Here is a list of all the replies we got from the scishops list. -------------------------------------------------------------- >From ShimonC@worldnet.att.netMon Jul 22 12:02:43 1996 Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 18:20:04 -0400 From: Shimon Camiel Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re:NCRN Conference update: Saturday morning At 07:50 PM 7/20/96 +0000, you wrote: >David Schecter prepared the participants for looking at various network >models by asking the following questions: > >Who should we serve? >What should we do for the communities that we serve? >What benefits should we provide these communities? >What is the larger goal of which we choose to be a part? >Who is the we? > >Please feel free to answer these questions and send them to us as we go >about trying to find honest answers ourselves. The next update will concern >the various models of networks that will be presented later this morning. > Just some random thoughts about the questions above from a grass roots community worker: University based people often have a conflict of interest in their work at the grass roots level. On one hand, they have their responsibilities to themselves to stay alive at the University, e.g. publishing, teaching University students, writing grants to pay the overhead etc. On the other hand, they have have a committment to help the host community. Sometimes more harm than good comes out of this conflict. Resources that could have been committed to the community end up in the University coffers. Sometimes experts stay too long in the community and spin the spider webs of dependency among the people that they want to help. When to make a graceful exit, is an art form, not a science, but is a crucial element in community activism. Shimon Camiel -------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From sac@apple.comMon Jul 22 12:02:56 1996 Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 20:35:46 -0400 From: Steve Cisler Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re:NCRN Conference update: Saturday morning John Gerber might take a look at the Coaltion for Networked Information web site . Paul Peters, the director, held o meeting for this group on exactly the question of the link between the university and the community networking projects. This took place late in 1995, and the minutes from the meeting and some of the presentations might be there. I wrote a report on it and could dig it up if he's interested. Steve Cisler Network Outreach Apple Research Labs sac@apple.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From 72162.241@CompuServe.COMMon Jul 22 12:03:24 1996 Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 22:28:33 -0400 From: "Deborah C. Swanson" <72162.241@CompuServe.COM> Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Response to conference update >David Schecter prepared the participants for looking at various network >models by asking the following questions: > >Who should we serve? >What should we do for the communities that we serve? >What benefits should we provide these communities? >What is the larger goal of which we choose to be a part? >Who is the we? > >Please feel free to answer these questions and send them to us as we go >about trying to find honest answers ourselves. The next update will concern >the various models of networks that will be presented later this morning. > I am intrigued by Shimon Camiel's allegations concerning the tendency for the Ivory Tower set to somehow rip off the community they may from time to time claim to serve. I say intrigued because I am at once both angered to hear yet again the cry from the street level bureaucrat that the fruits of academic knowledge are neither needed nor welcomed here and then sympathetic to the primary issue of distrust. I am a doctoral student who has spent five harvest seasons trying to "give psychology away" (a la Geo. A. Miller's 1969 APA Presidential address). I am stymied by just how difficult it is to try to benefit a program through the contribution of formal knowledge. Please understand, I do not advocate for this kind of knowledge to the exclusion of (or even above) practical experience, life knowledge, etc. I suppose what I am saying is that, with all of academe's horns, there are benefits to the clients in having an inclusive network of providers. I am looking for strategies to overcome the kind of bias I often experience in the applied world where I nonetheless prefer to swim and to build service systems that allow for the contributions of all stakeholders (clients, service providers, grantors, program evaluators, tax payers, etc.). Naturally, those who abuse the rights of others should be called into question, regardless of pedigree. Suggestions? Deborah C. Swanson /\\\\\\ E-Mail:72162.241@compuserv.com / (@ @) \ Snail Mail: P.O. Box 1054 ---ooOo--U--oOoo--- Glen Ellen, CA 95442 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From tpabeles@piper.hamline.eduMon Jul 22 12:03:47 1996 Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 11:42:53 -0400 From: Tom Peter Abeles Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Conference-org intros It was interesting to understand how different orgs such as PRAG, SWOP, CTCNET and the Dutch Science Shops function and what they are doing. Several points seem relevant: 1) It is apparent that each organization has created a unique set of relationships. What is not clear is the extent to which these relationships are intitutiionally constituted and maintained. It would seem important to find out whther these are supported at the institution level, at sub dept level or because of selected individuals or groups. Are institutions mentioned for purpose of identification only? or for other, non visible purposes? and what is the stability of the relationships as persons move in and out and as soft monies rise and fall One can speculate, but it seems important for the members of the organixzations represented to discuss these micro/marcro relationships. 2) The relationships are treated as static when in reality, the sub froups are dynamic and the relationships are probably evolutionary. Thus, the models presented are based on a past aseen from a dynamic present. To expect these relationships to exist in the future, even near term, is a large question and to base new models on the works of others who are undergoing transformations seems difficult at best. It would be important to understand the histories- but more importantly the future This is particularly true for academic "institutions" which will see radical changes, particularly in the US in the foreseable future 3) There is emphasis on technology- such as computer networking. It has been pointed out by many persons that to try to filnd a technical soution for a problem which is largely socioi;/political in nature is doomed. Technology is often the easy way to avoid dealing with the social issues. Thus, computer networking, as pointed out in this posting, raises new questions and does not necessarily lead to solving of old issues. A rising tide in the human harbor does NOT raise all ships and, of those it does raise, it does not raise them equally and probably does not raise the disenfranchised faster than the enfranchised. tom abeles tabeles@tmn.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From tpabeles@piper.hamline.eduMon Jul 22 12:03:57 1996 Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 12:04:00 -0400 From: Tom Peter Abeles Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Conference updates- group post First, point of clarity- there is no clear distinction in the postings as to which group is thinking about what- grp 1, blue group, stars or something which lets us out here know who the players are. It would also be interesting to know who the players in the groups are, what their background is and what they hope to get out of this exercise. Furthermore it would seem to be important to know who has ownership( not from control or rights perspective) in this exercise and can say that what is being proposed is reasonable and can be meaningfully moved forward Or is this an academic exercise? ----------------- the first question- who is served is critical- it identifies the markets. This discussion and the rest which follows is good brainstorming. Eventually someone will have to say: This is our market- these are our clients and this is what they want A wise business person would take his company through a planning session on a weekly basis. they would ask two questions: what business are we in? What business are we NOT in the former is very easy, particularly for academics- the latter is very hard- particularly for academics- If an organization is going to be successful, then it will have to make some very serious decisions about what markets it can NOT serve, at the present time- even with infinitely deep pockets!!!! tom abeles tabeles@tmn.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From tpabeles@piper.hamline.eduMon Jul 22 12:04:09 1996 Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 12:15:58 -0400 From: Tom Peter Abeles Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Conference update: discussion on defining community based research Who is the community? Are they represented at this conference and what do they want. Also, what is the relationship between the organization and the clients- it seems like doolittle's push-me-pull-you- This is part of the product- will the researchers stay separate or be part of the community and all the questions on relationships and economics are being invoked- i am hoping some hard nosed clarity is reached in these discussions- the network of academics has its own needs goals and relationships-but from that point on. . . . it is very unclear that anything other than the standard academic model can be achieved- I look to be surprised tom abeles tabeles@tmn.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- >From astingsh@ksu.eduMon Jul 22 12:04:18 1996 Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 12:21:09 -0400 From: kerry miller Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Conference > [1.] GENERAL DISCUSSION: Several questions arose > around the equitability of access through computer linkages. Being > on-line allows very small groups to have access in an efficient way. UUN > helps groups develop and maintain electronic connectivity. > .. > > [2.] GENERAL DISCUSSION AND QUESTIONS: > > There were a variety of questions about inclusivenes, namely: how to > operate a > diverse network that honored pluralism while developing a cohesive sense > of purpose and community. Is the sense of hierarchy imbedded in the effort of getting together in a land-based _ mechanically efficient_ centralizing pattern so thoroughly eliminated by use of the electronic medium that that in itself is worth making the investment for? kerry astingsh@ksu.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >From ShimonC@worldnet.att.netMon Jul 22 12:04:31 1996 Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 12:40:38 -0400 From: Shimon Camiel Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Response to conference update At 02:28 AM 7/21/96 +0000, you wrote: >>David Schecter prepared the participants for looking at various network >>models by asking the following questions: >> >>Who should we serve? >>What should we do for the communities that we serve? >>What benefits should we provide these communities? >>What is the larger goal of which we choose to be a part? >>Who is the we? >> > >>Please feel free to answer these questions and send them to us as we go >>about trying to find honest answers ourselves. The next update will concern >>the various models of networks that will be presented later this morning. >> > >I am intrigued by Shimon Camiel's allegations concerning the tendency for the >Ivory Tower set to somehow rip off the community they may from time to time >claim to serve. I say intrigued because I am at once both angered to hear yet >again the cry from the street level bureaucrat that the fruits of academic >knowledge are neither needed nor welcomed here and then sympathetic to the >primary issue of distrust. I am a doctoral student who has spent five harvest >seasons trying to "give psychology away" (a la Geo. A. Miller's 1969 APA >Presidential address). I am stymied by just how difficult it is to try to >benefit a program through the contribution of formal knowledge. Please >understand, I do not advocate for this kind of knowledge to the exclusion of (or >even above) practical experience, life knowledge, etc. > >I suppose what I am saying is that, with all of academe's horns, there are >benefits to the clients in having an inclusive network of providers. I am >looking for strategies to overcome the kind of bias I often experience in the >applied world where I nonetheless prefer to swim and to build service systems >that allow for the contributions of all stakeholders (clients, service >providers, grantors, program evaluators, tax payers, etc.). Naturally, those who >abuse the rights of others should be called into question, regardless of >pedigree. Suggestions? > >Deborah C. Swanson /\\\\\\ > E-Mail:72162.241@compuserv.com / (@ @) \ > Snail Mail: P.O. Box 1054 ---ooOo--U--oOoo--- > Glen Ellen, CA 95442 > Thanks for responding, Deborah. Several of my colleagues and I have been mulling over this problem of the role of Universities and Colleges in community based development for some years. All of us are beneficieries of University training. I have a Ph.D. and an MPH from UCLA and most of my fellow "street bureaucrats" have similar diplomas. I find myself frequently using academic connections to increase my theoretical and practical skills in public health. I am pleased with this relationship. I've also seen good community based programs run with a heavy participation from University departments. So where is the problem? Our main difficulty has been with the cost of such inputs. Since many street level programs need to be financed by grants, we find that inclusion of academics in our projects tends to eat up most of the money before it can be put to work in the community. Salaries for academics tend to be $10,000 or more above salaries for community based workers. This is not to say that we don't need to enrich our knowledge and skills with the latest in technologies, theoretical constructs, ideas, etc. It just means that we are in a dilemma. Most of us street workers cannot afford the time and the price of constantly going back to the Universities to play needed catch up. On the other hand we can't afford to bring academics into our community based work environments. Another problem is that much of our effectiveness (my colleagues and I) is based on the willingess to spend many days, months and years in direct contact with the people that we are trying to help. So far, University based programs have lacked this stay-with-it-ness. Have a look at the some of the community oriented health projects that were run by large Universities (Stanford 5 community study etc.) and tell me how they fared in institutionalizing themselves in the community. So I have gravitated to the idea that there probably is a middle ground. I think it might empahsize developing partnerships with community colleges rather than Universities. For myself, the internet and other on-line sources of information (like the one the two of us are using right now) are also a partial answer to the public's need for formal knowledge and the high cost of obtaining this knowledge. I agree with you that there are benefits in having an inclusive network of providers - no doubt whatsoever- but as you have probably noticed the polarization of our economic system is making the acquisition of essential community resources less and less affordable. I'd be interested to hear from you about your attempt to "give psychology away." these last five seasons. In turn, I'd be happy to tell you more specifics about our community based group here in San Diego (I also work out of a community college in the Upper Galilee, Israel part of the year, trainign volunteers to plan community disease prevention programs.) Sorry about the length of this thing. I guess I'm kind of getting off on this new experience of attending a conference through e-mail. Shimon Camiel e-mail: ShimonC@worldnet.att.net Phone: 619 287 9520 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >From ShimonC@worldnet.att.netMon Jul 22 12:04:53 1996 Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 12:45:01 -0400 From: Shimon Camiel Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Response to conference update >If academics want to contribute to a community, they should first become >part of the community and expose themselves to the consequences of their >speculations and experiences > >>Working in communities requires time and participation, new relationships >and new structures particularly between academics and the communities with >which they desire to become involved. this is also true in the >institutions of higher learning themselves. > >Corporate Universities are a 52 Billion dollar a year business growing at >30%/year with 70% of these resources catering to professionasl- the same >market which is flat in growth for institutions of higher learning- >Somewhere higher education has lost perspective and is loosing their >markets- community efforts are only a part of the larger picture > >Dr. Tom P. Abeles, Pres >Sagacity, Inc >3704 11th Ave South >Minneapolis, MN 55407 >email: tabeles@tmn.com >phn 612 823 3154 > Elequently said, Tom. I'm proceeding in two directions to find a way to benefit from a connection with educations of higher learning without getting too involved with their traditional agendas. 1) we are seeking affiliations with community colleges especially those located in inner city areas. 2) I'm working on a project in Israel that uses action research concepts to keep the power in the hands of community members (of course I would like to tell these communities the right way to do things, so I know that I need solid restraints on my own dysfunctional impulses). I see that the conference update of 7/21/96 asks the questions, How would you define community-based research? I don't know how to define it in general but I lean toward the following interpretation of community based research - lifter from Ernest T. Stringer's book, Action Research-a handbook for practitioners (Sage Publications, Thoousand Oaks, CA 1996) "Community-based action research works on the assumption..that all stakeholders -those whose lives are affected by the problem under study- should be engaged in the processes of investigation. Stakeholders participate in a process of rigorous inquiry, acquiring information (collecting data) and reflecting on that information (analysis) in order to transform their understanding about the nature of the problem under investigation (theorizing). This new set of understandings is then applied to plans for resolution of the problem (action) which then provides the context for testing hypotheses drived from group theorizing (evaluation)...Traditional research projects are complete when a report has been written and presented to the contracting agency or published in an academic journal. Community-based action research can have these purely academic outcomes, and may provide the basis for rich and profound theorizing and basic knowledge production, but its primary purpose is as a practical tool for solving problems experienced by people in their professional community or private lives. If an action research project does not make a difference, in a very specific way, for practitioners and/or their clients, then it has failed to achieve its objectives." P.10-11 Personally, given the way that my two countries of citizneship are going through corporate rape, I have very little interest in practitioner-driven community research. Our job is to hand out the tools and explain how to work with them, not to tell the community what to do. Shimon Camiel e-mail: ShimonC@worldnet.att.net Phone: (619) 287-9520 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From tpabeles@piper.hamline.eduMon Jul 22 12:05:08 1996 Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 12:51:51 -0400 From: Tom Peter Abeles Reply to: scishops@listserv.ncsu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Conference update and conlusion I am lost- either I am missing something or not all that happened was reported in a way which allows me to understand. To me the conclusions are tautological- tom abeles tabeles@tmn.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- >From straker@unixg.ubc.caMon Jul 22 12:05:31 1996 Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 11:14:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Stephen Straker To: Loka Institute Cc: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Conference updates (long) Dear Conferees -- I hope the length of this post is not a problem. I could have sent the parts separately, but it seemed just as well to keep it all in one package. Presumably any of you can edit out the material you wish to keep and circulate (if any). Wish I was there! One of the really important things, I think, is the *reciprocity* which is required between community & groups and "scientists", a reciprocity, symmetry, and dual reflexiveness which is emphasized in the studies of experts and the public done by Brian Wynne and colleagues. People in communities have expert knowledge, too, and it is often ignored and overlooked (and sometimes beyond even the imaginings) of academic experts. Wynne has shown this spectacularly in the case of Chernobyl fallout, Sellafield emissions, and sheep-farming in northwest England. The farmers knew *infinitely* more about soils and sheep and the grazing regimen -- their "ecosystem" -- than the experts did, and the experts flubbed it while in the process humiliating the locals. Wynne & colloborators have emphasized the necessity of recognizing that there are complex, socially situated "knowledges" in all groups. This necessity for reciprocity seems to be something that needs to be built in to the relationships of any network, between the groups in a network. All this suggests the following COMMENTS on one report from the Conference: > 2. What are the potential benefits of the network to these groups? > Nurturing/supporting BY LEGITIMATING LOCAL KNOWLEDGES WHILE INCREASING OVERALL EXPERTISE > Increased Access (and effectiveness and connections) > --------------------- > * information sharing > * technical assistance > * research capacity > * help identify strategic information needs > * share resources > * translate research jargon into common language > * increase the size of the audience (communications amplifier) RECIPROCALLY -- WORKS *BOTH* WAYS!! > Improved image/credibility > -------------------------------- > 4. How will this be accomplished? > * share models, questions, information > * collaborate IMPROVE IMAGE & CREDIBILITY BY *HUMILITY* -- THERE IS ALWAYS MORE TO KNOW ... These thoughts also underline and tend to reinforce another set of comments from the Conference: > Here are some excerpts from the large group discussion on what > community based research strives to do: > > "promote the production of the collective knowledge through the > investigation and presentation of a social reality by groups living in it." > > "promote group ownership of the information" > > "promote collective analysis through the ordering of information in ways > useful to the group" > > "promote critical analysis by groups and individuals by using ordered > information to determine root causes of problems and issues apparent in > the constituency with a view of finding solutions for them." > > "Establish relationship between personal and structural problems as part > of the collective problem solving process and link evaluation with > action, taking the time to ask why, who, what, where..." > > How would you define community-based research? How would you answer the > aforementioned questions? Please send us your replies... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * For background, and just in case it might be useful, I append here TWO pieces by Wynne (et al): (1) A letter from Wynne & Irwin to the Times Higher Ed Supp. replying to a review of their book by a "typical" academic scientist. (2) A draft of an essay later published in the THES about the politics & sociology of expertise & community involved in the CJS / "mad-cow" crisis. Stephen Straker straker@unixg.ubc.ca Arts One // History (604) 822-6863 University of British Columbia / FAX: (604) 822-4520 Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z1 * * * * * * * * * (1) Re: Alan Irwin & Brian Wynne (eds), _Misunderstanding Science? The public reconstruction of science and technology_ (Cambridge UP, 1996). Lewis Wolpert reviewed this book in the Times Higher Ednl Suppl (31 May), p.viii: Wolpert closed his review with: "... there is nothing to suggest that any of the authors themselves would not benefit from a better understanding of science. For they provide little evidence that they understand it". This is the letter responding from Irwin & Wynne (THES (21 June), p.13): "Unfortunately, in his review of our edited book, _Misunderstanding Science?_ (THES, May 31), Lewis Wolpert took the opportunity to repeat his well-known views concerning the social scientific misunderstanding of science. In so doing, he nicely exemplified our argument that the scientific understanding of its public is at least as important as the public understandings of science. At the same time, he illustrated (albeit inadvertently) the difficulties of establishing an open and critical dialogue between social scientific researchers and those such as Wolpert who claim to speak for the scientific community. Since Wolpert did not engage with the main points of the book, it may be helpful to draw some of these to readers' attention. "There are major difficulties with the current "public understanding of science" agenda, which generally views legitimate public concerns as a problem only in terms of "science communication". The research in this volume suggests that science needs to learn from, as well as contribute to, current debates, and indeed that its institutional practices may need to be reconsidered accordingly. Pulbic groups (and, it would appear, social scientists) are often represented as "ignorant" of science, yet the research collected in our book suggests that public groups often possess a rich body of contextually generated knowledge and expertise that is generally dismissed by scientific institutions. The various ethnographic and qualitative studies in our book do not suggest a polarisation around science or anti-scientific sentiment. Instead, they offer a more complex picture of the "public reconstruction" of scientific and other sources of information within often difficult social situations. "Finally, and in justice to our contributors, the various case studies in our book (which cover a variety of settings and contexts for science-public relations) deserve the serious academic discussion they have received elsewhere. In our opinion, the [UK] Economic and Social Research Council is to be congratulated for supporting an innovative and timely programme. The research in the book has already been discussed with scientists, science policy makers and industrialists, as well as within the social scientific community. These people are at the sharp end of interactions between science and society, and recognise the complexities which Wolpert seems to think can be legislated out of existence by his dogmatic and self-satisfied polarisations. While social science is ready to engage in serious, critical but open-minded debate as to how to sustain the cultural and instrumental benefits of science, Wolpert appears to be undermining the very enterprise he claims to be defending." (2) From: "Professor B. Wynne" To: Stephen Straker Subject: BSE / Risk article for THES. Dear Steve, Here is the article, though not as it appeared. as ever, Brian Notes on BSE and Europe - 22.4.96 Egged on by the Eurosceptic right, Rifkind states in parliament that UK will ban imports of European beef if the EC ban isnt lifted. EC Ministers said the science isn't important, what matters is more strict measures in the UK herd, and retaliation against EC would hurt UK. Major appears to be desperate to keep right wing happy and to claim no scientific basis for the ban, as before with the legal threat. Fischler was quite relaxed about having said it was a market confidence measure and he was happy to eat UK beef, as if the confidence thing was mutually exclusive with a scientific safety basis for the ban. The right is banging on that the ban is purely a tradewar issue, but one Tory said "don't press the nuclear button [ie, retaliate in meat-trade terms] unless you re sure you'll win the war". All this after Major had come back from trying to get European leaders at the weekend's Moscow G7 summit to agree to rescind the ban, even though they were not empowered to do so, and left him empty-handed. The extraordinary thing about this is the deep extent to which the right-wrong sides can be so reified by the contrived scientific position ("Fischler admitted it wasn't scientific") adopted by the UK government. This stands for the current state of the science on BSE-CJD risk. * D R A F T * BSE - Risk Article, The Times Higher Education Supplement It is still far too early to assess the political and cultural fallout, as well as the public health fallout, from the still-unfolding BSE affair. If ever risk assessment experts needed a reminder that what we take as objectively defined and bounded problems are always open-ended and interconstructed with other cross-cutting issues, BSE surely does it. Already coursing through the issue are, inter alia: --- the tortured UK relations with the EU; --- the over-industrialisation of agriculture and food supply; --- ideological obsessions with deregulation, and government ministries scandalously close to being nothing but the sponsor of private industrial interests; --- the deeper reaches of fast-eroding public identification with official policy bodies and their pronouncements; --- and the distinct whiff of political control of science arising from recent changes in UK research and educational culture. The prevalent political disease of Blame Someone Else was well captured in a Financial Times cartoon, and starkly-illustrated by infantile Parliamentary exchanges in which a desperate government attempted to blame Labour for the so-called public panic. The delicate political negotiations in the EU around the Intergovernmental Conference were also enbalmed in a clever strategy of "solidarity" with the UK, all leaders being able to express shared outrage at the media's responsibility for the crisis of public hysteria. Yet behind this familiar projection of blame onto others - and it is easy enough to find scapegoats in this affair - there are some much deeper problems, and some more challenging lessons to be absorbed. These concern our general understanding of the modern political-cultural syndrome of the "risk society", especially the deskilling of political responsibility which has accompanied the pervasive rise of dependency upon scientific expertise, not just as a servant of policymaking but as its cultural idiom. This has been seen in the BSE exchanges with Ministers claiming innocently to be doing nothing but follow scientific advice, when it is evident that this advice has been highly selectively garnered and shepherded. Not only are the politicians confused about the nature of scientific uncertainty and ignorance, so too it seems are many of the scientists. But the politicians have also absorbed a deeply misconceived and self-destructive idea of the public from the scientific experts. Modern risk issues and the fundamental misrepresentation of the nature of public responses which these exhibit, show how modern expert-dependent policy institutions generally are unwittingly conspiring in destruction of their own public legitimacy. However the increasingly prominent and influential social theories of the risk society, those of Ulrich Beck and Antony Giddens, whilst they have valuably illuminated much of what appears to be going on, are also fundamentally limited and even potentially misleading in important respects. I will attempt here to outline why. One of the hallowed features of UK government culture has been its sheer cohesiveness, even when pursuing a perverse stance, as it has done on many environmental issues like acid rain for example. Even if one excoriated the substantive position, one had to admire the cohesion. In recent years however a change has been gathering, amplified by other factors such as deliberate upheaval in the basic terms of the civil service code. Despite the intensification of expert-dependency, a sense of profound insecurity, incoherence and ungovernability has been detectable. The BSE affair does not come from nowhere, it continues a trend. On the face of it the infamous DoH press briefing of March 20th which unleashed the latest and most dire round by announcing the finding of a further 10 unusual CJD cases which could not be dissociated from BSE, was an act of straightforward gross incompetence. The underpinning research results had not been published, and the papers were not even available. One charitable view would be that DoH attempted at least to gain the initiative, by being able to say that it had informed the public immediately they had been informed, even if this meant jumping the gun on conventional norms for this kind of risk communication. However placing this decision in wider context offers a different view of it. Only three months ago, after the last BSE scare in December 1995, Professor Collinge in London had a paper in line for publication in Nature which appeared to offer some reassurances on the BSE-human connection. Collinge had attempted to simulate the human system by inserting the human gene thought to be relevant for the species-boundary with respect to spongiform encephalopathies into a mouse, then injecting the mice with BSE and observing the incidence of the CJD equivalent in the "human" mice. He found no extra incidence - better than finding an increase - which would have suggested that the human species-boundary was permeable to BSE. However, and crucially, he was the first to acknowledge that this attempted simulation of the full human system was very incomplete, and that his research thus left us far short of clear reassurance on this key question. In rushing to inform the public of disturbing findings on March 20th, DoH may well have been mindful of what happened with these earlier findings, when a senior official in MAFF who had seen a prepublication copy of the Collinge Nature paper, leaked to the press (and swept aside Collinge's own severe qualifications of his results) in order to try to rescue some public reassurance for the discredited MAFF stance of "problem solved (and anyway insignficant)". Even beyond the BSE issue, DoH was also villified in November 1995 when it was in the process of informing GPs of new research on coronary risks from some female hormone contraceptives, only to find itself upstaged by media headlines. It would not be surprising if it felt itself on a hiding-to-nothing however it had handled the new CJD cases; and it might have been a feeling of insecurity encouraged not only by the media aggressively doing their legitimate job, but by an unspoken sense of insecurity as to the dishonesty of the official political stance on BSE, as well as mistrust of the behaviour of its government fellows in other agencies. Looked at in this light we glimpse an altogether more disquieting sense of the breakdown of governance as such in late-modern expert-dependent cultures of policy and government, faced with issues like the consequences of aggressively high-technology, resource- and knowledge-concentrating systems for producing subsistence services. This is especially true for those increasingly definitive if as yet ill-defined arenas called risk and environmental sustainability, in which dominant expert cultures framing a priori what the problem is thought to be, have in effect become normative straightjackets engendering profound public senses of betrayal, neglect, patronisation and alienation from official policy institutions and processes. However, whereas Beck and Giddens, for example, portray this process as largely brought on by the emergence of genuine global risks which modern expert institutions were responsible for but can no longer control, I argue that this alienation is less grounded in rational calculation around real risks, but since anyway these are rarely directly observable by anyone, the basis of risk-anxiety is popular experience of increasing dependency on expert-led institutions which are experienced as less and less trustworthy. This breakdown of trust is more to do with the inability of expert institutions to frankly admit ignorance, contingency and lack of control when appropriate, than with the supposed growth of risk per se. If scientific institutions were capable of more throughly recognising the uncertainties and limitations of their knowledge, then they would acknowledge that this is a perfectly reasonable basis of popular risk assessment. The risk lies in the social dependency, and if those expert actors are less trustworthy, the risks are higher, not just the perceptions of them. The Beck thesis has been criticised (Independent March 1996) for its self-reinforcing circularity, that it depends in the first place on the reality of the risks, such as those from BSE. In my perspective whatever the physical risks turn out to have been, our moral and social identities as human beings are profoundly threatened by the ways in which expert dominated policy institutions represent us. Hence the cultural response, where withdrawal of identification with such bodies is not just due to their inability to control (contestable) risks, but to their systematic denial of responsibility, their patronising construction of a public response actually based in mistrust, as one based instead on public misunderstanding of the 'real' risks, and on infantile public expectation of zero risk. These latter miscontructions of the public, which research on public responses and risk perceptions has repeatedly falsified, are deeply patronising and alienating, as well as being plain wrong. They may be better understood as the illusory exogenous projections onto the public, of internal industrial and scientific insecurities about operating in a healthily critical and open social environment. It is easy - and necessary - to identify villains of this piece, particularly the surely now-doomed cohabitation of an obsessively supply-oriented food industry ministry with one supposed to protect the food consumer. But beyond the superficial reassurance of targetting particular scapegoats, it is the nature of this pervasive UK science-policy culture which needs critical attention and a determined effort at overthrow, across a much broader front than mad cows, food and agriculture. Some of these cultural features are not unique to the UK, though the overall combination may well be. Its key features can be described as follows: *** the burden of proof falls on the victim, with the so-called lack of evidence of harm (even where such evidence would be impossible to gather) being smoothly translated into an implied 'evidence of lack of harm'; *** reductionism in the factors recognised as falling legitimately within the framework of risk and policy assessment; *** selectivity in the kind of expertise accepted as worthy of acting as government advisers, and marginalisation and discrediting of the dissidents; *** a largely invisible Treasury stranglehold on decision making even influencing expert accounts of the risk; *** risk assessment embodying naively optimistic assumptions about the social world affecting the real risk-system, as with the official assertion (against contrary evidence) that rules at slaughterhouses would be followed; *** patronisation of public responses as irrational and even hysterical, assuming them to be based on misunderstanding of the risks as perceived by the experts when they are, perfectly reasonably, based on an assessment of whether the controlling actors (including the official experts) can be trusted. Thus institutional behaviour is removed from the agenda, when it may be the main issue; *** systematic under-recognition of the contingencies and open-ended assumptions which pervade scientific knowledge about such issues, as for example, the choice of what decision rule to follow about the cattle-human species barrier when the evidence showed both apparent permeability and apparent impermeability, dependent upon circumstantial reasoning; *** systematic misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the nature of scientific knowledge as deployed in policy, which is not based on open-minded hypothesis-testing and a comprehesive appreciation of the uncertainties which the science contains, but is (like laboratory science) also partly based on extending convictions about how the world behaves, into new empirical situations. Scientific knowledge always and inevitably contains suppositions knitting together and 'closing' incomplete and open-ended observations from nature itself. The last factor is in many senses the key to the others, and to the public policy world's mounting disorientation in the face of manifest uncertainty. It deserves dwelling on a little here. The same syndrome of scientific knowledge cocooning itself in a limited horizon of known uncertainties, and falsely presenting its approach as purely uncertainty-seeking, was evidenced during the post-Chernobyl crisis ten years ago. When hill sheep measurements contradicted the scientists' confident reassurances that their contamination and the restrictions on marketing would last three weeks at most, they were basing their commitments on the unquestioned extension of the known behaviour of radiocaesium in alkaine clay soils, to that in upland soils, which are typically acid, peaty and organic. They did not pose the question, will our knowledge based on clay be valid also for upland soils; they extended it without acknowledging a question was there to be asked. This conviction was later contradicted by observation, and eventually it was sorted out why. It has often been said that this was the unfortunate result of policy pressure on the science, but the point is that science typically proceeds in this fashion, making intellectual and technological commitments assuming existing theory to be valid universally, then eventually finding the need to qualify and elaborate, and occasionally to overthrow these commitments. It did not even realise what questions it had been asking. In the private confines of the scientific community, this rather hit-and-miss, conviction-led, and more closed-minded mode of advance is not especially problematic, even though it contradicts the idea of science as an open-minded community which never goes beyond provisional belief. But in the policy domain this kind of knowledge culture makes policy commitments based on the said scientific convictions, thus enrolling the public policy world into an inadvertent and unacknowledged experiment on society or part of it. This occurred in the Chernobyl aftermath and it has occurred in the BSE-CJD case. Against the dominant rhetoric of "scientifically sound, precautionary regulation" it is also true for environmental releases of genetically manipulated organ isms, and indeed for chemical pesticides and many other modern environmental and technological risks. This fundamentally misconceived notion of science in modern society shapes our policy institutions and their relations with others. Rather than seeing science as conditional knowledge never as unproblematically universal as it is made to appear, science is allowed to frame what the policy problems are as human problems, giving tacit political licence to an instrumental and reductionist ethic built into the epistemic culture of science. Thus in the BSE issue the problem of scientific hubris in placing industrial trajectories in the food and agriculture industries so close to the edge that then apparently minor changes in rendering conditions in the animal feed industry allowed scrapie to infect cattle fodder,nd the general issues of industrial intensification of food, all for marginal and anyway theoretical economic returns, is excluded from the public agenda. The politicians leave it alone claiming the experts are handling this as a risk issue, one of expert discovery, whilst the experts define a very narrow technical terrain on which they produce knowledge whose limiting conditions and hence limited sovereignty are not held in focus. Responsibility passes, as Beck puts in aptly, into "organised irresponsibility" where no one picks up the issues which concern the public, and instead they are simply patronised. In the BSE fiasco, a better term might have been, disorganised irresponsibility. The cultural syndrome of UK science-policy which has been so appallingly exposed in the BSE affair, will not be remedied by the obvious institutional changes which are a minimal response to the social risks now widely experienced and expressed - the splitting up of MAFF; the broadening of the officially recognised scientific inputs to the policy process so as to include more diverse scientific views; and institutional fora between the narrow technical domain of sound scientific risk assessment, and the representative political process, between which poles many of the most important and publically salient issues such as the wider implications of particular technical changes for agriculture and society, simply fall into an abyss, discrediting the policy process as a whole. It is now acknowledged that to add animal proteins to cattle feed involved risks which could be controlled so long as conditions of sterilising infectious agents like BSE prions were fulfilled. But it did place an extra risk as to whether such conditions would always be fulfilled. When in the early 1980s the feed industry did change their rendering conditions, the longstanding practice of adding animal proteins went through its critical risk barrier for BSE (and maybe CJD) enhancement almost without notice, let alone risk identification. Yet it is a moot point which change brought about the end result, the animal-protein/sheep-offal practice, or the change of rendering practices which finally allowed prion agents to proliferate and infect cattle. This fragmentation of the regulatory agenda has so many parallels in other domains - for example with current practice over environmental releases of GMOs, where the advisory committee on releases to the environment, ACRE, has no responsibility for assessing the possible effects on chemical herbicide use of releases of herbicide-resistant GMOs, nor for various other "indirect" risks from such releases. Likewise the regulation of the bovine somatotropin, BST growth-hormone for milk production ecluded the contingent risk of farmers adding continual antibiotics to the milk in order to suppress mastitis brought about by the higher milk production. Yet there are no other fora than the narrow scientific ones for such assessments and debates. Rather than cloud the technical clarity of the scientific aspects that can be addressed with some hope of precision, it may be better to innovate institutions to address the less direct but no less important risk and related issues currently falling to no agency to address on behalf of the public at large. These institutional changes, leading to more open debate, a more authentically precautionary culture in relation to such risks, and a more socially inclusive culture of ownership of and responsibility for risk-related policy decisions, including a more prepared and fluent parliamentary involvement, seem a minimal public settlement after this affair. But are these achievable changes when the most upstream parts of the process, those of research - biomedical, environmental, agricultural and social - are still undergoing erosion of political independence and freedom of thought? and when the new political-corporate discipline has overtaken related agents previously bastions of independence, such as Directors of Public Health? One of the most chilling aspects of the whole BSE experience is the evidence of 'independent' scientific advice on various aspects of the issue having been already shaped before it arrived at the policy door, by the scientists' own perceptions of what scientific accounts would be politically digestible. On the key issue of permitting the use of cattle offals in human food once BSE was recognised, Richard Southwood the past Chair of the RCEP, and Chair of an official inquiry in 1988 into the BSE issue, has been criticised for not having demanded from the start a ban on this use. He recalled that "We felt it was a no-goer. MAFF already thought our proposals were pretty revoutionary.." He later pressed for the ban, and it was introduced in 1989. But the point is that at the time, they could say that they were following the Southwood Committee's advice that such a step was not necessary on scientific grounds, when the scientists had ruled it out on tacitly political grounds. Such subtle reinforcements between the scientific and policy words are not uncommon across a wider field of policy; and yet Ministers can still say without public ridicule that they are just following independent scientific advice. The overwhelming sense is that this problem as now identified, in all its remaining uncertainties, could have been foreseen and taken up, indeed maybe even was foreseen for example by the 1979 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (but not taken up), had a more confident, pluralistic and independently secure research community existed in the UK. The excuse that such an institutional culture, one of recognised indeterminacy, would frighten the public and induce disorder, is ironically the very commitment now inducing a mounting disorder, because the public is more mature about risk and uncertainty than anyone appears willing to recognise, and experiences far greater risk in the self-delusions and systematic denials of the expert-led institutions on which they know they are dependent. ___________________ Prof. Brian Wynne, University of Lancaster, UK. ---------------------------------------------------------------