Democracy and Technical Expertise. Waseda University, SILS, Science, Technology and Society (LE202)

Transcription

1 Democracy and Technical Expertise Waseda University, SILS, Science, Technology and Society (LE202)

2 Democracy and technoscience in the modern world Modern democracy is supposed to be a participatory form of government, in which the people elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf known as representative democracy. Starting in the 19 th century, however, the decisions that politicians have to make have been of an increasingly technical nature. The necessity of politicians to specialize in politics has often meant that they have no real ability to negotiate technical matters and have to rely on the advice of technical experts. Moreover, the technical decisions that have to be made (regarding, for example, nuclear energy, GM foods, genetic engineering, etc.) are becoming increasingly complex, so that it is not clear that anyone fully understands the long-term implications and consequences of these decisions. The forms of representative democracy developed up to this point are not adequate to deal with the current situation.

3 Divide and conquer: The rise of expertise The modern world can be conceived of as based on two fundamental divisions: the division between the realm of facts and the realm of values, and the division between the people and their representatives. We can think of these as creating two axises, (1) along a line from science to politics, and (2) along a line from laypeople to experts. In both cases, we have envisioned a sharp divide between the two poles of the axis, a polarization. Indeed, the incredible progress of the modern world, when compared to other periods of history, can be understood in terms of both the proliferation of experts and the increase in specialization. This intense specialization and division of labor has especially increased in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. What is the best model for decision making processes in this increasingly complex and uncertain world?

4 Definition (Technocracy) Technocracy Technocracy is a form of political organization in which engineers, scientists, health professionals, and other technical experts are in control of decision-making in their respective fields. In the fist half of the 20 th century, technocracy experienced a sharp increase in both democratic and non-democratic nations. In both cases, technocracy is based on non-participatory decision-making processes in regard to science and technology. The technocratic model of development is based on the ideologies of scientism and technical determinism. Chicago World s Fair, 1933: Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms. The technocratic model of development has recently come under criticism from many different direction.

5 The theme of the 1933 World s Fair, held in Chicago, was technological innovation. The motto was Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.

6 Problems with this model This model, however, is based on the assumption that technoscientists (a) always know what the best thing to do is, and (b) can be fully objective about the situation they are investigating. Neither of these assumptions is fully sound. These assumption put technoscientists in the position of performing what Donna Haraway (1988) calls the god trick. The god trick is the development of a comprehensive view of phenomena that does not reflect the perspective of the technoscientists who produced it. This perspective is neutral, unbiased, value free, and involves seeing the phenomena from every perspective possible. That is, it would be the capacity of finite beings to understand some phenomena as a god might. It should be clear that such absolute objectivity is impossible. There will always be perspectives involved, and in the case of making decisions, or taking action, these different perspectives will lead to different results.

7 Example: Leukemia cases in Woburn, MA In the early 1970s, residents of Woburn, MA, began to notice that there were a lot of cases of childhood leukemia (bone marrow cancer) in the area. They also noticed that the water sometimes tasted and smelled foul. By the 1980s, the government, in response to local complaints, began an investigation. The government report found that the excess leukemia cases could be explained as a statistical accident and there was no certain link to the water. The scientists erred on the side of professional caution. Later, once more evidence was gathered, it was found that there was a link between the water and the leukemia cases. The residents would have preferred it if the scientists had erred on the side of caution for their health.

8 Value judgments and objectivity A false negative is the statement that something does not exist, when it actually does. A false positive is the statement that somethings does exist, when it actually does not. A scientist s reputation is much more damaged by making a claim that is a false positive than a false negative. After all, failing to discover or observe something that others have not already observed or discovered is not really a fault. On the other hand, claiming that something exists that other cannot confirm makes one seem unscientific. Hence, scientists have a natural tendency to err on the side of protecting their professional reputation. On the other hand, people who s health is potentially at risk would prefer that the scientists err on the side of caution for public safety, even at the risk of their professional reputations. This pits two different value systems against each other.

9 Technoscience in the wild Scientific knowledge is generally produced in the lab or in carefully controlled situations that allow statistical controls to be introduced. The real world, however, rarely meets these special conditions. This means that the knowledge produced in the lab, or in special studies, cannot always be applied to the real environment to which we hope to apply it. Moreover, people do not always accept the suggestions of technoscientists so that engineers have to think about the social acceptability of their projects. Because they know they have to convince people, under the old model, technoscientists used to find what they considered to be the best solution in relative secret, and then pitch this as the only solution. In the following examples, we will see that there is a role for dialog at all stages of the process of knowledge creation and application.

10 Example: Deep burial In 1987, the French government announced that they would bury nuclear waste in safe structures that could hold the material for hundreds of thousands of years, and that selection of the appropriate site was underway. Immediately, citizen and business groups who had a vested interest in the proposed sites began to question the technical assumptions of the project. Is it really possible to build containers that can hold for this time period? Will the geological formations really hold? What if better storage techniques are developed in the future? What if recycling techniques are developed? In the ensuing debate, the engineers had to make all of their arguments in a public forum and they had to publicly confront any doubts that were raised. This led to a reassessment of a number of shelved proposals, such as monitored long-term sub-surface burial.

11 Example: Cumbrian sheep farmers, 1 In the 1970s, in Cumbria, Britain, near the Sellafield plant for reprocessing radioactive waste, which had caught fire in 1957, residents and farmers noticed that there had been many leukemia cases. The authorities had a study conducted, but found no evidence of a connection between the leukemia cases and the plant. In 1986, during the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a cloud of radioactive fallout drifted over Britain. Initially, the authorities said that the fields in Cumbria would only be affected for three weeks. This was based on a miscalculation, however, and they later had to leave the ban in place indefinitely (until 2012) in certain areas. The reason for this was that they carried out controlled experiments on cesium (Cs) in soil, but they used one type of soil, whereas Cumbria has a number of different types of soil. Hence, the cesium was absorbed and immobilized in the experiment, whereas it lingered in the peaty soil of Cumbria.

12 Example: Cumbrian sheep farmers, 2 Because the scientists knew something, but not everything, they incorrectly transferred their knowledge to the local circumstances of Cumbria. The experiment that was set up to investigate the absorption of cesium involved penning the sheep up in small pastures, whereas they were used to roaming free. The farmers, who had local knowledge of the environment and the sheep, however, pointed out that the sheep would not behave normally in the pens. In the course of this investigation, it became clear that there was considerably cesium in the soil, and farmers began to suspect that it was not all from Chernobyl. Although the authorities originally denied this, after a number of studies it was concluded that the cesium in the soil is due both to Chernobyl and to other sources.

13 Example: AIDS patient groups In the mid 1980s, AIDS patient groups in the U.S. became increasingly impatient with the pace of the approval rate of experimental treatments by the FDA. Their lives were at risk, so they had a different definition of caution. [Movie: Dallas Buyers Club (2013)] Patients became conversant in the biomedical literature, attended scientific conferences, scrutinized research protocols and learned from sympathetic professionals. They successfully challenged some of the entrenched research methods, such as the use of placebo groups from both ethical and scientific perspectives. (a) They argued that the use of a placebo group involves requiring that a certain number of patients die in order to know that a certain drug is effective. (b) They also argued that if placebo trials were used, then patients, fearing they were in the placebo group, would try to procure the drug on their own. Thus undermining the purity of the experiment.

14 Example: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) patient groups SMA is a genetically caused neuromuscular disease that causes degeneration of the motor nerves. Starting in the late 1970s, parents of children with SMA organized L Association française contre les myopathies (AFM), which brought this condition to light. Initially, they simply raised awareness and appealed to the biomedical research community to investigate SMA. Eventually, however, the AFM formed hybrid research collectives with professional organizations and raised large amounts of money to support scientific research and lobby for improving the rights of disabled people. Indeed, much of what we now know about the genetic basis of SMA is the result of research organized and supported by the AFM.

15 New forms of decision making processes The difficulties involved with contemporary technical decisions have called for greater public participation in these processes, which is often called deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy, however, is very inefficient, because it attempts to bridge the barrier between the lay public and their representatives remember, specialization creates efficiency. Nevertheless, since technical decisions also involve normative and social assumptions, citizen participation should help improve the outcomes. In addition, deliberative democracy should help to legitimate the decisions which are made, since, in principle, citizen input will be democratizing. There are various different formal and informal types of hybrid forums: debates in the press, lawsuits in the courts, debates in town hall meetings, task forces, etc.

16 Consensus conferences Consensus conferences (CCs) were started by the U.S. NIH and developed in Denmark in the 1980s. Since then, they have been widely exported to other European countries, Japan and the U.S. A panel of randomly chosen citizens is charged with reporting and making non-binding recommendations to lawmakers. Stakeholders and experts are called on to present information to the panel, but the lay group has full control of the report. CCs do not always arrive at consensus, however, they have had a role in democratizing technical decision-making processes. Although CCs have the potential to be portable to new situations, not all CCs have been a success. Cultural and historical factors will also play a role in how the deliberations proceed. It requires skill, local experience and expert knowledge to organize a successful CC.

17 Final remarks We have discussed the fact that the modern world is made possible by an increasing technical and political specialization, which has lead to technocracy. We have looked at a number of examples that show the problems inherent in a system of strong technocracy. Although it is clear that a new model of technical decision-making in democratic societies is necessary, it is not clear yet what this model will be or what it will entail.