy processes open and conditional
  independent interactions
• Ambiguity What is (are) the issue(s)? What is
  salient?

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Public deficit modelan alleged cause of
public mistrustabandoned but then reinvented

• There is now an erroneous expectation that life
  can be risk-free, and faith in the system tends
  to be further undermined every time this proves
  not to be the case. Science education in schools
  focuses too much on facts, rather than process,
  leading to the misleading impression that
  science deals in certainties rather than, as is
  more often the case, conclusions based on the
  balance of probabilities after evaluation of the
  available evidence.
• Many policy decisions, for example on GM crops,
  have to be made while there are still
  significant degrees of uncertainty. Debate among
  scientists on these issues, which is an essential
  part of the process can be perceived as
  vacillation and weakness.
• Robert May, FRS UK Government chief-scientist
  11 July 2000, lecture Hannover Expo, Germany.

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The public performed (constructed)

• Is the public much more than what a cynical
  diplomat once called Italy a geographical
  expression?
• Just as philosophers once imputed a substance to
  qualities and traits in order that the latter
  might have something in which to inhere and
  thereby gain a conceptual solidity which they
  lacked on their face, so perhaps our political
  common-sense philosophy imputes a public only
  to support and substantiate the behaviour of
  officials.
• How can the latter be public officers, we
  despairingly ask, unless there is a public?
• John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (1927)

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Beyond the deficit model of publics

• Yes, there is public ignorance of science
• There is also scientific ignorance
• of science
• of publics and their lifeworld-realities
• Public ignorance is NOT the cause of public
  anxiety or public mistrust
• Scientific denial, of scientific ignorance is a
  key factor in public mistrust

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Why is risk discourse inadequate?

• It effectively denies the reality of unpredicted
  effects, and of the predicament of
  unpredictability
• Nanotechnology more than any other cannot be
  contained by prediction
• Ordinary people are concerned about this denial
  of ignorance, not just about known uncertainties
• Thus public concerns are about the institutional
  scientific culture, as much as about
  consequences
• and about the hidden upstream purposes and human
  visions driving innovation-oriented science

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Risk discourse - tacit constructions of citizen

• A universal, standard public meaning of risk
• Any deviation is seen as misunderstanding or
  wilful anti-science
• Agency confined to impacts of science
• Unknowns not our responsibility leave it to
  others (marginalised, future people)
• Individual, and instrumental, self-centred
  motivations no relational meanings
• Zero-risk, certainty-obsessed
• no autonomous meanings citizens dependent on
  science for these
• But citizen naïve and gullible to media and NGO
  misinformation
• Behaviourism behaviour reflects singular
  attitude/feeling
• Epistemic vacuity (ethics, (mis)trust, are
  emotive and individualised concerns only)

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- dialogue - public engagement -
participation (various methods) - inclusivity
of knowledges - transparency and accountability
- extended peer-reviewi.e. scientific
citizenship etcIs confined to back-end only -
the risks, consequences, impacts,
(uncertainties)- and how to manage these
New democratisation of science agenda
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Public trust as the aim of dialogue?

• It is pervasive but what is it? Does not equal
  consensus or compliance
• Once we define it to be an object of
  management, we have already lost the plot
• All we can aim to manage is our own
  trustworthiness
• This must include questioning our own
  dependencies, associations, and their driving
  assumptions, and aims
• That is, our own institutional culture must also
  be in question
• this includes the political economy of science
  and the epistemology of public knowledge

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Upstream public engagement

• This is a cultural-change issue, not only of
  instrumental reason or design
• It is about better human imaginaries and visions
  informing scientific research
• Encourage scientists to articulate their visions,
  assumptions and responsibilities
• May require cultural confrontation, and
  (cognitive emotional) disruption of established
  cultural idioms in science
• Not necessarily about direct or explicit public
  inputs
• Also involves negotiation of boundaries of
  science