Almost every DailyKos diary, excepting 'meta' gigs and personal tales, concerns some type of policy question. We may consider ourselves "news junkies," but if we don't see the need for 'policy-wonkishness' mixed in with our addiction to data, we are failing as citizens.
A citizen-science website has agreed.
A recent editorial in Science posed the question: "Who should sit at the table when science policy is being decided?"
For the answer, folks may continue after the break.
And here is what Science contended was a 'best-practices' answer.
(1) All citizens support science through their tax dollars and experience the profound consequences of science...;
(2) in a democracy, those who experience the consequences of an activity and those who pay for it ordinarily expect a voice ...;
(3)scientific leaders have no monopoly on expertise, nor do they have a privileged ethical standpoint for evaluating social consequences ...;
(4) nonscientists already contribute ... (e.g., women's organizations have redirected medical research agendas to reduce gender biases);
(5)elite-only approaches are antithetical to open, vigorous, and creative debate on which democracy, policy-making, and science all thrive;
(6) ...public support for science (may) erode if other perspectives are excluded.
By popular request, I am beginning with a CBPR brief. I'll start with a descriptive characterization that I've used in Georgia, in conducting citizen panels, one format for operationalizing CBPR.
Community Based Participatory Research(CBPR)is a method for conducting scientific or technological research, development, implementation, etc.; its precepts may apply in any instance that involves utilization of or impacts upon community members as a regular and expected element of doing business, such as human experimentation, any instance that would require an environmental impact statement or adoption of health and safety codes or regulations, and in many other cases; under such circumstances, community leaders and members would have all of the following expectations: opportunities to participate in pre-planning for and strategizing about the research or project; adequately funded chances to obtain expert assistance, ombudsmen, and training to improve and watch over community participation; a permanent presence on all committees or other planning and administrative and like bodies; a defined stake in the outcome of the research or project, including possible sharing of monies, grants, intellectual property, etc.; defined capitalization of the community--possibly in the form of ongoing training, classrooms and laboratories, tools and equipment, among other potential fixed assets--that would remain under community control after the completion of the research or project; a funded voice in all outcomes of the research or project, including reports, collouqiums, media productions, and other events or output of the overall work; a continuing presence and stake in all follow-up activities that deal with the original research or project, such as subsequent grants, further studies, etc.
INTRO
As much as anything else, science typifies what being human means. We have survived and thrived by using trial and error to increase knowledge, by organizing and communicating our knowledge, and by theorizing about how all that we've learned fits together. We delight in inventiveness, with toys and tools and sounds and words and more. However we define science, its attributes include common aspects of everyday life for almost everyone.
But how do we define science? For all too many practitioners and advocates of the business of science, the answer to that question is tantamount to 'whatever I say goes; I'm the expert.' This essay provides a definition, examining the so-called "Science Wars" and the history of science for the genesis of its answer. It also shows how, in a complex and inherently political context such as any modern society, science must acknowledge and develop its social component, or a variety of suboptimal results will ensue, concluding with a definition of 'Community Based Participatory Research' as an apt expression of a socially democratic science.
THE STANDARD VIEW: OR RELATIVIST MORONS AGAINST REALITY
Philosopher of Science, and complete proponent of a robustly scientific society, Theodore Schick has long advocated for potent science against relativist and 'know-nothing' thinkers and critics. His article in Skeptical Inquirer, "The End of Science," is an excellent example of a powerful response to philosophical tricksters who would seek to undermine scientific legitimacy. Nonetheless, Schick is critical of scientists as well, for being philosophically naive and both too sure of their own rectitude and too dismissive, out of hand, of any naysayers.
He writes, quoting the prolific, authoritative, and sadly bitter Theo Theocharis, physicist and scientific pugilist extraordinaire, who in turn was quoting British Nobelist Peter Medawar,
Ask a sicentist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty eyed: solemn because he feels he ought to declare an opion; shifty-eyed because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.
Without digging too deeply into the socio-economic aspects of science, Schick develops the intellectual basis to insist that science is the only rational guide for the world's peoples now to follow.
Schick ends his essay like this:
Can science be shown to be a superior means of acquiring knowledge? Yes it can, but only by showing that it is more likely to yield justified beliefs than any other methodology. Thus the real issue is not whether a belief is scientific or pseudoscientific but whether it is justified or unjustified.
We are justified in believing something to be true when it provides the best explanation of the evidence. Science is superior to other methods of inquiry because it usually provides better explanations than they do. The goodness of an explanation is determined by the amount of understanding it produces, and the amount of understanding an explanation produces is determined by how much it systematizes and unifies our knowledge. The extent to which an explanation does this can be determined by appealing to various criteria of adequacy such as simplicity, scope, conservatism, and fruitfulness. No one wants to hold unjustified beliefs. The problem is that most people never learn the difference between a good explanation and a bad one. Consequently they come to believe all sorts of weird things for no good reason.
Must science come to an end? Not necessarily. But unless scientists become more philosophically sophisticated, their apologetics will continue to ring hollow. And unless our educational system focuses more on teaching students how to think than on what to think, our populace will become increasingly credulous. Scientists and educators alike need to realize that the educated person is not the person who can answer the questions, but the person who can question the answers. In our age of rapidly changing information, knowing how to distinguish truth from falsity is more important than knowing what was once considered true and false. Only a person who knows the difference between a justified and an unjustified belief can truly appreciate the value of scientific inquiry.
This nearly works as a definition of science, though, lacking a social, economic, and political context, these beautiful thoughts don't leave us with much of a sense of why science is often in such trouble today.
The aforementioned Theocharis has over and over again sought to 'circle the wagons' of science against the assaults, seemingly from all sides, that have characterized what the periodical Social Text has labeled "The Science Wars." Two of Theo's essays, "Where Science Has Gone Wrong" and "Science and Truth," are de rigeur for anyone who wants to comprehend the seemingly uncalled-for viciousness and apparently often endless vitriol that adheres to many discussions of science policy these days.
In "Where Science Has Gone Wrong," Theocharis gives a bare-bones intellectual history of the coming of the current attacks on science's objectivity and stature. While he sketches lightly some of the missing political and economic factors that underpin science woes, his primary purpose is likewise to demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of the anti-science crowd and the risks attendant on their continued assaults. He portrays the danger of this situation starkly:
(T)he antitheses pose at least three different kinds of potential threats or actual dangers not only to science as such, but also to society in general. In summary, these risks are: (i) Intellectual bankruptcy entails financial bankruptcy. (ii) Epistemological anarchism entails social anarchism. (iii) Epistemological relativism, criticism and nihilism entail scientific chaos, confusion and stagnation.
He ends this comment from Nature magazine by calling for a more rigorous commitment to defining objectivity and science itself.
In "Science and Truth," he undertakes to accomplish this definitional task, first though supporting the notion that some things in fact do exist that we can more or less uniformly and universally agree are accurate. He then calls out to scientists, who all too often insist that their only philosophy are these truths themselves.
The philosopher C.E.M. Joad argued correctly that people who think they haven't got a philosophy simply have a badly-thought-out philosophy. This is another way of stating Aristotle's observation (more than two millennia earlier) that the claim to not have a metaphysics is itself a form a metaphysics.
In order to define the overall discipline and locate the core of truth, he has first to call his fellow natural philosophers back to the fold, so to speak.
He therefore shows with glorious precision that a "naive instrumentalism" has infected the realms of Newton's followers, and that this 'it works, so don't mess with it' attitude, were we to continue to accept it, would leave us still struggling over the existence of Santa Claus, and comparable to rats trying all manner of theories to account for their hit and miss success in finding food in the maze. He then sets out, in ingenious fashion, to answer his quest by imagining that he had the job of disproving the geocentric view of the world in 1600.
Before he does so, however, he distinguishes knowledge and insight generally from a scientific approach. China; he points out, and much of Islamic Asia, had noted the spherical nature of the earth prior to European declarations thereon. But none of these societies conjoined formulaic processes to knowledge of nature and discourse about theory and understanding, which are the bedrock of scientific methods.
In any event, as Theocharis makes completely clear, science is such a key element of civilization now; the material and intellectual gains of which are a sine qua non of survival, that any abstract attempt to separate us from science is, at best, a disingenuous disservice to our chances of sustaining the human tribe. His final analysis seeks firmly to reestablish the strongest 'reality-based' processes as the basis for our work as humans, resuscitating positivism and truth from the assaults of post-modernism, relativism, and what he sees as other 'voodoo' hangers-on.
While, despite Theocharis' protestations, Thomas Kuhn's and other's work is not irredeemable in regard to such a view, we can here merely nod and say that we can see his point. Knowledge and truth, even if we admit social components and factors and such, are not only possible but also a necessary precursor to most of what we say that we want to accomplish. Folks can check out Theocharis' operational presentation, regarding the refutation of the geocentric worldview of the early seventeenth century, in the essay itself.
In any case, he follows this up with a pretty dandy definition of science.
It follows from all the above arguments that the best possible one-sentence definition of science is this:
Science is the conscious, disciplined, systematic, and sustained, endeavour to methodically discover the non-obvious truths - of both nature and society.
The non-obviousness of scientific truths may range from the frequently uncommonsensical, to the often counter-intuitive, to the sometimes surprising, and occasionally to the truly astonishing.
Whether his estimation is "best," it certainly presents a nuanced and provocative summation of what is going on when people talk about doing science, which is to say to explain what is behind the veil or surface of things.
My own, more naive and ordinary, precis may be useful by way of comparison.
A working definition of science might appear as follows: 'Science is the process of classifying or otherwise organizing, interrelating, and theorizing about or otherwise explaining all that we know about existence, which process inherently involves the creation of new knowledge, both knowledge in the form of facts and discoveries and such, and knowledge in the form of improvements and refinements of the classificatory, interrelating, and theoretical scheme with which the process began.'
So saying, in contemplating a 'scientophilic' perspective, "what's not to like?" might be our query. To me, mediating between Kuhn and his assailants both in and out of science, or between Kuhn and other philosophers, on the one hand, and strong proponents of science as the study of reality, on the other, does not seem to represent any sort of insoluble dilemma.
GETTING REAL IN DISSECTING THESE MATTERS
In fact, a key problem with Theocharis, Kuhn, and the vast majority of participants in the self-styled 'Science Wars' is that, scientifically, what separates the parties to the melee seems a paltry basis for the uproar that all seem to feel is taking place. Why do we have this 'tempest in a teapot?' Whatever one's orientation in the skirmishes over 'natural philosophy' and its attendant techological attributes, one might hope for a more satisfactory explanatory nexus to account for all of the brouhaha about reality and knowledge and society.
When Vannevar Bush headed a Presidential Commission that resulted in the formation of the National Science Foundation and other bureaucratic backers of American experiment and design, he subtitled the Commission's report, "An Endless Frontier." Whether or not one catches the reference to Frederick Jackson Turner's 'frontier thesis,' the promise of these words is manifest in every WalMart, plastic surgeon's office, seed catalog, and prescription from a medical doctor, to name just a few places and relations that express the extraordinary productivity of contemporary science and technology.
Theocharis and almost all of the 'happy-reality' community are content to trumpet science's benefits to the human condition, and then to separate scientific endeavor from technical results. And of course they are right to brag, at least to an extent. Theocharis characterizes anyone who complains as essentially a whiner, though he does acknowledge that what causes some of the intellectual failings that he details in science is what he calls "short-termism" among practitioners, which essentially boils down to wanting quick technological pay-offs that yield either profit or product of some sort.
And, however one views the causal mechanisms involved--'profit' is something that we will consider further in a moment--modern science is replete with many incidents of willful or even conscious destruction of life, health, and property in the name of scientific advances or technological improvements. The four that I list here--with the briefest of thumbnails and links to further materials--are ones that I have studied or reported, or both.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments--
This matter of murder in the name of science is accessible online, http://www.infoplease.com/... in dozens of places, and James Jones' book, Bad Blood, provides plenty of detail. Basically, 400 primary subjects with syphilis were under 'study' while they wasted away, unaware of their infection, thereby passing on the disease to spouses and children at the same time that their caregivers did nothing but watch.
This went on for forty years, until its discovery in 1972, and not until a quarter century later did Bill Clinton offer an apology for this treachery. Under these circumstances, that only ten per cent of African Americans in 1990 believed AIDS to be a government plot may testify to the strong reality orientation of Black people.
Anniston, Alabama PCB exposure--
A manufacturing town in Northeast Alabama, Anniston has long acted as a host of the military industrial complex. Countless cases transpired there of government and corporate malfeasance against residents and workers. Perhaps none, even the grotesque chemical weapons situation, has brought the notoriety of Monsanto's purposeful release of PCB's into the local environs, with predictable results--cancer, neurological disorders, birth defects, retardation, heart disease, and more.
This might have remained merely a matter of speculation and accusation, since 'science' respected none of the evidence or assertion that damage had happened, and the poisoning may just have continued, had not Johnny Cochran seen fit to sue Monsanto in a class action lawsuit involving tens of thousands of victims. The $700 million settlement remains one of the largest in history. Multiple sources--http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HS/anniston-final-report.pdf, provides ATSDR's Final Report on Anniston; http://www.nrdc.org/... talks more about the lawsuit and its background--provide copious proof that countless high level employees, including science advisers and technical personnel, knowingly afflicted unknowing folks with hideous toxins for three plus decades after the knowledge about this 'reality' was absolutely certain, i.e., that PCB exposure was "a ticking time bomb."
Atomic Veterans--
Several hundred thousand soldiers followed orders and, purely for experimental purposes, received small to substantial radiation doses under 'combat conditions' following nuclear weapons tests. Among the sites that attest to this particular application of the scientific method are http://www.naav.com and http:www.atomicveterans.org. These human test subjects, incapable of and not allowed even rudimentary informed consent, obviously do not include the millions of civilians knowlingly exposed to fallout long after epidemiological evidence had accumulated that low-level radiation had deadly effects.
For a dramatic account of a particularly painful outcome for the soldiers involved, readers may turn to http://www.atomicveterans.org/... in which the writer conveys seeing comrades' skeletons in the light of the blast, and other telling details of 'science in the service of country.' To this day, despite all of the research demonstrating culpability, the government has neither apologized nor assumed full financial responsibility in this matter.
Three Mile Island--
I will be posting a diary about this in a couple of weeks. For present purposes, we may just note that an incident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at a pressurized water nuclear reactor there, resulted in a partial core meltdown and a potentially catastrophic accident in March, 1979, that only luck and brave action averted being disastrous. As a result of this accident, vast quantities of radiation entered the environment, and by government fiat, no research or evidence gathering about these releases were permitted, save the representations that the utility company involved and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission offered to the public.
Among the revealing documents that will support my upcoming article are this: http://www.flybynews.com/... which is the sworn statement of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover's daughter-in-law that the admiral admitted to participating in a cover-up in his report on the accident; and this: http://www.iicph.org/... Dr. Rosalie Bertell's sworn statement that she believes, as a participant in the Citizens Advisory Council to the Rickover Panel, that a cover-up of damages occurred that continues to this day; and this: http://www10.antenna.nl/... a community advocate's response to a University of Pittsburgh study of cancer incidence that found no statistically significant cancer effects. Over half a million people were within twenty miles of the plant, and to date, no long term monitoring of their health has taken place, nor have the workers who cleaned up the site received check-up or any sort of follow-up at all.
Literally thousands of unheralded communities and tens of millions of individuals have suffered toxic exposure, have acted as unwitting lab rats, have come face to face with a countenance of science that is anything but beneficent. Such cases belie the standard procedural response of science under attack. Such responses overlook arrogance and malfeasance that both is easy to document and has had horrific results.
To call for community involvement, for greater equity for all 'stakeholders' in any development of knowledge or expansion of technical acuity, certainly is difficult to dismiss in light of deception, deprivation, and death at the hand of experts. In any event, we can anticipate some elements of a CBPR definition with the insistence that increased community education, capacitation, and involvement must, for the sake of its viability if for no other reason, accompany 21st century science. Without these elements of vital citizen involvement, as Schick noted above, science will suffer and could cease to exist as the guiding force for public decision-making.
To say the least, Theocharis' and others' lack of recognition of the obvious missteps of science, in spite of all its triumphs, is an issue that works against trust. What explains this? The standard account of morons and wing nuts and idiots may have some truth to it; American public schools are among the worst in the 'developed' world, after all. But as we will see in the upcoming section, other explanations are also plausible.
THE 'GREAT EVASION' REDUX
Inasmuch as Theocharis' insistence that we develop a 'science of society' or Schick's demand that we increase science education has come to pass, our efforts in the USA have revolved around individuals--either figuring out what motivates single actors or focusing on the failing of individual schools and districts and such. An entirely different paradigm of science--whether of understanding society or any other sort--is possible. Radical, often socialist or Marxist, critics have accounted for the struggles over science in ways that meet Schick's measuring stick--they are "simpl(er)," have a wider "scope," and are much more likely to "fruit(fully)" anticipate how skirmishes over science continue to manifest themselves among us.
Such critics often issue ethical or equitable challenges to the present system that imply a need for us to create more democratic forms of debate and policy formulation. Steve Wing has penned an influential essay about such matters. "Objectivity and Ethics in Environmental Health Science" focuses on his experience as an expert witness for litigants in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island meltdown. He provides a technical and yet still accessible breakdown of how "normative science" goes about producing results in cases of conflict, essentially concluding that, in the hands of established technicians, chance becomes both a force of nature and a tool for analysis that precludes conclusions that might otherwise powerfully suggest statistical significance.
Though this serves corporate interests, it is anti-scientific. He writes,
Conflicts over responsibility for damage to health and the environment are increasingly common. They often involve disputes between actors, such as industries and governments, with the ability to make large impacts as well as sponsor research on those impacts, and communities that are most directly affected but which have little political power or capacity to conduct research to document their exposures or health conditions (Wing 2002). Affected communities may experience these situations as examples of environmental injustice. Many rural people living near TMI had modest levels of formal schooling and little experience in being assertive with government and industry officials. Those that spoke out about their experiences of physical problems from the accident endured ridicule.
This dismissive attitude, in conjunction with absolute control of research parameters, hardly seems redolent of objectivity.
Wing goes on to describe a vibrant Pennsylvania citizen response.
The Aamodts were able to influence the TMI Public Health Fund’s sponsored research on physical impacts of the accident by initiating their own survey, researching government records, and petitioning the NRC. Other residents who lived within the 10-mile area also conducted surveys, constructed disease maps, and documented damage to plants and animals (Osborn, 1996; Three Mile Island Alert 1999). However, when health studies were undertaken through official channels, citizens who believed they had been affected by accident emissions and their supporters were not included in the framing of questions, study design, analysis, interpretation or communication of results. The studies themselves were funded by the nuclear industry and conducted under court-ordered constraints, and a priori assumptions precluded interpretation of observations as support for the hypothesis under investigation.
Despite their persistence and perspicacity, however, these community initiatives never received a hearing. Such practice, which represents the SOP of contemporary science policy and conflict, in the view of growing numbers of ethicists, public health scholars, and environmental health experts, is not scientific, ethical, or just.
Two Richards, Levins and Lewontin, have for decades assailed corporate science's prerogatives from the relative safety of tenured Harvard positions. Their work both generalizes the more particular points of a Steven Wing and provides a theoretical framework--of class and political economy--to explain why matters so often come to their present, pugilistic face-off. A British reviewer of their most recent volume, Biology Under the Influence, in Summer 2008 capsulized their most recent work together as follows:
Apologists for capitalism love those scientists who claim that the inequalities, competition and conflict inherent in the capitalist system are the inevitable consequence of "human nature" and of biologically determined inequalities between people.
Those apologists will not like this book, subtitled Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture and Health. ... Lewontin and Levins are ... explicitly Marxists(who) show that a dialectical approach can and must be applied to science as a whole. ... The authors show the necessity of applying a dialectical materialist method in science if we want to gain a full understanding of the world. They argue for "a dialectical emphasis on wholeness, connection and context, change, historicity, contradiction, irregularity, asymmetry, and the multiplicity of levels of phenomena, as a refreshing counterweight to the prevailing reductionism".
This dialectical approach is reflected in the essays in this book, which cover a wide range of topics, including the relationship between disease and capitalism; the ecological threat posed by capitalism; the complex intermeshing of the biological and the social; the relationship between the natural and social sciences; the interaction between the organism and its environment; the falseness of the view of the brain as a computer; and the uses and misuses of statistics.
For Lewontin and Levins, science under capitalism has a dual nature. On the one hand it has added to our understanding of the world. But on the other hand, "as a product of human activity, science reflects the conditions of its production and the viewpoints of its producers and owners."
Whatever trepidations about 'Marxism' that readers might harbor, they will definitely find interpretive models and empirical demonstration in this volume that acts as a counterpoint to the reifying emphasis on a conflict of ideas that characterize standard assessments of the 'science wars.'
In a similar vein, the efforts of Harry Braverman, also help make sense of present problems concerning technical policy and technological choices. His Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century makes a powerful argument for the inherently political aspects of all technical directives and developments. Copious other radical and Marxist critics emphasize such categories as equity and ethics and community and political-economy and more in developing materialist and scientific explanations for science's problems. Given the common sense strength of such critiques, one may well wonder, "Why are they so seldom in evidence, to balance viewpoints of 'battling ideas' or the adherence to what Theocharis calls "naive instrumentalism among scientists and technicians themselves?"
The Great Evasion, an extended essay by William Appleman Williams, criticizes America's foreign policy and domestic exceptionalism and argues for the necessity of incorporating such critiques into any productive dialog about a sustainable future. His opening lines are resonant on such a day as this.
America's great evasion lies in its manipulations of Nature to avoid a confrontation with the human condition and with the challenge of building a true community.
As a poet whose perception was not wholly blurred by his underlying approval of this massive deception, Frederick jackson Turner understood that his countrymen defined Nature as the frontier and viewed the frontier as a 'gate of escape from the bondage of the past.' This has been true, not only in the obvious sense of conquering and managing(and often wasting)the resources of a continent initially occupied by weaker societies, but also in the more fundamental sense of evading the demands of living closely and responsibly and creatively with other human beings. Nature offered, and Americans seized, a way of becoming a world unto themselves.
Perhaps the seeker can find some semblance of direction in Williams' evocative introductory remarks. Perhaps we should pay attention to the purpose of the book, which the author expresses succinctly in his sub-title: An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of Karl Marx and on the wisdom of Admitting the Heretic into the Dialogue about America's Future. Today, 45 years after its publication, The Great Evasion calls to us as we face multiple conflicts on multiple fronts that necessitate a conjunction of objectivity and honesty, on the one hand, with openness to innovative input on the other hand.
CBPR: COMMUNITIES, CAPACITATION, ACTION, AND DIALOG
Europeans generally have no problem including Marx in the conversation about what we've got to do to survive. From Spain to the Baltic States, from Sweden to Greece, nation after nation has found ways to expand the discussion of social policy--which in the modern world means scientific approaches to solving any of our problems--by including diverse communities and perspectives that, overwhelmingly, the United States still sees fit to exclude. In this view, science's resuscitation requires the community integration that William Appleman Williams so poetically implies and that progressive democracies are carrying out.
As already mentioned above, one name for such approaches is Community Based Participatory Research. A more thorough definition of CBPR is now possible. First, an important component of CBPR is the Science, Technology, and Society movement, especially at the university level. Therefore, a few words concerning it initiate our discussion of CBPR.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, following the lead of English and other European universities, has led the way in American science studies, exploring many avenues to raise awareness of social, political, and economic relationships with science and technology, and laying the basis for community involvement and empowerment in the process. MIT's 'Open Courseware' website and hundreds of other highly competent sources are available to back up the conceptual end of what underlies CBPR.
Founded in 1976, the Program in Science, Technology, and Society attempts to increase human understanding of the human-built world.
Science and technology are no longer specialized enterprises confined to factories and laboratories: they have become intertwined with each other and with human society. The fundamental contribution of STS is to look at the human-built world as an integrated whole. Two basic, interrelated questions are addressed by faculty and students in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society:
* How did science and technology evolve as human activities?
* How do they relate to the larger civilization?
The STS perspective has become of critical importance in understanding a host of public issues such as privacy, democracy, environment, medicine, education, and national and global security.
Beginning in 1988, the STS Program, in collaboration with the History Faculty and Anthropology Program, created a doctoral program in the History and Social Study of Science and Technology (HSSST). While many HSSST graduates teach at universities, others bring an STS perspective to law, business, journalism, and museum work. An undergraduate program in STS has existed since 1980. It typically attracts students with broad interests who seek an interdisciplinary approach to education and who want to learn how scientists and engineers influence the world.
More specifically in regard to CBPR, here is how Gwen Collman presented the idea in Environmental Health Perspectives three years ago. For her, the key is to recognize that all research about health consequences has a social dimension.
This awareness of the social determinants or dimension of diseases may be the result of a new and better understanding of the etiology of diseases. Understanding disease in contemporary human populations requires in-depth analysis and understanding of the role of social factors. The most complete picture may be obtained by understanding the relevant social forces as much as possible, and linking this knowledge to the biology of disease processes.
Because social factors or forces can vary tremendously among and within cultures and societies, obtaining detailed and authentic information of particular social forces may be facilitated through partnerships with community members. Such research requires the involvement of communities at multiple levels--not only to obtain better understanding of the concerns and issues of the communities but also to promote change by involving members of communities who live in these areas and are affected by these processes.
Here is another EHP extract that will guide readers with an interest in this subject, whether that interest is open-ended or merely connected with a desire to criticize the approach. It emanates from a multi-author article entitled, "Community-Based Participatory Research: Lessons Learned from the Centers for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research."
Definition of CBPR and community. Within the field of public health, a number of partnership approaches to research have been called variously community-centered or community-based participatory/involved/collaborative research [for a review, see Israel et al. (1998)]. In addition, there is a large social science literature that has examined research approaches in which participants are actively involved in the process (e.g., Heron and Reason 2001; Jason et al. 2004; Kemmis and McTaggart 2000).
CBPR in public health is a partnership approach to research that equitably involves, for example, community members, organizational representatives, and researchers in all aspects of the research process, in which all partners contribute expertise and share decision making and responsibilities (Israel et al. 1998, 2003). The aim of CBPR is to increase knowledge and understanding of a given phenomenon and integrate the knowledge gained with interventions and policy change to improve the health and quality of life of community members (Israel et al. 1998, 2003). Within the context of CBPR, community is defined as a unit of identity. Units of identity refer to membership in, for example, a family, social network, or geographic neighborhood, and are socially created dimensions of identity (Steuart 1993). Community, as a unit of identity, is defined by a sense of identification and emotional connection to other members, common symbol systems, values and norms, shared interests, and commitment to meeting mutual needs (Steuart 1993). Communities of identity may be geographically bounded, for example, a neighborhood, or may be geographically dispersed, sharing a common identity (e.g., ethnic group, gays and lesbians). A city, town, or geographic area may include multiple overlapping communities of identity or may be an aggregate of individuals who do not have a common identity.
Principles of CBPR. Based on an extensive review of the literature, Israel et al. (2003) have identified a list of nine principles or characteristics of CBPR: CBPR recognizes community as a unit of identify; builds on strengths and resources within the community; facilitates a collaborative, equitable partnership in all phases of the research, involving an empowering and power-sharing process that attends to social inequalities; fosters co-learning and capacity building among all partners; integrates and achieves a balance between knowledge generation and intervention for mutual benefit of all partners; focuses on the local relevance of public health problems and ecologic perspectives that recognize and attend to the multiple determinants of health; involves systems development using a cyclical and iterative process; disseminates results to all partners and involves them in the dissemination process; and involves a long-term process and commitment to sustainability. There is no one set of principles that will be applicable for all partnerships; rather, all partnerships need to jointly decide what their core values and guiding principles will be, drawing on those presented here, as appropriate. These principles can be considered to be on a continuum, with those listed here being an ideal goal to strive for (Green et al. 2003; Israel et al. 2003).
Thus far, therefore, readers have seen that sharp battles have for many years afflicted science, both within the academy and in relation to communities and the wider world. Scientists' explanations for these clashes have focused on the intellectual issues. Many cases illustrate a material side to the problems, however, including cases that have involved loss of health, life, property, as well as other damages to individuals and groups at the behest of organizations employing science and technology for profit. Radical and Marxist critics of science and technology have offered down-to-earth, and scientific, hypotheses about the processes and interests that underlie such instances of conflict and, arguably, inequity.
Just above, CBPR has appeared as an approach that might ameliorate such tensions and even bring together citizens and scientists in useful coalition. Such a vision may be a happy one. But how would it work exactly? While literally hundreds, even thousands, of examples exist to provide models for interested folks to examine, today, we will only scrutinize one of these.
In the late 1990's, all of France was abuzz with conflicting opinions and competing concerns about the potential for genetically modified foods, seeds, and agriculture. Such a situation here, at its most democratic, would involve a few Congressional hearings, environmental impact statements, opportunities to publish OpEd articles or otherwise utilize the media, and litigation. At no juncture, short of the jury box, would citizens have a sayso, a guaranteed voice, a seat at the planning table, the chance to ask questions and demand answers, the potential to request information and receive research that addresses those requests, and so on.
In contrast, France implemented a national process of citizen involvement in the decision-making process. At its most bare bones, from this Canadian website, http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/... we find a short precis of the French procedure on this issue.
Summary of the Citizen Panel Report:(June 21, 1998)
The French lay panel of 14 members were chosen randomly by a polling institute using criteria of gender, age, geographic location, socio-professional status, religious beliefs, and political leanings.
This lay panel chose the experts from an available pool, received two training weekends, and steered the conference questioning.
The Citizen Questions:
Health theme:
In terms of the actual state of research, what are the consequences of the consumption of genetically modified organisms for the health of human beings?
Economic theme:
Considering the economic stakes, what are the implications of providing consumer information about GMO's (labelling, etc.)?
Environmental theme:
How can we guarantee ourselves against the proliferation of risks of GMO's on the environment?
Judicial theme:
How will the legislature prevent medium and long-term hypothetical damage that could be caused by GMO's?
Political theme:
Considering the complexity of competing interests, how will the inevitable relationships of force between the different political and economic positions be regulated?
The Citizen Panel Report recommended:
* a ban on "marker" genes which are resistant to antibiotics
* part of the panel favoured a blanket moratorium on GMO's, and part were in favour of an assessment in each specific case.
* requested a clear and secure labelling system
* demanded identification of the products throughout the production and distribution chain
* reinforcement of bio-vigilance and a reform of the structures of GMO's assessment
* more ecological research and government effort to sustain public research
* legislation to determine responsibility in the event of an 'accident'
Response of the French government to the Citizen Conference Recommendations:
Government Decisions July 31, 1998
* assessment in each specific case of GMO's
* authorization given to two new transgenic corns
* a two year moratorium on transgenic plants which cross over with other species (rape, beets)
* reinforcement of bio-vigilance
* identification of the altered product throughout the food distribution chain
* reform of the expert assessment commission
Social Impact
* major media coverage in 60 French newspapers, most TV channels and radio stations
* increased public awareness of the issues and stimulated public debate
* active petition campaign for total moratorium emerged
* Monsanto, Novartis, and Rhone Poulenc, (corporate stakeholders), responded with major adverstising campaigns to influence public opinion
As well as occasionally occurring at the national level, smaller versions of such efforts are common in French cities and communities. The links below offer further data and explanation of this particular instance of a method that is widespread throughout Europe.
http://www.ifpri.org/... article that looks at Europe as a model for Africa.
http://74.125.47.132/... Da Ros and Diahanna Lynch article comparing France's experience with that of the U.S..
http://www.cipast.org/... article providing links to models and examples worldwide of CIPAST, 'Citizen Participation in Science and Technology.
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/... site that contains info about a Food and Biotech Conference in Candada, including a model Citizens Panel.
Da Ros' and Lynch's article, cited above, provides a detailed and yet manageable presentation of the CBPR versus standard-American approach to such matters. The authors recognize various pitfalls with a participatory method--that it might be mere 'window-dressing,' that citizens lack the technical rationality to participate effectively, among others. They conclude that U.S. protocols are more likely to be merely instrumental, while the French, and by extension the European, process is more clearly democratic. The introduction to their paper allows for an apt conclusion to this essay.
One of the core assumptions behind regulation ... is that what we really need is "better" science. By "better" science, we mean science that fully explicates all of the questions raised about the health and safety implications ...(Naturally) the efforts of scientists in many different fields to understand these processes will add to societal understanding, and may lead to better efforts to regulate. But increasingly policymakers have come to recognize that involving the public in regulating GM foods is a critical next step. ...
The notion that more and better science leads to better policy results is an approach to policy where the expert plays the key role; this is sometimes called a "technocratic" mode of decisionmaking. Here, the expert is supposed to speak truth to power, to produce the facts and then let policymakers decide. But both uncertainties as well as the socially constructed nature of science itself undermine the appeal of this approach."
Academics have long recognized the difficulties science faces in addressing questions asked of it by public policy. Alvin Weinberg, the renowned physicist, addressed the relationship between science and society almost three decades ago in his seminal article on "Science and Trans-Science." Weinberg labeled as trans-scientific those questions "which can be asked of science and yet which cannot be answered by science." Trans-scientific questions are of three types: those that are simply too expensive to get answers to; those where the subject matter is too variable to answer according to the natural sciences;" and those where "science is inadequate simply because the issues themselves.. .deal not with what is true but rather with what is valuable."
Funtowicz and Ravetz similarly address what happens when science reaches into the public realm. They identify the emergence of "post-normal science" when decision stakes and system uncertainties are both high. 'The problem situations that involve post-normal science are ones where, typically, facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent." These analyses have pointed out that science is not capable of answering all the questions put to it by public policy, primarily because public policy reflects not only facts, but also values. These scholars contend that science is prepared to answer questions of facts, but not ones of values.
Other analysts have questioned whether science is indeed the objective enterprise that the above portrays it as; that is, whether it is indeed even capable of answering the questions of facts. While the above characterize the distinction between science and trans-science or post-normal science as based on external factors, other accounts look to the work of scientists themselves in drawing these boundaries. "The boundaries of science are ambiguous, flexible, historically changing, contextually variable, internally inconsistent, and sometimes disputed." Scientists try to stake out their own territory in which their competence is not questioned, and juxtapose that to non-scientific intellectual or professional activities. Their interests guide how they present their work to the public. This effort at "boundary work" is the way in which scientists stake out the authority and legitimacy of their work; and this authority is not a permanent feature, but rather "is enacted as people debate (and ultimately decide) where to locate the legitimate jurisdiction over natural facts." In her study of the scientific advisory process in the United States, Sheila Jasanoff found scientific advisory boards produced their science through a process of negotiation—which points to the socially-constructed nature of science—and then gave the result legitimacy through demarcating their scientific work from other non-scientific work."
Thus, rather than seeing science as surrounded by societal influences but separated from them, science is permeated by society. Bruno Latour suggests five aspects to this connectedness: 1) how science keeps the world engaged through equipment, expeditions, surveys, etc.; 2) how science convinces colleagues and scientific institutions; 3) how science engages groups outside of the sciences that are interested in their work (e.g. military); 4) how science affects public representation, media etc., i.e., how much trust do people place in science; 5) scientific content. When science is connected on all these levels, it is more "sturdy," or less uncertain. This offers us a way to conceptualize how science influences and is influenced by society.
Da Ros and Lynch proceed to discuss problems with a participatory approach. They note that France has found ways to address these issues though. If Americans want a democracy that functions, following the advice of Jefferson, perhaps we ought to elevate our ability to participate in policy in such a fashion as Europeans and others are developing. If scientists and those who love knowledge and progress want access to the public purse and science policy that reflects objective reality, in any event, they had best pay attention to what is happening in Europe and seek to import some of this along with wine and cheese.