Book contents
- Environmental Expertise
- Reviews
- Environmental Expertise
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What Is Science? (And Why Does This Matter?)
- 3 Frames: Beyond Facts Versus Values
- Case A Framing Climate Change
- 4 Science, Politics, and the Public in Knowledge Controversies
- Case B What Does ‘Climategate’ Tell Us About Public Knowledge Controversies
- Case C Whose Deficit Anyway? Institutional Misunderstanding of Fracking-Sceptical Publics
- 5 The Limits to Knowledge
- Case D Angry Bulbs
- 6 Usable Knowledge
- Case E Expertise for European Fisheries Policy
- 7 Interdisciplinarity and the Challenge of Knowledge Integration
- Case F Knowledge Integration in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
- Case G Integrated Assessment for Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution
- 8 Lay Expertise
- Case H Lay Expertise and Botanical Science
- Case I The Loweswater Care Project
- 9 Environmental Experts at the Science–Policy–Society Interface
- Case J Groupthink and Whistle Blowers in CO2 Capture and Storage
- 10 Environmental Knowledge in Democracy
- 11 Conclusion
- Index
- References
4 - Science, Politics, and the Public in Knowledge Controversies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2019
Book contents
- Environmental Expertise
- Reviews
- Environmental Expertise
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What Is Science? (And Why Does This Matter?)
- 3 Frames: Beyond Facts Versus Values
- Case A Framing Climate Change
- 4 Science, Politics, and the Public in Knowledge Controversies
- Case B What Does ‘Climategate’ Tell Us About Public Knowledge Controversies
- Case C Whose Deficit Anyway? Institutional Misunderstanding of Fracking-Sceptical Publics
- 5 The Limits to Knowledge
- Case D Angry Bulbs
- 6 Usable Knowledge
- Case E Expertise for European Fisheries Policy
- 7 Interdisciplinarity and the Challenge of Knowledge Integration
- Case F Knowledge Integration in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
- Case G Integrated Assessment for Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution
- 8 Lay Expertise
- Case H Lay Expertise and Botanical Science
- Case I The Loweswater Care Project
- 9 Environmental Experts at the Science–Policy–Society Interface
- Case J Groupthink and Whistle Blowers in CO2 Capture and Storage
- 10 Environmental Knowledge in Democracy
- 11 Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
Controversies are an inevitable part of current science–policy–society relations. Getting people to agree on the facts of nature and environment is never a smooth and easy process, particularly when there are high stakes and interests involved. In this chapter, we discuss what forms of reasoning underlie controversies, the extent to which controversies are never only about facts or knowledge but also, simultaneously, about policy and society, and how they are settled in practice. We use the example of controversies to illustrate some general patterns in science–policy–society relations, including the linear model and the information deficit model. We conclude the chapter by drawing attention to the importance of trust. This chapter is complemented with cases about climate change and the IPCC and public resistance against hydraulic fracturing or fracking
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Environmental ExpertiseConnecting Science, Policy and Society, pp. 68 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
References
Collingridge, D., and Reeve, C. (1986). Science Speaks to Power: The Role of Experts in Policy Making. London: Frances Pinter Publishers.Google Scholar
Dean, J. (1979). Controversy over Classification: A Case Study from the History of Botany. In Barnes, B. and Shapin, S., eds., Natural Order, Historical Studies of Scientific Culture (pp. 211–230). London: SAGE Publications.Google Scholar
Epstein, S. (1996). Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Oakland: University of California Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Ezrahi, Y. (1990). The Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gilbert, G. N., and Mulkay, M. (1984). Opening Pandora’s Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists’ Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hajer, M. (2012a). A Media Storm in the World Risk: Enacting Scientific Authority in the IPCC Controversy (2009–10). Critical Policy Studies, 6(4), 452–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hajer, M. (2012b). Living the Winter of Discontent: Reflections of a Deliberative Practitioner. In Heinlein, M., Kropp, C., Neumer, J., Poferl, A. and Römhild, R., eds., Futures of Modernity: Challenges for Cosmopolitical Thought and Practice (pp. 77–94). Bielefeld: Transcript.Google Scholar
Huitema, D., and Turnhout, E. (2009). Working at the Science–Policy Interface: A Discursive Analysis of Boundary Work at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Environmental Politics, 18(4), 576–594.Google Scholar
In’t Veld, R. J. (2000). Willingly and Knowingly: The Roles of Knowledge about Nature and the Environment in Policy Processes. The Hague: Advisory Council for Environmental Research (RMNO).Google Scholar
Irwin, A., and Wynne, B. (1996). Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jay, E. (2011, January 24). Horizon 2010–2011: Science Under Attack. BBC TV. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y4yqlGoogle Scholar
Landström, C., Whatmore, S. J., Lane, S. N., Odoni, N. A., Ward, N., and Bradley, S. (2011). Coproducing Flood Risk Knowledge: Redistributing Expertise in Critical ‘Participatory Modelling’. Environment and Planning A, 43(7), 1617–1633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lane, S. N., Odoni, N., Landström, C., Whatmore, S. J., Ward, N., and Bradley, S. (2011). Doing Flood Risk Science Differently: An Experiment in Radical Scientific Method. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 36, 15–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, K. (2009). Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945–1975. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nelkin, D. (1982). The Creation Controversy: Science or Scripture in the Schools. New York: NortonGoogle Scholar
Oreskes, N. (2004). Science and Public Policy: What’s Proof Got To Do with It? Environmental Science & Policy, 7(5), 369–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porter, T. M. (1995). Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ravetz, J. R. (2011) ‘Climategate’ and the Maturing of Post-normal Science. Futures, 43, 149–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarewitz, D. (2004). How Science Makes Environmental Controversies Worse. Environmental Science and Policy, 7(5), 385–403.Google Scholar
Shapin, S. (1979). The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy and Social Interests in the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes. The Sociological Review, 27(1), 139–178.Google Scholar
Shapin, S. (1995). Cordelia’s Love, Credibility and the Social Studies of Science. Perspectives on Science, 3(3), 225–271.Google Scholar
Tuinstra, W., and Hajer, M. (2014). Deliberatie over klimaatkennis: de publieke omgang van het PBL met IPCC-fouten en klimaatsceptici. Bestuurskunde, 23(2), 38–45.Google Scholar
Turnhout, E., Hisschemöller, M., and Eijsackers, H. (2008). Science in Wadden Sea Policy: From Accommodation to Advocacy. Environmental Science and Policy, 11(3), 227–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weingart, P. (1999). Scientific Expertise and Political Accountability: Paradoxes of Science in Politics. Science and Public Policy, 26(3), 151–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whatmore, S. J. (2009). Mapping Knowledge Controversies: Science, Democracy and the Redistribution of Expertise. Progress in Human Geography, 33(5), 587–598.Google Scholar
Wildavsky, A. (1979). Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Wynne, B. (2001). Creating Public Alienation: Expert Cultures of Risk and Ethics on GMOs. Science as Culture, 10(4), 445–481.Google Scholar