Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: How can modern democratic societies draw insights from scientists and science to improve public policy without taking away the rights of citizens to participate?A decades long literature that spans disciplines and subfields has wrestled with this question, frequently showing how efforts to "rationalize" policy making through use of science instead sparks protracted controversies and stalled policy efforts (e.g., Collingridge and Reeve 1986;Kagan 1991;Nelkin 1995; Primak and Von Hippel 1974).In her recent book, Politics and Expertise: How to use science in democratic society, Zeynep Pamuk selectively engages with relevant literature in order to argue that science--inescapably biased--undermines equal participation of citizens in democratic decision making.Asserting that science has a direct, unfiltered impact on public policy, Pamuk sets out to convince the reader that allocating public dollars for science by lottery and debating scientific claims through a citizen-initiated science court will offer meaningful checks on the otherwise undemocratic influence of scientists in policy processes.Pamuk begins by arguing that scientists and the science they conduct is not neutral.She points out that entirely neutral science is not desirable given that neutrality with respect to outcomes would make science irrelevant in policy debates.Pamuk considers and rejects the idea that scientists can be made to be representative.Advisory committees are too small to generate actual representation.Moreover, when committees are composed, does one even know which interests need to be represented?From this brief consideration, Pamuk concludes two things: (1) science directly shapes policy outcomes and (2) science is subject to no effective mechanisms of democratic accountability.
Author: Ann C. Keller
Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems and Management
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409113667