CARDIFF UNIVERSITY UK Cardiff School of Social Sciences

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY UKCardiff School of Social Sciences

The iconic question How can relativism, fascinating though it is, help me understand what to say to someone from the South African townships who claims that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS?

Origin The 2002 paper intended as un-contentious – a small increment to science studies, solving an intellectual problem Science is a mundane social process Science has special authority Produces certain results timelessly and without social process Science policy can be “read off” from science THE LOGIC: science, per se, cannot have a distinctive role in policy Default response: “Democratisation”

Levelling the Doman Mount Science Cultural plain Cultural plain

Origin The 2002 paper intended as un-contentious – a small increment to science studies, solving an intellectual problem Science is a mundane social process Recreate a role for science in policy Science has special authority Produces certain results timelessly and without social process Science policy can be “read off” from science THE LOGIC: science, per se, cannot have a distinctive role in policy Even without Wave 2 “speed of politics is faster than speed of scientific consensus formation” so solution needed Default response: “Democratisation”  “Technological Populism” “FROM TRUTH TO EXPERTISE”

Problem of extension must be resolved Wave 1’s definition of expert is incorrect. Expertise extends into the formally unqualified – experience-based experts But how far? There must be a limit or the notion of specialist expert is dissolved This is The Problem of Extension To resolve it must understand expertise

Levelling the Doman Cultural plain

Focus of attention No change of mindJUST SHIFT OF ATTENTION TO NEW TOPIC HOW TO MAKE POLICY USING SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE THE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

Not a rejection Not a rejection of anything Not a change of mind about anything Annoying when people say things like: Remarkably, and to his credit, Collins recently softened his critical stance of science significantly, publishing a short essay [in Nature] entitled “We cannot live by scepticism alone” (From Pigliucci, 2010 Nonsense on Stilts, p322) One expects this from science warriors but not from social scientists – but that is what happened – a cliché of resistance to innovation

Why the intensity of reaction? “Professional” reasons aside, perhaps 3rd Wave was seen as a change of mind because STS has evolved. Has it become less the study of scientific knowledge and more a political movement concerned with reducing the power of science and scientists? Relativism was understood to be a major contributor to the reduction of the power of science – a shift of attention to something non-relativistic was seen as a betrayal If science studies’ main concern is reduction of the power of science then the 3rd Wave is a problem because of its concern with the Problem of Extension – which is an attempt to retain some influence for scientific expertise

3Wave and power But actually, 3Wave takes almost the same position on the power and authority of science as Wave 2. It insists that scientists have no special warrant outside their narrow specialisms It opens up contributory expertise to experience-based but untrained and uncertified experts It insists that politics always trumps technical opinion But it wants to retain a place for some notion of scientific and technical expertise

The positive side of the intensity of reaction Because of the intensity of reaction the arguments had to be strongly defended and developed in many directions 3rd Wave/SEE has become an extended programme of research

Management Education Media Studies … EXPERTISE DOMAIN DEMARCATION POLITICS and POLICY DOMAIN Social theory Division of labour Notion of collectivity Fractal model Role of language/practice Psychology Neuropsychology Philosophy Map of 3rd Wave/SEE Tacit Knowledge Interactional expertise Other categories Ethnography Anthropology Imitation game Periodic table EXPERTISE Nature and analysis Sociology Comparative analysis of societies LLI Role of expertise in decision-making institutions Elective modernism/Rawlsian model Real-time analysis POLITICS Recognising expertise and scientific values Political philosophy STS DOMAIN Relationship between science and politics at different levels Criminology … …

The new programme Two strands: • Technical: The analysis of expertise along with a new method for measuring interactional expertise • The World view: (a) Re-establish notion of scientific and technical expertise by solving the problem of extension (b) Re-establish the central role of scientific norms in the good society (Elective Modernism) and work out the associated politics 2b is where 3rd Wave differs most markedly from the Weltanschauung of core STS

The Politics of the 3rd Wave Collins, Harry, Weinel, Martin and Evans, Robert, 2010. `The Politics and Policy of the Third Wave: New Technologies and Society’ Critical Policy Studies, 4, 2, 185-206) Combat technological populism and, it turns out, all forms of populism Not anti-democratic but, perhaps, Rawlsian democracy (Durant 2010) Choose scientific values as central to society as they are a subset of democratic values (neo-Mertonian):`Elective Modernism’

Some crucial features • Science is a distinct form of life with characteristic features linked by family resemblance • Distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic politics • `Political phase’ has priority over but must not distort or subvert `technical phase’, only publicly over-ride • Expertise is real and social scientists are experts on expertise

Credo 3-Wave is neither anti-democratic nor technocratic `Democracy cannot dominate every domain – that would destroy expertise – and expertise cannot dominate every domain – that would destroy democracy.’

Some conclusions 1 Recognise but do not endorse religious or populist reasons in the making of technological decisions in the public domain. 2 Frame technological issues imaginatively so as to bring as many propositional questions and answers to the table as might bear on the technological decision. 3 Never suppress or distort the opinions of experts even if they must always be treated as subservient to politics but, on the contrary, make sure that all relevant answers to all relevant propositional questions are as visible as possible. 4 A good society will be informed by, among other things, scientific values for these are democratic values. 5 A good society will facilitate maximum scope for discussion of political matters and maximum exposure of technical matters. 6 Always aspire to keep the technical and the political phase separate even where they are combined in institutions or individuals.

Choose challenging cases for analysis 1 The Brent Spar oil rig: Cannot analyse it without asking and trying to answer propositional questions The `impurity’ argument is religious The utilitarian argument requires knowledge of the effects of rigs (eg, nurture fish) The `thin end of the wedge’ argument demands social analysis – the answer to a different kind of propositional question

Choose challenging cases for analysis 2 Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS policy: It may have been politically motivated But Mbeki said it was a scientific question, distorting the technical phase and disempowering the political process SEE could show, in real time, how Mbeki’s expertise was inappropriate to the making of a scientific decision

Choose challenging cases for analysis 3 MMR vaccine revolt Technological populism has led to deaths and suffering of the powerless The `lay experts’ were middle-class free riders and it is disappointing to see social scientists so misrepresent the distribution of power in society

Choose challenging cases for analysis 4 Criminal justice and deterrence Problem of populism: In the UK politicians appealing to popular opinion in respect of the deterrent effect of capital punishment would immediately reintroduce it In the more democratically responsive USA this has happened Same for punishment of criminals of all sorts: retain expert role for criminologists

Choose challenging cases for analysis 5 Popular intervention in education policy Student feedback/ parent choice? Teaching of creationism/intelligent design? Retain expert role for academics/teachers?

Concrete Institutions WEBSITE www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/expertise (Or Google “Harry Collins Expertise”) EMAIL TALK LIST SEETALK-l@cardiff.ac.uk ANNUAL WORKSHOP SEESHOP1, 2, 3, 4 etc we hope

Jasanoff’s view Jasanoff, 2003, writes: 3Wave is: trying to lock the barn door after the horse has already bolted. The worldwide movement in legislation and public policy these days is toward, not away from, wider participation … In general, Western states have accepted the notion that democratic publics are adult enough to determine how intensely and in what manner they wish to engage with decision-making, subject only to the constraints of time and other resources … If this is the state of the world, then why should we pay attention to work that seems on its face to be looking for principles with which to limit the scope of public participation? Jasanoff, S., 2003a. Breaking Waves in Science Studies: Comment on H.M. Collins and Robert Evans, ‘The Third Wave of Science Studies’. Social Studies of Science 33(3), 389-400

Wynne’s view … when Thabo Mbeki was pilloried a few years ago according to western rationality standards, for apparently cleaving to the propositional claim that HIV was not the cause of AIDS, he was said by others who were closer to his thinking and speaking, to have been saying, not that there is no causal connection between HIV and AIDS, but something very different and orthogonal to the propositional question in itself - that the causal progression of HIV to full-blown AIDS is strongly exacerbated by poverty, malnutrition, immune-system deficit, bad hygiene and sanitation conditions, and other poverty-related conditions, which extravagantly expensive western commercial drug responses (this was before cheaper but still expensive more local generic drugs were available) advanced by extortionate global corporations would not resolve, but would compete with for investment. He was emphasising his view of the need to focus priority on a different set of salient factors in the multi-factorial situation. It was definitely an arguable position; but it was not a superstitious expression of anti-real beliefs. Email 2008

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY UK Cardiff School of Social Sciences