Science, Risk, and Policy
For decades, experts and the public have been at odds over the nature and magnitude of risks and how they should be mitigated through policy. Experts argue that the fears of the public are irrational, and that public policy should be based on sound science. The public, on the other hand, is skeptical of experts, and believes policy should represent their interests. How do policy analysts make sense of these competing views?
Science, Risk, and Policy answers this question by examining how people evaluate evidence, how science is conducted, and how a multidisciplinary framework for risk can inform policy by bridging the gap between experts and the public. This framework is then applied to four case studies: pesticides, genetically engineered foods, climate change, and nuclear power. By tracing the history of the science, policies, and regulations, and evaluating arguments made about these risks, Andrew J. Knight provides a guide to understand how experts and the public view risks.
Andrew J. Knight works for the Province of Nova Scotia in program evaluation.
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Andrew J. Knight
Science, Risk, and Policy
Andrew J. Knight
First published 2016
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Contents
I would like to acknowledge Dr. Rex Warland, Professor Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University, for being a mentor and introducing me to the field of risk perception. I would also like to acknowledge my colleagues in academia and government, who have inspired me to write this book from our interactions over the years. Two fellow graduate students in particular indirectly contributed to this book by aiding in my development as a writer: Robert (Bob) Andersen, currently the Dean of Social Science at the University of Western Ontario, and Tim Slack, currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at Louisiana State University.
When I hear the term layperson, my mind returns to my childhood, when my father was an occasional lay preacher. In his spare time, he gave sermons on Sunday mornings at churches, filled in as an interim pastor, held services at correctional facilities, taught Sunday school, served as a deacon, and led devotions. He was a lay preacher because he was not an ordained minister; he did not have any formal schooling to be a preacher, nor did he have the appropriate credentials to be a minister. While the lack of credentials prevented him from becoming a certified member of the pastor membership sanctioned by the governing body, his strong faith in God, an inquiring mind to the study of scripture, exceptional people skills, and a gift for speaking enabled him to become a highly respected Sunday school teacher, biblical scholar, church elder, and speaker.
Having been raised in such an environment may very well have been responsible for my desire for learning, achieving a doctoral degree, and becoming a professor. Unlike my father, however, years of formal schooling and training provided me with the credentials to become a professional with an expertise on various topics. Without the credentials of a PhD and the requisite training, I would be a person with a passion for innovation and science, but would remain a layperson outside of the expert scientific society.
It may be argued that there are practicing pastors without formal training and some scientists working at universities who do not have PhDs. In reality, this argument is true. Technically, these laypeople have been accepted as members of a given profession or specialized field. There are always exceptions to the general rules, and exceptional individuals may be able create their own path. As a sociologist, my training warned about making generalized statements, but at the same time, taught me to be cognizant of trends and overarching patterns. While exceptions might exist, it still valid and necessary to describe the overarching pattern.
The scientific community historically, and often still, views laypeople as uniformed and unqualified to discuss scientific matters. The predominant view is that laypeople should leave science to the experts. Whereas some scientists might prefer the realm of science to be their domain exclusively, many laypeople disagree with this view and have launched various critiques against science and scientists. Debates between laypeople and scientists and their conceptions and misconceptions about each other became a topic of my own research agenda and in part led to the writing of this book.
As an academic, a government employee, and a layperson, I have been privy to many discussions on the roles of science in research and public policy. Some people have advocated that public policy should be based solely on scientific evidence. Politicians, however, have sometimes ignored or discarded science for the sake of politics. Some either deny or misrepresent science for ideological reasons. Others are skeptical of science and its so-called experts. Lay charlatans sometimes exploit the publics ignorance about science to profit from it. Many of these discussions have led me to believe that there are two sides to the coin. On one side, the scientific community is correct when stating that non-practitioners often do not understand science. On the other side, scientists far too often ignore or dismiss valid points made by the public or laypeople.
