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Toward a More Objective Understanding of the Evidence of Carcinogenic Risk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Deborah G. Mayo
Deborah G. Mayo*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Extract

The field of quantified risk assessment is a new field, only about 20 years old, and already it is considered to be in a crisis. As Funtowicz and J.R. Ravetz (1985) put it:

The concept of risk in terms of probability has proved to be so elusive, and statistical inference so problematic, that many experts in the field have recently either lost hope of finding a scientific solution or lost faith in Risk Analysis as a tool for decisionmaking. (p.219)

Thus the ‘art’ of the assessment of risks… is at an impasse. The early hopes that it could be reduced to a science are frustrated. …[O]thers are tending to introduce the ‘human’ and ‘cultural’ factors. The question now becomes, to what extent should these predominate? Would it be to the reduction or exclusion of the ‘scientific’ aspects? For, …if the perceived phenomena of ‘risks’ are interpreted as lacking all objective content or being merely a small part of some total cultural configuration, then there is no basis for dialogue between opposed positions on such problems, (pp.220-221)

Type
Part XV. Risk Assessment
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 489 - 503
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

A portion of this research was carried out during tenure of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers; I gratefully acknowledge that support. I would like to thank Marjorie Grene for numerous useful comments on earlier drafts.

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