science experts

science experts

The Role of Science Experts in Shaping the Future

1. Introduction to Science Experts

Across industry and government, a proliferation of science-based policy choices has emerged involving highly complex and technical decisions on the use, risk, and regulation of modern science, particularly in the areas of microelectronics, biotechnology, and nuclear technology. This expansion in the use of science-based policies for the solution of societal problems has stimulated the growth of institutions that, as part of their decision-making structure, have increased connections with the scientific community. For example, the United States Congress has trebled the use of OTA to meet its needs for assistance in conducting oversight, resulting in increased legislative sensitivity to the potential impacts of science-based policies. This congressional sensitivity has also had the effect of increasing lobbying by groups with clientistic motivations who seek to use this potential influence.

Important professional substantive and socialization aspects of scientific work have strong influences on what science experts do. The important role that some science experts play in our democratic system, including providing information about choices and values, responding to or framing problems, selecting or arranging goals, generating or evaluating actions that achieve these goals, and modifying or reframing goals and values, implies that the exercise of power and the time and context of interactions between science experts and decision-makers may govern the availability, the content and use of expertise, and the development of policy decisions and actions. Since knowledge is not neatly organized, decision-makers need not only the information but also an explanation of how the data are generated and evaluated by a scientist who comprehends the possibility of ignorance, the limits of some methodologies, and the implications of different procedures and actions for reliability and utility.

2. The Influence of Science Experts in Policy Making

Experts influence policy making in three major ways. Experts make scientific knowledge legible to policymakers as they offer policy-relevant knowledge for policy decisions. Experts legitimize specific policy alternatives based on their expertise, and they sometimes have the authority to make binding decisions by acting as experts and specifying policy alternatives in a legally binding manner in rules, regulations, or standards. In addition, experts may also have a horizontal influence on the behaviors of policymakers, so that they do not instruct direct policy outcomes but affect the process of policy making. This process is known as issue framing and refers to the way experts signal the importance of a problem based upon their recommended policy alternatives. Issue framing affects policymaker attention and, as such, influences policymaker decisions indirectly.

This alliance between experts and policymakers is both central and enduring. Science experts are such an important component in the making of modern societies that their political role is often labeled the “knowledge society.” In fact, scientific knowledge has become the authoritative source of truth and rationality in modern societies. Expert knowledge assumes the role of objective information that is independent of political views and that can only be produced through rational and scientific approaches. Political decisions are supposed to rely on expert-generated science and the position of certain actors as scientific experts.

3. Challenges Faced by Science Experts in the Modern World

The issues related to the futurity of science expertise are connected with a number of new challenges that scientists have come across in the last few decades. First of all, science comes across increasing problems and obstacles which prevent it from accomplishing its primary missions, which often results in a crisis of confidence of wider publics towards the productivity of scientific research and its social utility. This is the trend as described by interviewing sciences, communication scientists, and commissioners of scientific innovations in several meetings. It could be coupled with challenges to infuse again an attitude of scientific curiosity, well beyond academic boundaries and interests.

Another problem is related to the increasing polarization of scientific communities worldwide, and their inability to present a unified voice and vision on the most pressing issues and challenges which mankind has come across. This trend was especially evident during the ongoing financial and economic crisis in the European Union, which has caused many traumatic impacts, e.g. Brexit, which could pose substantial questions of weak governments that are no longer capable of upholding social justice within national legal boundaries.

4. The Ethical Responsibilities of Science Experts

In 1989, physicists Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson argued in the journal Science that public education and the expansion of ecological awareness were two necessary conditions for the future growth of the environmental movement. New value systems and religious ideologies intended to gain environmental support from social and political groups, they write, were “second required steps”, again building on previous work where “it must be shown explicitly that environmental ethics are firmly grounded in social evolution, biological reality, and the history of the planet.” Ruse and Wilson also declare that new religious revivals which reflect ecological truths are “largely mercenary, appealing to untutored individuals anxious for answers to age-old questions”. Despite the urgency of environmental needs, acceptance of these ecological truths were to be difficult for many to understand because “the biological basis of human behavior may or may not be sufficient to support wisdom.” So while the future remained a matter of choice for humankind, the choice lay with those that at the science desk.

What we are meaning to suggest above is not simply that the term ‘science expert’ derives from the work to both a credible scientific authority and an inspired moral influence. Scientists should both educate and inspire. As recycling is the most bare of facile political nostrums, however, ethics ariseth when we confront a science community which, despite attempts which are overtly or accidentally coercive, fails to merit the public trust. To examine these issues, we will discuss racism, eugenics, and other failures of moral science without belaboring their many grotesque details. Then we will broach several serious dilemmas in science and environmental policy, dilemmas with no single solution.

5. Conclusion and Future Outlook

In this chapter, we argue that ICSR depends on the active support of societal stakeholders for the mission and contributions of its scientific experts. That stakeholder support should not be taken for granted. ICSR is an inherently iterative, dialogic, two-way process that succeeds when both experts and other stakeholders are actively engaged. Some implications of our analysis include: Experts should promote better mutual understanding among competing stakeholders and help to identify and overcome cognitive and structural barriers to forming and implementing societal coalitions for reform. Experts should promote bilateral exchanges and mutual learning, not only outgoing communication of science to non-scientific stakeholders.

Laypeople stand to learn from science about how best to achieve their values. Conversely, allowing non-scientist stakeholders to be involved, especially in project design and in determination of the historical and social implications of a research program, can illuminate the policies, institutions, values at stake and alternative research directions that scientists may not fully recognize. It appears to be unrealistic to establish dedicated institutional mechanisms for ICSR purposes and to give a voice in these to anyone with a stake in the research or those citizens who actually seem to care. Therefore, developing brokerage skills when talking and making decisions in the presence of stakeholders is of paramount importance.