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Negotiating “Sound Science”: Expert Disagreement about the Risks of Release of Genetically Engineered Micro-organisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Ullica Segerstrale
Ullica Segerstrale*
Affiliation:
Finnish Academy, Helsinki, Finland, and Department of Social Sciences, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616
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Extract

During recent years scientists coming from the ecologist and molecular biologist traditions have argued very differently about the risks of deliberate release of genetically engineered micro-organisms (GEOs) into the environment. When actual guidelines for regulation have been drawn up and “scientific experts” have been consulted, representatives of these different scientific camps have given quite different advice. In fact, we have a tacit battle between scientific experts as to who has the right to speak “for” science to the public and policy makers. It seems that the molecular biologists so far have had the upper hand because of concrete and spectacular achievements in this field. Meanwhile, these experts can profit from the fact that the general public and policy makers tend to see science as a unified enterprise and are typically unaware of systematic differences in conceptions about science between experts from different scientific traditions. Thus, a scientist from any scientific field may easily be seen as an expert on science in general.

Type
Further Commentaries
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 8 , Issue 2: Special Issue: The Politics of Surrogacy Contracts , February 1990 , pp. 221 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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