While the demands for greater engagement in science in general and regulatory science in particular have been steadily increasing, we still face limited understanding of the empirical resonance of these demands. Against this context, this paper presents findings from a recent study of a potential participatory opening of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, a prominent regulatory scientific organization in the field of risk governance. Drawing upon quantitative surveys of the public and selected professional experts as well as in-depth (...) qualitative expert interviews, we identify a general support for greater engagement in science-based risk assessment. However, we also find significant contestation concerning its potential enactment and its normative and strategic merit. Underlying these contestations, we identify the persistence of a normal view of science and decisionist understanding of risk assessment, which create conflicting legitimacy demands for BfR and other regulatory scientific organizations. Together with concerns about imbalances in the power to participate, especially in highly specialized engagement processes, these pose significant challenges for the institutionalization of more participatory practices. (shrink)

Disciplinary boundaries become increasingly unclear when grappling with “wicked problems,” which present a complex set of policy, cultural, technological, and scientific dimensions. “T-shaped” professionals, i.e. individuals with a depth and breadth of expertise, are being called upon to play a critical role in complex problem-solving. This paper unpacks the notion of the “T-shaped expert” and seeks to situate it within the broader academic literature on expertise, integration, and developmental learning. A component of this project includes an exploratory study, which is (...) aimed at evaluating the emergent attributes of T-shaped expertise in two different educational programs completed between January and May in 2015. The two programs build disciplinary knowledge in science, technology engineering, and mathematics fields at the core, while expanding the students’ awareness and comprehension of other expertise. The courses introduced science and engineering students to case study topics focusing around complex human-technological-ecological systems in a nanotechnology and society course; and the governance of genetically modified organisms in a science, technology, and society course. We analyze pre- and post-test data from this pilot project before presenting findings that pertain to student learning, as well as variants in the methodology and reflect on the utility of the selected methodology for evaluating expertise as it evolves over time. The paper closes with a discussion of a theory of acquisition with implications for delineating early attributes and characteristics of T-shaped expertise. (shrink)

There is a lack of published evidence which demonstrates the impacts of public engagement in science and technology policy. This might represent the failure of PE to achieve policy impacts or indicate a lack of effective procedures for discerning the uptake by policy makers of PE-derived outputs. While efforts have been made to identify and categorize different types of policy impact, research has rarely attempted to link policy impact with PE procedures, political procedures, or the connections between them. In this (...) article, we propose a simple conceptual model to capture this information, based on semistructured interviews with both policy makers and PE practitioners. A range of criteria are identified to increase the policy impact of PE. The role of PE practitioners in realizing impacts through their interactions with policy makers in the informal “in-between” spaces of public engagement is emphasized. However, the potential contradictions between the pursuit of policy impacts and the more traditional conceptualizations of PE effectiveness are discussed. The main barrier to the identification of policy impacts from PE may lie within policy processes themselves. Political institutions have responsibility to establish formalized procedures for monitoring the uptake and use of evidence from PE in their decision-making processes. (shrink)

Public engagement is increasingly advocated and applied in the development and implementation of technological innovations. However, initiatives so far are rarely considered effective. There is a need for more methodological rigor and insight into conducive conditions. The authors developed an evaluative framework and assessed accordingly the effectiveness of a project of the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in which the application of interactive policy making was piloted in medical biotechnology, among others, to increase the legitimacy and quality of (...) the policy agenda. Relevant societal actors, including citizens, were actively involved in an open-exchange, action and reflection process, integrating relevant knowledge. Although the project was overall evaluated as effective, some difficulties were faced. These were mostly related to the novel roles public engagement requires of principal actors. The article concludes that more research is needed on the position of the executing team and on overcoming tensions existing between different governance modes. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a personal account of a journey through a world of science governance that is in flux. I reflect on three levels of experimentation: first, the intermingling of social scientists with scientists and policymakers; second, the creation of new forms of public dialogue; and third, the blurring of technical and social experiment with geoengineering as a case in point. My conclusion is that social scientists can both gain and contribute a great deal through engaging with, questioning (...) and trying to open up such experiments. (shrink)

Scientists continually face public concerns over the potential risks of biotechnology. This article reflects on the 1970s when leading molecular biologists established a moratorium, and initiated the second international Asilomar conference, on recombinant DNA molecules. Since then, this event has been widely perceived as an important historical moment when scientific actors took into account public concerns. Yet, by focusing on the history of the Public Understanding of Science discourse, we gain new insight into how ‘‘science’’ and the ‘‘public’’ have in (...) the meantime been framed in political discourses as homogeneous but antagonistic concepts. This sheds new light on the ways scientific, political, and administrative actors in biotechnology perceive the events, which occurred in the 1970s. Through interviews, we found that, with the Asilomar II conference serving as a quasi role model, the quest to reconcile ‘‘science’’ and the ‘‘public’’ is being traced back to a moment in history when such divisions had yet to be considered. This leads us to ask whether the politics of PUS contributed as much to the production of these two entities as it is claimed to have done in bridging the differences between them. (shrink)

As an instrument for participatory technology development, Scenario-Based Design offers significant potential for an early inclusion of future users. Over the course of a 3-year research project, this method was examined as a procedure for participatory technology development. Methods and instruments aimed at achieving a potential user’s participation, and the resulting cooperation of heterogeneous social groups can be seen as translation tools. Their purpose is to act as translators between different social fields and the specific knowledge associated with them. These (...) translation capabilities and participatory methods should result in the best possible convergence of different orientations and purposes. In this paper, attempting to achieve the best possible convergence is described as a dilemma of alignment. Several approaches will be used to describe the dynamic of the alignment dilemma within the above-mentioned project. The reconstruction follows one question that is proposed as a heuristic pattern to meet the requirements of an accurate analysis of holistic participatory methods: Who or what has to adjust to whom or what, why, when, and in which way? The main conclusions include the finding that the alignment dilemma is not equally balanced, that the agency of epistemic objects within the process has to be captured, and that it is easy for translation—provided primarily by core instruments of the participatory method used—to begin to overwrite the needs and purposes of one social group with the interests and orientations of another. (shrink)