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Regulating technologies, innovations and risks is an activity that, as much as scientific research needs proofs and evidence. It is the site of development of a distinct kind of science, regulatory science. This special issue addresses the question of the standards of knowledge governing how we test, assess and monitor technologies and their effects. This topic is relevant and timely in the light of problematics of regulation of innovation, regulatory failure and capture. Given the enormous decisions and stakes regulatory science (...) |
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The theory of boundary organizations was developed to address an important group of institutions in American society neglected by scholarship in science studies and political science. The long-term stability of scientific and political institutions in the United States has enabled a new class of institutions to grow and thrive as mediators between the two. As originally developed, this structural feature of these new institutions—that is, their location on the boundary between science and politics—dominated theoretical frame-works for explaining their behavior. Applying (...) |
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Given the growing centrality of interdisciplinarity to scientific research, gaining a better understanding of successful interdisciplinary collaborations has become imperative. Drawing on extensive case studies of nine research networks in the social, natural, and computational sciences, we propose a construct that captures the multidimensional character of such collaborations, that of a shared cognitive–emotional–interactional platform. We demonstrate its value as an integrative lens to examine markers of and conditions for successful interdisciplinary collaborations as defined by researchers involved in these groups. We (...) |
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This paper presents a new model for how to jointly analyze the ethical and evidentiary dimensions of environmental science cases, with an eye toward making science more participatory and publically... |
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The formulation and implementation of policies addressing the need to adapt to climate change can be difficult due to the long-term, uncertain nature of localised climate change impacts and associated vulnerabilities. Difficulties are intensified because policy interventions can involve high costs, foregone opportunity and changes to people's way of life. Factors such as these can spur an uncritical, or reflexive, negativity regarding efforts to address the projected impacts of climate change. Such reflexive negativity is often trivialised in pejorative terms, such (...) |
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Technology- and product-oriented movements are mobilizations of civil society organizations that generally include alliances with private-sector firms, for which the target of social change is support for an alternative technology and/or product, as well as the policies with which they are associated. TPMs generally involve “private-sector symbiosis,” that is, a mixture of advocacy organizations/networks and private-sector firms. Case studies of nutritional therapeutics, wind energy, and open-source software are used to explore the tendency for large corporations in established industries to incorporate (...) |
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Post-normal science is presented by its proponents as a new way of doing science that deals with uncertainties, value diversity or antagonism, and high decision stakes and urgency, with the ultimate goal of remedying the pathologies of the global industrial system for which, according to Funtowicz and Ravetz, existing science forms the basis. The authors critically examine whether PNS can fulfill this claim in the light of empirical and theoretical work on politics and policy making. The authors credit PNS as (...) |
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This article provides a comparative institutional analysis between El Niño/southern Oscillation forecasting systems in the Pacific and southern Africa with a focus on how scientific information is connected to the decision-making process. With billions of dollars in infrastructure and private property and human health and well-being at risk during ENSO events, forecasting systems have begun to be embraced by managers and firms at multiple levels. The study suggests that such systems need to consciously support the coproduction of knowledge. A critical (...) |
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This paper contributes to the growing social science scholarship on organic agriculture in the global South. A “boundary” framework is used to understand how negotiation among socially and geographically disparate social worlds (e.g., non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foreign donors, agricultural researchers, and small-scale farmers) has resulted in the diffusion of non-certified organic agriculture in Kenya. National and local NGOs dedicated to organic agriculture promotion, training, research, and outreach are conceptualized as “boundary organizations.” Situated at the intersection of multiple social worlds, these (...) |
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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 (...) |
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By comparing three types of hybrid organizations—18th-century scientific academies, 19th-century institutions of higher vocational education, and 20th-century industrial research institutes—it is the purpose here to answer the question of why new hybrid organizations are continuously formed. Traditionally, and often implicitly, it is often assumed that emerging groups of potential knowledge users have their own organizational preferences and demands influencing the setup of new hybrid organizations. By applying the concepts epistemic and academic drift, it will be argued here, however, that internal (...) |
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In the U.S.A., advocates of academic freedom—the ability to pursue research unencumbered by government controls—have long found sparring partners in government officials who regulate technology trade. From concern over classified research in the 1950s, to the expansion of export controls to cover trade in information in the 1970s, to current debates over emerging technologies and global innovation, the academic community and the government have each sought opportunities to demarcate the sphere of their respective authority and autonomy and assert themselves in (...) |
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This paper examines the broad social purpose of US climate science, which has benefitted from a public investment of more than $30 billion over the last 20 years. A public values analysis identifies five core public values that underpin the interagency program. Drawing from interviews, meeting observations, and document analysis, I examine the decision processes and institutional structures that lead to the implementation of climate science policy, and identify a variety of public values failures accommodated by this system. In contrast (...) |
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This paper is interested in the interdisciplinary characteristics of European integration studies. It explores how the institutional and intellectual, internal and external boundaries of this interdisciplinary field are shaped. For this purpose, it discusses two interlocking dynamics that are most important: on the one hand, the European Union actively attempts to mobilise European integration studies to contribute to building a united Europe by providing specific spaces, resources, and infrastructures for academic research and the public dissemination of results. On the other (...) |
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Researchers are increasingly expected to deliver “socially robust knowledge” that is not only scientifically reliable but also takes into account demands from societal actors. This article focuses on an empirical example where these additional criteria are explicitly organized into research settings. We investigate how the multiple “accountabilities” are managed in such “responsive research settings.” This article provides an empirical account of such an organizational format: the Dutch Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health. We present a cross-case analysis of four collaborative (...) |
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The concept of life plays a crucial role in the debate on synthetic biology. The first part of this chapter outlines the controversial debate on the status of the concept of life in current science and philosophy. Against this background, synthetic biology and the discourse on its scientific and societal consequences is revealed as an exception. Here, the concept of life is not only used as buzzword but also discussed theoretically and links the ethical aspects with the epistemological prerequisites and (...) |
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In recent decades, several authors have claimed that an epoch-making change in the development of science is taking place. A closer examination of this claim shows that these authors take different – and problematic – concepts of an epochal break as their points of departure. In order to facilitate an evaluation of the current development of science, I would like to propose a concept of an epochal change according to which it is not necessarily a discontinuous process that typically begins (...) |
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This article analyzes the conditions for mobilizing the science base for development of public policy. It does so by focusing upon the science-policy interface, specifically the processes of direct interaction between scientists and scientifically trained experts, on the one hand, and agents of policymaking organizations, on the other. The article defines two dimensions – cognitive distance and expert autonomy – which are argued to influence knowledge exchange, in such a way as to shape the outcome. A case study on the (...) |
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No matter one’s wealth or social position, all are subject to the threats of natural hazards. Be it fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, or drought, the reality of hazard risk is universal. In response, governments, non-profits, and the private sector all support research to study hazards. Each has a common end in mind: to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities. While this end goal is shared across hazards, the conception of how to get there can diverge considerably. The earthquake and (...) |
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This paper explores the evolution of a trading zone by organizing the case study of turtle excluder devices within the model proposed by Collins et al.. The case study offers evidence that trading zones do evolve and that the concepts of enforced and fractionated trading zones hold practical utility for describing and defining the complexities of actual exchanges. In this case a trading zone evolved from enforced to fractionated and ultimately diverged into two trading zones. For each step of the (...) |
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) evaluates grant proposals based on two criteria: intellectual merit and broader impacts. NSF gives applicants wide latitude to choose among a number of broader impacts, which include both benefits for the scientific community and benefits for society. This paper considers whether including potential societal benefits in the Broader Impacts Criterion leads to enhanced benefits for society. One prerequisite for realizing societal benefit is to transfer research results to potential users in a meaningful format. To determine (...) |
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This article challenges the idea that success of boundary organizations is marked primarily by the stability of the science–policy interface. We review key theory in the literature on boundary work and boundary organizations. We then present a case, the Derwent Estuary Program in South East Tasmania, Australia, to explore the evolution of successful boundary organization. We detail how a science-oriented program of work achieved success, through early wins that cemented its support and created a relatively stable entity able to navigate (...) |
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Studies of how scientists select research problems suggest the process involves weighing a number of factors, including funding availability, likelihood of success versus failure, and perceived publishability of likely results, among others. In some fields, a strong personal interest in conducting science to bring about particular social and environmental outcomes plays an important role. Conservation biologists are frequently motivated by a desire that their research will contribute to improved conservation outcomes, which introduces a pair of challenging questions for managers of (...) |
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Drug development regularly has to deal with complex circumstances on two levels: the local level of pharmacological intervention on specific target proteins, and the systems level of the effects of pharmacological intervention on the organism. Different development strategies in the recent history of early drug development can be understood as competing attempts at coming to grips with these multi-level complexities. Both rational drug design and high-throughput screening concentrate on the local level, while traditional empirical search strategies as well as recent (...) |
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While recent science and technology studies literature focuses on “projectification” and its felt tensions for researchers, a surprising scarcity of empirical work addresses experiences at the “other end,” such as funding bodies often held “responsible” for tensions encountered by researchers. Actors in funding bodies experience similar tensions, however. While projectification necessitates predictability and individual project objectives, research funding is also increasingly organized in networks promoting local experimentation. Moreover, funding bodies are part of a system of accountability in which investments are (...) |
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This article aims to discuss the contemporary activities and roles that scientific associations play in science and society. It is based on a comprehensive study of scientific associations in Portugal, relying on a multi-method, quantitative and qualitative approach. After a brief review of the literature on associations in the social studies of science, we provide an outline of the expanding field of scientific associations in Portugal. We then proceed to present and discuss the five main roles of associations identified through (...) |
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Este trabajo presenta la Teoría de Principal-Agente y la forma en que se ha establecido en los últimos años en los estudios de ciencia y tecnología. Para ello describe, primero, la propia teoría y la forma en que la han desarrollado la economía y la ciencia política. El trabajo revisa el modo en que estas disciplinas la han utilizado para explicar problemas relacionados con ciencia y tecnología o que los tocan lateralmente. Después se ocupa de las aplicaciones concretas en los (...) |
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Science studies scholars of the twenty-first century have been arguing for a reconceptualization of science based on the emergence of new values and practices. Allegedly, these new norms have come from science in the context of application. However, the argument here is that science in the context of application is a phenomenon with as long and rich a history as so-called pure or basic science. Science in the context of application only appears to be new since so little light has (...) |
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How do “international” epistemic communities shape regulatory contests between transnational firms and civil society organizations in the Global South? With the establishment of the World Trade Organization, member states committed to basing trade-restrictive national regulations on science-based “international” standards set by “international” standard-setting bodies. Yet we know little about how the WTO regime has shaped the operation of epistemic communities within standard-setting bodies and, in turn, how standard-setting bodies articulate with national policy-making processes in the Global South. Building on work (...) |
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