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What's Really Wrong with Quantitative Risk Assessment?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Helen E. Longino
Helen E. Longino*
Affiliation:
Mills College
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Extract

Risk assessment is one part of the multistage process of determining the acceptability of risks. Risk assessment, as I understand it, and as I think Dale Hattis is talking about it (Hattis, 1986), is the estimation of the hazards likely to be incurred by proceeding with a given course of action—adopting a new pesticide, using a sugar substitute in processing foods, employing some method of generating energy, installing a toxic or radioactive waste disposal system in a particular location. The hazards in question are generally health hazards as distinct from economic costs, although many critics of current technology assessment (or non-assessment) programs might well argue that this is too limited a conception of hazard—that there may be social and political effects of a technology's adoption that are not encompassed in calculations of biological risk or economic cost. Risk evaluation generally refers to the procedures for deciding whether to employ a particular technology, chemical, etc. i.e. whether to accept the risks involved or not.

Type
Part X. Methodology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1986 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1986 , 1986 , pp. 376 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of portions of this commentary appeared in Longino (1985).

References

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