Misunderstanding Science? offers a challenging new perspective on the public understanding of science. In so doing, it also challenges existing ideas of the nature of science and its relationships with society. Its analysis and case presentation are highly relevant to current concerns over the uptake, authority, and effectiveness of science as expressed, for example, in areas such as education, medical/health practice, risk and the environment, technological innovation. Based on several in-depth case-studies, and informed theoretically by the sociology of scientific knowledge, (...) the book shows how the public understanding of science questions raises issues of the epistemic commitments and institutional structures which constitute modern science. It suggests that many of the inadequacies in the social integration and uptake of science might be overcome if modern scientific institutions were more reflexive and open about the implicit normative commitments embedded in scientific cultures. (shrink)

Building on recent theories ofscience in society, such as that provided bythe `Mode 2' framework, this paper argues thatgovernments should reconsider existingrelations among decision-makers, experts, andcitizens in the management of technology.Policy-makers need a set of ` technologies ofhumility' for systematically assessing theunknown and the uncertain. Appropriate focalpoints for such modest assessments are framing,vulnerability, distribution, and learning.

This article examines the regulation of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, with particular focus on products approved for marketing in the United Kingdom, while denied marketing approval in the United States on safety grounds, and then subsequently withdrawn from the UK market on those grounds. Using international comparison of regulatory data never before accessed outside government and companies, together with interviews with relevant industry scientists and regulators, the article demonstrates the importance of regulatory expectations, deficits and paradigms. It is argued both that (...) these sociological concepts can be enriched by their application to detailed comparative case study of regulatory science, and that they provide an important policy-relevant framework with which to understand discrepant drug regulatory processes in a sociohistorical context. It is found that regulatory expectations and paradigms may be regarded as mediating factors between political culture and structural interests, on the one hand, and the outcomes of regulatory science, on the other. (shrink)

These are just some of the many controversial and timely questions that Sheila Jasanoff asks in this study of the way science advisers shape federal policy.

How might social theory, public understanding of science and science policy best inform one another? What have been the key features of science-society relations in the modern world? How are we to re-think science-society relations in the context of globalization, hybridity and changing patterns of governance? This topical and unique book draws together the three key perspectives on science-society relations: public understanding of science, scientific and public governance, and social theory. The book presents a series of case studies (including the (...) debates on genetically modified foods and the AIDS movement in the USA) to discuss critically the ways in which social theorists, social scientists, and science policy makers deal with science-society relations. ‘Science' and 'society' combine in many complex ways. Concepts such as citizenship, expertise, governance, democracy and the public need to be re-thought in the context of contemporary concerns with globalization and hybridity. A radical new approach is developed and the notion of ethno-epistemic assemblage is used to articulate a new series of questions for the theorization, empirical study and politics of science-society relations. (shrink)

Governmentality draws on Foucault's work along with wider analytical frameworks to reclaim centre stage for this sociological concept. The author argues for a new understanding of how the individual is related to the state and vice versa.

Public bioethics bodies are used internationally as institutions with the declared aims of facilitating societal debate and providing policy advice in certain areas of scientific inquiry raising questions of values and legitimate science. In the United States, bioethical experts in these institutions use the language of consensus building to justify and define the outcome of the enterprise. However, the implications of public bioethics at science-policy boundaries are underexamined. Political interest in such bodies continues while their influence on societal consensus, public (...) debate, and science policy remains ambiguous. This article presents a theoretical discussion of public bioethics bodies as boundary organizations and examines them in terms of relationship to the moral and cognitive authority of science and other forms of expertise, mechanisms for public participation in controversial science policy, and the deployment of consensus models. The theoretical discussion is examined in the case of the U.S. Human Embryo Research Panel. (shrink)

La bioéthique pose à la sociologie une double question. Que peut-on prendre du corps pour le consommer à des fins médicales, scientifiques ou personnelles, et dans quelles conditions? Et qui a le droit d'en décider pour la collectivité, en ce temps d'importantes mutations de la technologie biomédicale? Le contrôle - que toute société réclame - sur la façon dont chacun peut disposer de son corps et de celui d'autrui est ainsi fait d'une arbitraire social qui s'habille et se légitime au (...) travers des traits sociaux de ceux qui sont chargés de le proférer. Il est donc ici question de l'autorité sociale à dire la norme, mais pour retrouver à travers elles les usages sociaux et scientifiques du corps aujourd'hui tolérés. A partir d'une enquête attentive rapportant les rhétoriques bioéthiques (et en particulier celles du Comité consultatif national d'éthique) aux identités sociales et professionnelles de leurs auteurs se dessine une topographie sociale des " gardiens " du corps. C'est surtout le savoir professionnel qui autorise ici à parler en non collectif. D'où les tensions - comment dire scientifiquement morale? qui écartent les uns, favorisent les autres, et obligent chacun à participer à l'autolégitimation et au soutien de cette autorité sociale en formation. Scruter ceux qui, pour nous et à notre place, rationalisent l'irrationnel éclaire la cohérence d'un nouveau dispositif anthropologique venu au secours du corps humain. (shrink)

The global development of human embryonic stem cell science and its therapeutic applications are dependent on the nature of its engagement at national and international levels with key cultural values and beliefs concerning the moral status of the early human embryo. This article argues that the political need to reconcile the promise of new health technologies with the cultural costs of scientific advance, dependent in this case on the use of the human embryo, has been met by the evolution of (...) bioethics as a political community, transnational network, and bureaucratic device. Bioethics has become the political means for the creation of a global moral economy where the trading and exchange of values is normalized and legitimated. As a result of such trading, value compromises are produced capable of legitimizing the regulatory policies necessary for maintaining public trust in the new science. (shrink)