Scientific Expertise in Technological Controversies

Abstract

Public debate and conflict around technology has increased significantly in the past decades. The main features of the interplay of expertise and counterexpertise in technological controversies, as found in the literature, are summarized. Role and behavior of experts in the nuclear controversy and in the recombinant DNA debate are briefly described and the controversies compared. The importance of questions of safety and risk, the cognitive structure and substance of arguments used, the effect of the scientific community and basic scientific theory, historical parallels and differences among these controversies, and the technocratic, apolitical reasoning of many scientists involved are analyzed in particular. Some conclusions are drawn concerning transformation processes of science, such as establishment of intermediate institutions for expertise and a growing market of expertise, institutionalization of dissent, lines of scientific criticism or criticism of science, and changing legitimation patterns of science.