Democracy and Technical Expertise

Waseda University, SILS,Science, Technology and Society (LE202)

Democracy and technoscience in the modern world• Modern democracy is supposed to be a participatory form of

government, in which the people elect representatives to makedecisions on their behalf—known as representative democracy.

• Starting in the 19th century, however, the decisions thatpoliticians have to make have been of an increasinglytechnical nature.

• The necessity of politicians to specialize in politics has oftenmeant that they have no real ability to negotiate technicalmatters and have to rely on the advice of technical experts.

• Moreover, the technical decisions that have to be made(regarding, for example, nuclear energy, GM foods, geneticengineering, etc.) are becoming increasingly complex, so thatit is not clear that anyone fully understands the long-termimplications and consequences of these decisions.

• The forms of representative democracy developed up to thispoint are not adequate to deal with the current situation.

Divide and conquer: The rise of expertise• The modern world can be conceived of as based on two

fundamental divisions: the division between the realm of“facts” and the realm of “values,” and the division betweenthe “people” and their “representatives.”

• We can think of these as creating two axises, (1) along a linefrom science to politics, and (2) along a line from laypeople toexperts. In both cases, we have envisioned a sharp dividebetween the two poles of the axis, a polarization.

• Indeed, the incredible progress of the modern world, whencompared to other periods of history, can be understood interms of both the proliferation of experts and the increase inspecialization. This intense specialization and division of laborhas especially increased in the 19th and 20th centuries.

• What is the best model for decision making processes in thisincreasingly complex and uncertain world?

TechnocracyDefinition (Technocracy)Technocracy is a form of political organization in which engineers,scientists, health professionals, and other technical experts are incontrol of decision-making in their respective fields.

• In the fist half of the 20th century, technocracy experienced asharp increase in both democratic and non-democraticnations.

• In both cases, technocracy is based on non-participatorydecision-making processes in regard to science and technology.

• The technocratic model of development is based on theideologies of scientism and technical determinism.

• Chicago World’s Fair, 1933: “Science Finds, Industry Applies,Man Conforms.”

• The technocratic model of development has recently comeunder criticism from many different direction.

The theme of the 1933World’s Fair, held inChicago, was technologicalinnovation. The motto was“Science Finds, IndustryApplies, Man Conforms.”

Problems with this model• This model, however, is based on the assumption that

technoscientists (a) always know what the best thing to do is,and (b) can be fully objective about the situation they areinvestigating. Neither of these assumptions is fully sound.

• These assumption put technoscientists in the position ofperforming what Donna Haraway (1988) calls the “god trick.”

• The “god trick” is the development of a comprehensive view ofphenomena that does not reflect the perspective of thetechnoscientists who produced it. This perspective is neutral,unbiased, value free, and involves seeing the phenomena fromevery perspective possible. That is, it would be the capacity offinite beings to understand some phenomena as a god might.

• It should be clear that such absolute objectivity is impossible.• There will always be perspectives involved, and in the case of

making decisions, or taking action, these different perspectiveswill lead to different results.

Example: Leukemia cases in Woburn, MA

• In the early 1970s, residents of Woburn, MA, began to noticethat there were a lot of cases of childhood leukemia (bonemarrow cancer) in the area. They also noticed that the watersometimes tasted and smelled foul.

• By the 1980s, the government, in response to localcomplaints, began an investigation. The government reportfound that the excess leukemia cases could be explained as astatistical accident and there was no certain link to the water.The scientists erred on the side of professional caution.

• Later, once more evidence was gathered, it was found thatthere was a link between the water and the leukemia cases.The residents would have preferred it if the scientists haderred on the side of caution for their health.

Value judgments and objectivityA false negative is the statement that something does not exist,when it actually does. A false positive is the statement thatsomethings does exist, when it actually does not.A scientist’s reputation is much more damaged by making a claimthat is a false positive than a false negative. After all, failing todiscover or observe something that others have not alreadyobserved or discovered is not really a fault. On the other hand,claiming that something exists that other cannot confirm makesone seem “unscientific.”Hence, scientists have a natural tendency to err on the side ofprotecting their professional reputation. On the other hand, peoplewho’s health is potentially at risk would prefer that the scientistserr on the side of caution for public safety, even at the risk of theirprofessional reputations.This pits two different value systems against each other.

Technoscience in the wild• Scientific knowledge is generally produced in the lab or in

carefully controlled situations that allow statistical controls tobe introduced. The real world, however, rarely meets thesespecial conditions. This means that the knowledge producedin the lab, or in special studies, cannot always be applied tothe real environment to which we hope to apply it.

• Moreover, people do not always accept the suggestions oftechnoscientists — so that engineers have to think about the“social acceptability” of their projects.

• Because they know they have to convince people, under theold model, technoscientists used to find what they consideredto be the best solution in relative secret, and then pitch thisas the only solution.

• In the following examples, we will see that there is a role fordialog at all stages of the process of knowledge creation andapplication.

Example: Deep burial• In 1987, the French government announced that they would

bury nuclear waste in safe structures that could hold thematerial for hundreds of thousands of years, and that selectionof the appropriate site was underway.

• Immediately, citizen and business groups who had a vestedinterest in the proposed sites began to question the technicalassumptions of the project.

• Is it really possible to build containers that can hold for thistime period? Will the geological formations really hold? Whatif better storage techniques are developed in the future? Whatif recycling techniques are developed?

• In the ensuing debate, the engineers had to make all of theirarguments in a public forum and they had to publicly confrontany doubts that were raised.

• This led to a reassessment of a number of shelved proposals,such as monitored long-term sub-surface burial.

Example: Cumbrian sheep farmers, 1• In the 1970s, in Cumbria, Britain, near the Sellafield plant for

reprocessing radioactive waste, which had caught fire in 1957,residents and farmers noticed that there had been manyleukemia cases.

• The authorities had a study conducted, but found no evidenceof a connection between the leukemia cases and the plant.

• In 1986, during the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant, a cloud of radioactive fallout drifted over Britain.

• Initially, the authorities said that the fields in Cumbria wouldonly be affected for three weeks. This was based on amiscalculation, however, and they later had to leave the banin place indefinitely (until 2012) in certain areas.

• The reason for this was that they carried out controlledexperiments on cesium (Cs) in soil, but they used one type ofsoil, whereas Cumbria has a number of different types of soil.Hence, the cesium was absorbed and immobilized in theexperiment, whereas it lingered in the peaty soil of Cumbria.

Example: Cumbrian sheep farmers, 2• Because the scientists knew something, but not everything,

they incorrectly transferred their knowledge to the localcircumstances of Cumbria.

• The experiment that was set up to investigate the absorptionof cesium involved penning the sheep up in small pastures,whereas they were used to roaming free. The farmers, whohad local knowledge of the environment and the sheep,however, pointed out that the sheep would not behavenormally in the pens.

• In the course of this investigation, it became clear that therewas considerably cesium in the soil, and farmers began tosuspect that it was not all from Chernobyl.

• Although the authorities originally denied this, after a numberof studies it was concluded that the cesium in the soil is dueboth to Chernobyl and to “other sources.”

Example: AIDS patient groups• In the mid 1980s, AIDS patient groups in the U.S. became

increasingly impatient with the pace of the approval rate ofexperimental treatments by the FDA. Their lives were at risk,so they had a different definition of caution. [Movie: DallasBuyers Club (2013)]

• Patients became conversant in the biomedical literature,attended scientific conferences, scrutinized research protocolsand learned from sympathetic professionals.

• They successfully challenged some of the entrenched researchmethods, such as the use of placebo groups from both ethicaland scientific perspectives.

• (a) They argued that the use of a placebo group involvesrequiring that a certain number of patients die in order toknow that a certain drug is effective. (b) They also arguedthat if placebo trials were used, then patients, fearing theywere in the placebo group, would try to procure the drug ontheir own. Thus undermining the “purity” of the experiment.

Example: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) patient groups

• SMA is a genetically caused neuromuscular disease thatcauses degeneration of the motor nerves.

• Starting in the late 1970s, parents of children with SMAorganized L’Association française contre les myopathies(AFM), which brought this condition to light.

• Initially, they simply raised awareness and appealed to thebiomedical research community to investigate SMA.Eventually, however, the AFM formed hybrid researchcollectives with professional organizations and raised largeamounts of money to support scientific research and lobby forimproving the rights of disabled people.

• Indeed, much of what we now know about the genetic basis ofSMA is the result of research organized and supported by theAFM.

New forms of decision making processes• The difficulties involved with contemporary technical decisions

have called for greater public participation in these processes,which is often called deliberative democracy.

• Deliberative democracy, however, is very inefficient, because itattempts to bridge the barrier between the lay public and theirrepresentatives—remember, specialization creates efficiency.

• Nevertheless, since technical decisions also involve normativeand social assumptions, citizen participation should helpimprove the outcomes.

• In addition, deliberative democracy should help to legitimatethe decisions which are made, since, in principle, citizen inputwill be democratizing.

• There are various different formal and informal types of hybridforums: debates in the press, lawsuits in the courts, debates intown hall meetings, task forces, etc.

Consensus conferences• Consensus conferences (CCs) were started by the U.S. NIH

and developed in Denmark in the 1980s. Since then, theyhave been widely exported to other European countries, Japanand the U.S.

• A panel of randomly chosen citizens is charged with reportingand making non-binding recommendations to lawmakers.

• Stakeholders and experts are called on to present informationto the panel, but the lay group has full control of the report.

• CCs do not always arrive at consensus, however, they have hada role in democratizing technical decision-making processes.

• Although CCs have the potential to be portable to newsituations, not all CCs have been a success. Cultural andhistorical factors will also play a role in how the deliberationsproceed.

• It requires skill, local experience and expert knowledge toorganize a successful CC.

Final remarks

• We have discussed the fact that the modern world is madepossible by an increasing technical and political specialization,which has lead to technocracy.

• We have looked at a number of examples that show theproblems inherent in a system of strong technocracy.

• Although it is clear that a new model of technicaldecision-making in democratic societies is necessary, it is notclear yet what this model will be or what it will entail.