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Assessment through Adversary Proceedings

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Science Policy, Ethics, and Economic Methodology

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Abstract

Many controversies over technology- and environment-related policy have been characterized by experts’ disagreement over the relevant scientific facts. Prominent examples include conflict over nuclear fission, fluoridation, food additives, depletion of the ozone layer, and high-voltage transmission lines. Often the industrialists and technocrats who are party to such controversy blame the conflict on the fact that their opponents are paranoid neo-Luddites who are scientifically illiterate and uninformed about the relevant technical issues.1 Likewise, often the radical environmentalists and consumer advocates involved in such a dispute blame the allegedly scientific controversy on the fact that their opponents are spokespersons for a ‘technomanagerial elite’ rather than advocates of disinterested scientific inquiry.2 The existence and intensity of these controversies suggests that the present governmental bodies responsible for using the results of technology assessment (TA) and environmental-impact analysis (EIA) are unable to handle the interface between technological, environmental, and public policy components of contemporary decisionmaking. Perhaps one reason for this failure, as Chapters Three—Seven of this volume suggest, is that TA’s and EIA’s are often not responsive to the complex ethical and methodological issues which need to be addressed as part of comprehensive policy-making.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, W. Hafele, ‘Energy’, in Science, Technology, and the Human Prospect (edited by C. Starr and P. Ritterbush), Pergamon, New York, 1979, p. 139

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  2. hereafter cited as: Hafele, Energy, in Science. See also M. Maxey, ‘Managing Low-Level Radioactive Wastes’, in Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management (ed. by J. E. Watson), Health Physics Society, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1979, pp. 410–417; hereafter cited as: Maxey, Wastes.

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  3. See, for example, R. S. Banks, ‘The Science Court Proposal in Retrospect: A Literature Review and Case Study’, Critical Reviews in Environmental Control 10, (2), (August 1980), 111; hereafter cited as: Banks, SCP.

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  4. Alex C. Michalos, ‘A Reconsideration of the Idea of a Science Court’, Research in Philosophy and Technology (ed. by P. T. Durbin), vol. 3, JAI Press, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1980, pp. 14, 26; hereafter cited as: Michalos, Reconsideration.

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  5. Michalos, Reconsideration, p. 19; see also J. A. Martin ‘The Proposed Science Court’, Michigan Law Review 75 (5–6), (April—May 1977), 1059; hereafter cited as: SC.

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  6. See J. A. Martin, SC, pp. 1059–1060 and B. M. Casper, ‘Technology Policy and Democracy’, Science 194 (4260), (1 October—1976), 34; hereafter cited as: Policy.

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  7. Ian Barbour, Technology, Environment, and Human Values, Praeger, New York, 1980, p. 129.

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  8. Science 193 (4254), (20 August 1976), 653–656; hereafter cited as: Task Force, Report.

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  9. For further details on the science court and its history, see A. Kantrowitz, ‘Controlling Technology Democratically’, American Scientist 63 (5), (September-October 1975), 506–507

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  10. hereafter cited as: Controlling. See also Casper, Policy, p. 29 and B. M. Casper and P. C. Wellstone, “The Science Court on Trial in Minnesota’, Hastings Center Report 8 (4), (August 1978), 5–7

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  11. hereafter cited as: Trial. Finally, see R. S. Bank, SCP, and K. G. Nichols and the OECD for Science, Technology, and Industry, Technology on Trial, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, 1979, pp. 97–101; hereafter cited as: Nichols, TOT.

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  12. See Michalos, Reconsideration, pp. 12–27, and A. Kantrowitz, ‘The Science Court Experiment: Criticisms and Responses’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 133 (4), (April 1977), 44–47; hereafter cited as: Response.

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  13. Michalos, Reconsideration, p. 13; see also E. Callen, ‘The Science Court’, Science 193 (4257), (September 1976), 948–951

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  14. L. Lipson, ‘Technical Issues and the Adversary Process’, Science 194 (4268), November 1976), 890.

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  15. Michalos, Reconsideration, p. 14.

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  16. Michalos, Reconsideration, pp. 15, 20, 26.

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  17. Michalos, Reconsideration, pp. 14–15.

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  18. Michalos, Reconsideration, pp. 20–21.

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  19. Michalos, Reconsideration, p. 26.

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  20. At the recent conference on the science court, Nancy Abrams of the US Office of Technology Assessment made exactly this suggestion for use of television to educate the public. See ‘General Discussion’, in Commerce Technical Advisory Board, Proceedings of the Colloquium on the Science Court, Held at Leesburg, Virginia, on September 19–21, 1976 (ed. by Commerce Technical Advisory Board), American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C., January 1977, PB-261 305, NTIS, p. 105; hereafter cited as: Commerce Technical, Proceedings.

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  21. This is one of Casper’s and Wellstone’s main points. See Casper and Wellstone, Trial, p. 7. H. Wheeler, ‘Bringing Science Under Law’, in The Establishment and All That (ed. by R. M. Hutchins), Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, 1970, p. 149; hereafter cited as: Wheeler, Science, and Hutchins, Establishment.

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  22. Kantrowitz, Response, p. 653.

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  23. See note 7 in this chapter.

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  24. R, M. Hutchins, ‘The Center in the Sixties and Seventies’, in Hutchins, Establishment, p. 10.

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  25. J. N. Martin, ‘Procedures for Decisionmaking under Conditions of Scientific Uncertainty: The Science Court Proposal., Harvard Journal on Legislation 16 (2), (1979), 464; hereafter cited as: Decisionmaking.

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  26. Alan McGowan, ‘The Science Court’, in Commerce Technical, Proceedings, p. 91.

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  27. Wheeler, Science, p. 140, makes a similar point.

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  28. Fabian Society, London, 1931, Fabian Tract no. 235. See also Kantrowitz, Controlling, p. 506.

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  29. Quoted in Kantrowitz, Controlling, p. 505.

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  30. Martin, SC, p. 1068, makes this same point.

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  31. Cited in D. Bazelon, ‘Risk and Responsibility’, Science 205 (4403), (1979), 277–280.

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  32. D. L. Bazelon, ‘Psychiatrists and the Adversary Process’, Scientific American 230 (6), (1974), 18.

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  33. Quoted in Casper, Policy, p. 33.

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  34. See Banks, SCP, p. 111.

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  35. Banks, SCP, 111.

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  36. Moore, Principia Ethica, University Press, Cambridge, 1929, p. 40.

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  37. Controlling, p. 506.

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  38. See Banks, SCP, p. 112, and Michalos, Reconsideration, p. 26.

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  39. This same point is made by Wheeler, Science, p. 147.

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  40. Dr. Stan Carpenter and Dr. Paul Durbin raised exactly this point when an earlier version of this proposal was presented in September, 1983 at the New York Colloquium on Philosophy and Technology.

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  41. Nichols, TOT, p. 82.

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  42. Nichols, TOT, p. 83.

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  43. Nichols, TOT, p. 85.

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  44. Nichols, TOT, p. 86.

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  45. See K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Boston, 1980, p. 12; hereafter cited as: NPPP.

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  46. See Shrader-Frechette, NPPP, pp. 91–93; see also Nichols, TOT, p. 87.

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  47. Nichols, TOT, p. 90.

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  48. Nichols, TOT, p. 91.

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  49. Nichols, TOT, pp. 94–95.

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  50. See K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Environmental Ethics, Boxwood, Pacific Grove, 1981, pp. 144–145.

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  51. Nichols, TOT, p. 99.

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  52. Nichols, TOT, p. 100.

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  53. Nichols, TOT, p. 100.

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  54. Cited in Martin, SC, p. 1090.

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  55. See note 9.

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  56. Cited by Casper, Policy, p. 32.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Florida, USA

    K. S. Shrader-Frechette

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  1. K. S. Shrader-Frechette
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© 1985 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland

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Shrader-Frechette, K.S. (1985). Assessment through Adversary Proceedings. In: Science Policy, Ethics, and Economic Methodology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6449-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6449-5_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-277-1845-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-6449-5

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