10.6092/issn.2038-3460/16936
The role of experts and their competencies in contemporary society are at the core of current debates in democratising technological cultures and establishing innovative forms of responsible dialogue within society. This section offers a reworking of the materials presented during the seminar hosted by “Giannino Bassetti” Foundation in Milan on May 3, 2010. The first article is part of the keynote speech given by Wiebe Bijker, one of the founding scholars of STS in the European scene. He draws from ethnographic results of his research on the Dutch Health Council and the risk governance of nanotechnologies. Two comments follow. The first one, by Paolo Volonté, focuses on the relationship between democracy and scientific knowledge, as well as the subtle ambivalence of democratisation starting from the intrinsic undemocratic character of scientific authority. The second comment by Cristina Grasseni emphasises the implications of a committed engagement of citizens in shaping forms of responsible innovation, when taking the science governance seriously.
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Cristina Grasseni
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
nanotechnologies
Technoscientific Dialogues. Expertise, Democracy and Technological Cultures
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Debates
2011-01-07
2023-05-11
2011-01-07
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121-140
TS
Cristina Grasseni
2010
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/16936
121
Università di Bergamo e Fondazione “Giannino Bassetti”
2038-3460
2
nanotechnologies
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140
Technoscientific Dialogues. Expertise, Democracy and Technological Cultures
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1
                                                                            Debates
Technoscientific Dialogues
Expertise, Democracy and Technological Cultures


Wiebe E. Bijker, Paolo Volonté and Cristina Grasseni



      Abstract The role of experts and their competencies in contemporary society
      are at the core of current debates in democratising technological cultures and es-
      tablishing innovative forms of responsible dialogue within society. This section of-
      fers a reworking of the materials presented during the seminar hosted by “Gian-
      nino Bassetti” Foundation in Milan on May 3, 2010. The first article is part of the
      keynote speech given by Wiebe Bijker, one of the founding scholars of STS in the
      European scene. He draws from ethnographic results of his research on the Dutch
      Health Council and the risk governance of nanotechnologies. Two comments fol-
      low. The first one, by Paolo Volonté, focuses on the relationship between democ-
      racy and scientific knowledge, as well as the subtle ambivalence of democratisation
      starting from the intrinsic undemocratic character of scientific authority. The se-
      cond comment by Cristina Grasseni emphasises the implications of a committed
      engagement of citizens in shaping forms of responsible innovation, when taking the
      science governance seriously.

      Keywords expertise, democracy, technological cultures, responsible innovation,
      nanotechnologies




Different Forms of Expertise in Democratis-
ing Technological Cultures
Experiences from the current Societal Dialogue on Nan-
otechnologies in the Netherlands

Wiebe E. Bijker


    We live in technological culture. That is my one-line summary of the opportuni-
ty and the problem of the world we live in. It has a message to my colleagues in the



TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Volume 1(2) pp. 121-140 - ISSN 2038-3460
http://www.tecnoscienza.net                       © 2010 TECNOSCIENZA
122   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI



      social sciences and it has a message to my colleagues in engineering and the natural
      sciences. I am trained as an engineer, as a physicist. I now have a chair in sociology.
      So I have some obligation to talk to both worlds1.
          To my social science colleagues I say, “Don’t think that you can ever under-
      stand our current society if you do not take into account the role of science and
      technology”. I would go as far as making the claim that you can’t understand mod-
      ern poetry if you don’t understand the role of science and technology in the way
      metaphors are shaped. You can’t understand modern classical music and you can’t
      understand pop music, if you do not understand the technology: not only the
      technology on stage but also the digital technology that creates music. And, then,
      of course, the web-based iTunes distribution. And then the mirror image: engi-
      neers and scientists, don’t think that you can ever create innovations that work if
      you don’t think of how they are embedded in society, if you don’t think about the
      social, cultural, economic variables around that technoscientific innovation.
          Now, based on that diagnosis of our current society, my main question, the
      main question of the book (Bjjker, Bal and Hendriks 2009) is: how can we democ-
      ratize that technological culture? How can we do that by building on the insights
      of STS, the sociology of scientific knowledge, the social construction of technolo-
      gy, boundary work? In one line, is there still a place for scientific advice in our
      technological culture?
          Sociology of scientific knowledge has been arguing now almost 30 years that
      scientific knowledge is socially constructed. Scientific knowledge is not discovered
      literally by taking away the cover, by peeping through the hole and seeing the facts
      laying down there. It’s not like that. It’s very much a social process, and in that so-
      cial process, scientific knowledge is created. The implication is that there is no a
      priori special status for scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is socially creat-
      ed like religious knowledge is socially created or legal knowledge is socially creat-
      ed. Why bother specifically about scientific knowledge? Social construction of
      technology makes a very similar argument. The working of a machine is the result
      of a social process. It’s not something that is dictated by nature, by economic laws,
      by physics laws. No. Some technologies work in certain social contexts. They don’t
      work in other social contexts. So, machines do not have their own intrinsic worka-
      bility. They’re made to work by a particular social context. Now, these two state-
      ments have been read erroneously: that technoscience doesn’t need any special at-
      tention. Technology is socially constructed. Scientific knowledge, religious
      knowledge, experiential knowledge – these are all socially constructed, so why
      bother about science and engineering? So that is the kind of agenda that is set by
      the very successful early work of STS. I very much believe in that work, but the



          Tecnoscienza wishes to thank the Fondazione Giannino Bassetti for making the materials of
      the seminar available and the collaboration and support.
         1
             I am grateful to Giuseppina Pellegrino for her help in changing the presentation into a paper.
                                                              TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)        123



implication that scientific and engineering expertise is unimportant, that’s a com-
pletely wrong implication. I want to argue why specifically scientific and techno-
logical expertise are important, and make that argument by building on the con-
structivist view of knowledge.


1. Case-study: The Health Council of the Netherlands
    Now, my case study: the Health Council of the Netherlands. This advisory body
in the Netherlands is a strategic research site for this kind of research. It’s a gold
mine if you’re interested in the type of questions that I just outlined. The Health
Council is very much at the crossroads of science and policy; at the crossroads of
the general public and the politicians; at the crossroads of medical, scientific and
technical professions. It’s at all those crossroads. Moreover, it’s a highly respected
body. When the Council celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 2002, the Queen
was there to receive a copy of the Dutch version of our book. The Dutch Queen
only shows up if it’s really important, so this testifies of the importance of the
Health Council and of its status in the Netherlands.
    But was this not a weird occasion? I actually asked Her Majesty whether we
weren’t at the wrong celebration. Shouldn’t we be burying that old dinosaur of the
Health Council? How could we think that something that was created 100 years
ago is still working well? Think of how the world changed in the last century! And
we still listen to that advisory body? That by itself is a small paradox.
    Now, the bigger paradox is that we live in this technological culture (a world
that is permeated by science and technology), but at the same time observe that the
authority of scientists, engineers, medical doctors has gone down. If there is scien-
tific report presented to Dutch Parliament, within 24 hours there will be some
random member of Parliament who says, “oh, well, it’s just one opinion; let’s ask
for another opinion”. The recent debate about the International Panel on Climate
Change is another indication of the erosion of scientific authority: the finding of
small errors (and I don’t want to diminish the importance of avoiding errors) too
easily was taken to undercut the whole scientific body that supports climate change
thinking. So, this big paradox generates the following important political question:
how to have authoritative scientific advice in this technoscientific culture in which
scientific authority is generally eroding? And that is why the Health Council is
such a strategic research site, because they have to work around that paradox in
every advice they give.
    I now want briefly, more or less as a footnote, explain how we designed the
project. The original question that we were asked when granted this project, was to
measure what the societal impact of the Health Council is. I’m sure that they were
hoping to get graphs of influence, nice pie charts that would map in a quantitative
sense the impact of the Health Council on Dutch politics, on Dutch society. We, to
be honest, didn’t really believe that something like that would come out of it. But
we said “okay, let’s try that”. We made a nice design. We were quite proud of the
kind of properly scientific design: a comparison of five successful advisory reports
124   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI



      and five failed advisory reports. They liked that. Then we asked the scientific staff
      of the Health Council to identify for us those case studies. (There are about 40 sci-
      entific researchers in the Health Council’s secretariat; all with a PhD). We asked
      them to list the three most successful scientific reports, and the three biggest fail-
      ures. Almost all of them responded. And then, exactly as we had expected (if I’m
      naughty, I would say hoped) did happen. Some of these advisory reports were
      listed as extremely successful by some staff, and as utter failures by others. So, evi-
      dently even amongst the staff of the Health Council itself, there was no agreement
      about how to measure the size of the success and impact of the Council. Some
      would place something completely on the success side and others would place the
      same advice on the failure side of the measuring scale. Now that is exactly what
      we, in a way, had hoped for in order to argue that a quantitative approach would
      not work. Instead, we proposed, let’s try to understand in what way success is cre-
      ated, or in what way failure results from social processes. So we used our failure to
      produce a quantitative project design, to argue for a more ethnographic design.
      The leadership of the Health Council was perhaps not completely happy with this
      plan, but they did not see an alternative. (Now, by the way, they are very happy
      with the results). This is how we turned the quantitative study into an ethnograph-
      ic study.
          Very briefly then, about the Health Council of the Netherlands. Officially, in
      the law, it is specified that the Council’s task is to advise the Dutch government on
      the state of scientific knowledge concerning public health. Public health is taken
      quite broadly: from ecology to medical equipment. The Health Council was estab-
      lished in 1902. It works mainly through a committee process: for every specific sci-
      entific advice one committee is formed from professors from Dutch universities,
      sometimes from foreign universities. The Health Council is, as I already men-
      tioned, highly respected, also internationally.
          The rest of my contribution will be in three parts. First a summary of our theory
      of scientific advising. Then a closer look into risk governance as an example of us-
      ing that scientific expertise. And finally an on-going experiment with democracy in
      the Netherlands at this very moment.


      2. A theory of scientific advising
          This theory of scientific advice, then, has three elements: the product of scien-
      tific advising; the work that goes into making that product; and the wider process
      in society in which that advisory product plays a role.
          First about the product of scientific advising, the advisory report. It comes as a
      nicely produced book, and you can download it from the Council’s website. It is
      very much a front stage thing. It is public and they are proud of it. And it’s very
      scientific. But it’s not scientific in the same way as a scientific article, reporting on
      laboratory work. It is, with a term coined by Sheila Jasanoff, a kind of scientific
      work that offers not just truth but a kind of “serviceable truth”. It is truth that is
                                                                         TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)           125



specifically meant to serve policymaking, to serve political discussions. It is service-
able to that external, non-scientific goal. That’s front stage2.
   Backstage the world is completely different. There, the scientists, the staff of the
Health Council, know that they have to juggle many more variables than only a
narrow textbook form of science. They know that they have to engage in what
Tom Gieryn (1999) and David Guston (2001) have called “boundary work”. They
used the term ‘boundary work’ to talk about the boundary between science and
policy. We add several extra dimensions to the original boundary work. One addi-
tion is a social dimension. While in the original usage, “boundary work” is rhetori-
cal (it is about text and how you use certain vocabularies), for us boundary work
also involves social engineering, inviting people, excluding other people, setting up
certain institutions, changing institutions. The next step is to recognize that it is
not only about drawing a boundary and separating, for example, policy from sci-
ence. After drawing the boundary, it’s also about reconnecting the two, but recon-
necting them in new ways, organizing the interaction between the two. Hence we
are using the term “coordination mechanism”, rather than boundary mechanism”.
We identified a series of coordination mechanisms in the work of the Health
Council.
   Third step in the theory: to relate the (backstage) advisory work and the (front
stage) advisory product to the wider process of democracy. The question is how to
position that scientific advice in the larger framework of democracy of technologi-
cal cultures. I will illustrate this with the case of risk governance of nanotechnolo-
gies.


3. Risk governance of nanotechnologies
   Before going into the example, I want to make a step back and broaden the
agenda by picturing the debate about nanotechnologies in a wider discourse on the
vulnerability of our modern societies. I’m doing that to re-shape the agenda of risk
studies a little bit, to widen the scope of those issues. I want to make two points
about the vulnerability.
   The first point is that vulnerability is very much a characteristic of these techno-
logical cultures that I’m continuously talking about. In two ways. On the one hand
vulnerability is often caused by science and technology or at least mediated by sci-


    2
      Very briefly on the distinction front-stage/back-stage. Think of a restaurant: the menu and
the plate, those are front stage. That is publicly on display. In most cases, you do not want to see
what is happening backstage...! But of course, the front stage meal wouldn’t come if there was
no backstage work. So the backstage is crucial to produce the front stage. But there is a distinc-
tion; there is a door at least. So if we want to understand how these reports appear front stage,
we have to move backstage. If we want to understand the cooking, the work, then we have to go
backstage.
126   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI



      ence and technology. (Of course, hurricanes are not science and technology. But
      the dikes that we build to create an illusion of safety in New Orleans are technolo-
      gy; and the illusion of having firm forecasted knowledge about where the hurricane
      lands and how strong it is, derives from science). On the second hand, we typically
      use science and technology to defend ourselves against these new vulnerabilities.
      (We build higher dikes. We develop better meteorological programs to forecast
      hurricanes. We use sophisticated econometric statistics to help insurance compa-
      nies not go bankrupt when risky areas are flooded). Whatever way you look at it,
      vulnerability is a key characteristic of modern societies.
          The second point is that vulnerability is inevitable. It would indeed be foolish
      to think of a society that would not be vulnerable. Try to imagine a world that is
      completely non-vulnerable. That must be worse than the worst Stalinist dictator-
      ship. It’s a world where nothing can change, where no learning happens, where no
      development is possible. All development and learning involves risk, inevitably. So
      if you want to live in a developing society, where we have innovation, where we
      improve things, then we should also allow for some mistakes, some vulnerability.
      So, vulnerability is inevitable as an unintended consequence of science and tech-
      nology. And I will go one step further. Vulnerability is a prerequisite for modern
      societies. If we don’t allow for some vulnerability, we don’t allow ourselves to learn
      and to develop and to change society. So that is why, for me, vulnerability is such a
      key issue now.
          Now, with that in mind, let’s briefly stop to make a footnote about risk. The
      one-sentence summary of my point is: risk is more than a number. Risk is more
      than only a quantitative analysis of effect and chance. Risk depends on how you
      define problem situation. Perceptions also vary a lot. People living next to an in-
      dustrial plant, and also being employed by that plant, do assess the risks of that
      plant lower than those not employed by the plant. Risks are value-laden. They are
      not independent. If you’re really a mobile person and you like to live in an individ-
      ual way, you will perceive the risk of car driving as being smaller than if you have a
      different style of mobility and prefer the train.
          If risk is more than a number, then the idea that we just would need to better
      communicate risks to the citizens is not enough. We really should try to think of
      new democratic ways of governing risks. The implicit assumption behind ‘risk
      communication’ is often that we, the scientists, know the risks and they, the citi-
      zens, don’t. Basically those citizens are stupid; if they would just better under-
      stand, the whole problem would be solved. Now, my argument is that it’s not that
      easy: because of the value-leadenness, because of the context dependence, because
      of the different perceptions. It’s not just a matter of getting the numbers across. So
      we need much more two-directional communication, and new forms of democracy
      to deal with risks. That ends the footnote.
          Now I’ll get to the risk governance example of nanotechnology. The core idea is
      to identify different risk situations and then try to be specific for every risk situa-
      tion: a specific approach for each risk situation. Depending on the risk situation
      then, other experts, action groups, stakeholders, and citizens will be invited to par-
                                                                TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)        127



ticipate, and at the end of the story there is a whole array of policy instruments that
can be called upon for each situation.
    Nanotechnologies are everything that happens on a scale of 1 to 100 nanome-
ters, 10-9. There are two ways of understanding it. There is the top-down move-
ment in nanotechnology: making things smaller and smaller. The transistor, then
the integrated circuit, and then still smaller and smaller. That’s one way to get to
nanoscale. The other way is to get up from the molecular level using clever instru-
ments to combine molecules and build nanostructures like that. The current state
is that there are very high expectations. There are a few but increasing number of
applications. If you use a sun lotion, it probably contains nanotechnology prod-
ucts. All our car tires contain nano particles to strengthen the rubber. It is very dif-
ficult to find a field in the scientific and technological world that is not touched by
nanotechnologies.
    Now, the question is, some people say, “well, it’s nothing new, it’s just small; all
our existing rules and regulations should work”. Others say, “no, there is some-
thing fundamentally new going on, and we need a completely new style of govern-
ing this technoscience, these innovations”. You’ll see that the Health Council ad-
vice is in the middle position here. Why is this so important? It is important be-
cause nanotechnologies promise huge benefits and at the same time seem to create
new risks. One beneficial example would be a nanotechnological drug delivery sys-
tems that would deliver chemotherapy exactly at the cancer place and not all over
the body; then you wouldn’t have all the awful side effects that we now have with
chemotherapy. An example of a risk is the toxicity of synthetic nano particles. The-
se risks we do not completely understand yet. And thus it is unclear to what extent
the current regulations for chemicals, for example are applicable, or that we should
conceive of completely new rules and regulations. The option of completely stop-
ping - a moratorium on nanotechnologies - is not acceptable either, because of the
promising benefits. So here is the true democratic problem. I will argue to not
leave it completely to the experts, but also I do want input from the experts.
    When the bad effects and the benefits of a new technological development have
become clear, then quite often the development has gone so far, that it is difficult
to change its course and steer that technoscientific development. On the other
hand, at the moment we can still easily steer the development, we don’t know the
benefits and the risk. This is called the Collingridge dilemma. Do we wait until the
problems surface, but then we might not be able to regulate and to steer; or do we
now steer, but then we do not really know what we are doing. That dilemma is an-
other fundamental dilemma in governing risks and benefits of new technologies
like nanotechnologies.
    We distinguish four risk situations. (1) Simple risk situations are situations
where scientific evidence is completely clear. In the case of nanotechnology an ex-
ample are the degradable nano particles. Another example would be asbestos or
radioactive radiation. So ‘simple’ does not mean that it cannot kill you. But it
means that scientific knowledge is quite certain and complete, and it thus is possi-
ble to design regulations and safety measures. You know exactly, for example, how
much lead you have to hold between the X-ray equipment and the nurses that
128   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI



      handle the equipment. (2) Complex problems. We’re still talking about a world
      where scientific knowledge is pretty complete, but the problem now is so complex
      that scientific knowledge isn’t quite enough to formulate a policy. An example is
      the way that nanotechnologies would affect sustainable development. There is a lot
      of knowledge about how, for example, biotechnological developments influence
      food processing and agriculture. But how everything hangs together with interna-
      tional trade, social reform, financing schemes to possibly produce a more sustaina-
      ble agriculture: that is so complex a problem that it cannot be solved as a straight-
      forward scientific puzzle. (3) Uncertain problems are radically different. That is the
      kind of problem where scientific knowledge is not complete and not certain
      enough. An example is the following. We all learned in chemistry class that gold
      and silver are inert and thus do not react with other chemicals. They are not toxic
      and we wear them as jewelry. At a nano scale, gold and silver suddenly seem to
      turn highly toxic. Now that’s worrying. There is solid scientific evidence that there
      is a problem with nanoparticles of gold and silver. But the scientific evidence it not
      complete yet. There is no complete understanding of nanotoxicity, as it is called.
      This thus is a different class of problems: we know that there is a risk, but we don’t
      understand it as well as the risks of radioactive radiation or asbestos. (4) Ambigu-
      ous problems are yet of a different character. In the nanotoxicity case we at least
      know in which direction we want our society to move: towards a world without
      toxic materials, to put it briefly. In ambiguous risk situations we do not even know
      that. The nanotechnology example here is a memory chip implanted in my brain.
      This would help me to memorize the big family that my wife has, and better sur-
      vive birthday parties and funerals where I meet all those uncles and aunts. But I
      suppose that in Italy as much as in the Netherlands there are fundamentalist Chris-
      tian groups who would consider this as tinkering with God’s creation and as the
      last thing that they would want our society to move to. Ambiguous risks thus are
      about situations where not only the scientific knowledge is uncertain, but where it
      is also unclear in which direction we want society to move to. There is disagree-
      ment about the fundamental values and aims for policy in society.
          The next step - but I will not discuss this in detail - is that for each of those four
      risk situations we can specify a different style of risk governance. Also there is a
      different sector of people to be invited into the process of deliberation about these
      risks. (1) In the case of simple problems, regular university scientists are all we
      need. There is no reason to bother other people to take a vote on 2 + 2 = 4. I don’t
      want lay persons to meddle around with the toxicity of asbestos. I trust scientists to
      do a proper job on defining the rules and regulations for the toxicity of small parti-
      cles of asbestos. (2) In the case of complex risk situations, it is still a completely
      scientific issue. But it’s important to recognize now that science is not neutral, that
      also scientific knowledge depends on the perspective that scientists have. So here it
      is important to also invite scientists from the pharmaceutical industry, from
      Greenpeace, from stakeholders and action groups. (3) For uncertain risk situations
      we really need something more. By definition, these are risk situations in which
      scientists do not know enough. So we need stakeholders to sit at the table and par-
      ticipate in the deliberations. In that way the balancing of economic, health, ecolog-
                                                               TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)        129



ical and other kinds of values can weigh into the negotiations and decision making.
(4) In ambiguous risk situations, there is no other way than also to include the citi-
zens. Here is at stake the direction in which we want our society to move. There is
no escape of thinking of ways of involving citizens. But it is difficult, and that is
what the final section will be about.
    The big question is now: who decides about the characterization of a problem
into one or the other category? Do nanoparticles pose a simple or uncertain risk
situation? The answer is that this needs to be settled by a broad monitoring com-
mittee. This broad committee will include university scientists, scientists of specific
organizations, stakeholders, and representatives of the general public. This com-
mittee then will do something like a triage of problems. If a problem is, for exam-
ple, characterized as simple, it can be given to a purely scientific advisory council.
If a problem is complex, in the Netherlands we give it to a ‘sector council’ that also
has scientists from industrial agents. In some cases you really need a public debate
of some sort. The next and final section will discuss one such example that we cur-
rently are carrying out in the Netherlands.


4. Experiment with democracy: societal dialogue on nanotechnol-
ogies in the Netherlands
   We started a year ago with this societal dialogue on nanotechnologies, and it
will be finished by March 2011. The government decided on this dialogue by fol-
lowing the advice by the Health Council and two other bodies in the Netherlands.
The organizing committee, of which I am the vice-chair, is made completely inde-
pendent of the government. That is because we have some experience with previ-
ous public debates in the Netherlands. Especially in the case of genetic modifica-
tion the public got suspicious that the government was not intend to listen but only
wanted to use the debate as a kind of lubricant to push already made decisions
through society. With this experience in mind, both the government and we as
committee wanted to make sure that the public debate was as clearly as possible
separate from the government. The flipside is that the government is not commit-
ted to immediately do what we conclude from the debate. That’s the price that we
pay. But I’m happy to pay that price.
   Our agenda is really open in the sense that as a committee we don’t have an
opinion on what we want out of this. So what we do? We then were immediately
confronted with that fundamental problem that you can only have a dialogue once
you understand what you’re talking about. Very few people know about nanotech-
nology in the Netherlands, so we first have to do a lot of information giving. That
needs to be followed by awareness raising so that people understand not only what
nanotechnology is about, but also can recognize problems and promises, risks and
benefits—that there is actually something to debate and something to think about
and engage with. And then finally a dialogue can follow. The outcome of all those
projects of information giving, awareness raising, and dialogue are collected by our
130   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI



      committee and translated into a societal agenda on nanotechnology. We will pre-
      sent this to the government in the last week of January 2011.
          The committee had 4.5 million euros, which we used to create a plurality of
      perspectives and voices. We made a preliminary list of issues that we thought
      would need to be discussed. This was done on the basis of a stakeholder consulta-
      tion of action groups and industry scientists who already know about nanotech-
      nology. Then we issued an open call for proposals, and anyone - individuals, action
      groups, churches, institutions, university departments, industry, labor unions -
      could submit proposals to do a project of information, awareness building or dia-
      logue. One project had a maximum budget of 130,000 euros. We received about
      twice as many proposals as we could fund, and we selected as transparent as possi-
      ble a series of projects that together cover all three stages of the process. So, as a
      committee we are not the authors of the information; we do not set the problems
      for awareness; we do not control the agenda of the dialogue.
          There have been books written, TV programs broadcasted, exhibitions dis-
      played in libraries, hospitals and museums. A bus travels around the country with
      nanotechnology experiments that will allow people to tinker with nanotechnology.
      If we see information that we think is really wrong, then we’ll ask another expert to
      provide her expertise to contrast the evidence that we thought was a bit fishy. So
      we do try to orchestrate, but we do not control. Same applies to awareness. One
      example of a project is “nano in the baby room”. It will be a virtual project with a
      baby room and you can point to particular aspects of the furniture or food or toys,
      and ask how much nanotechnology is in there now, how much might there be in
      the future, and what could be the benefits and the risk. There will be theater plays
      and artistic productions to create different kinds of perspectives and stimulate
      awareness. We have no idea what will come out of it, but we figured that using
      such different vocabularies and styles of thinking might help the general dialogue.
      Philosophers write vignettes and scenarios that in two pages take one particular
      problem and then describe how nanotechnology might play out in both positive
      and negative ways. These vignettes and scenarios are used by other projects too. A
      school project started with laboratory experiments and school class lessons, and
      finishes with a debate with CEOs of industry and politicians of the provincial gov-
      ernment. There will be web debates, science cafes. One project of Protestant
      Christians discusses the potential of human enhancement: is this tinkering with or
      improving upon God’s creation? They are planning to liaise with Islam scientists
      and try to compare an Islamic perspective and a Christian perspective on the ethi-
      cal dimensions of nanotechnology. And there is one project that explicitly relates
      to international relations and the role that nanotechnology may play both on the
      weapon side and on the reconnaissance and peace enhancement side.
          To conclude. The most fundamental point is the issue of expertise and democ-
      racy: we need to balance a variety of knowledges in our society, scientific
      knowledge but also other kinds such as users’ knowledge or patients’ knowledge.
      The theory that I have outlined helps to do that balancing act, by showing when
      scientific expertise is necessary, and when you need stakeholder expertise to be
      added to that, and when you also need the expertise of citizens. Second, I have ar-
                                                               TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)        131



gued that institutions like the Health Council of the Netherlands and the US
Academy of Sciences are needed to make our technological cultures democratic.
These institutions themselves seem, paradoxically, undemocratic in the sense that
all their deliberations are completely confidential. The Health Council, like the
National Academy of Sciences in America, provides a place for scientists to debate,
to have controversies about how to interpret scientific evidence, and to translate
their knowledge into a serviceable truth, into an advice that may work for politics.
It is crucial that these discussions remain confidential so that there can be a true,
scholarly discussion about what is the political meaning of some scientific evi-
dence. And so that’s all the backstage work. After that, it goes front stage and it
goes out into the public. We think that this will create again some trust in scientific
evidence. Thirdly, on the nanotechnology debate, I just don’t know yet. You can
try your best Dutch by going to this website (http://www.nanopodium.nl). And
finally, the core message is that we need to experiment with our democracy. We
need to do that because the character of our technological culture asks for a new
constitution. All democracies still work with, basically, 19th century constitutions.
We can’t blame Montesquieu that he didn’t think of our nanotechnologies, bio-
technologies and nuclear technologies. So we need to think about developing a
new political constitution to democratically govern our technological cultures.
132   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI



      Democratising Technoscience through Undemocratic
      Spaces

      Paolo Volonté



          Democratization of science is a main topic in the studies of science and tech-
      nology today (Maasen and Weingart 2005; Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons 2001).
      Following the steady process of political democratization and administrative tech-
      nocratization in the last century and the up-to-date increasing case of the commer-
      cialization of science (Mirowski and Sent 2008), the issue of a wider participation
      of people in the decisions regarding funding and design of technoscientific under-
      takings has been risen. At the same time, the old assumption of technological de-
      velopment being a positive goal has been challenged by new social and cultural
      movements. The need of public discussion on some basic issues of technoscience
      has been put forward. Some radical scholars, referring to new ways of knowledge
      construction and diffusion through the web, ask for an open access to all scientific
      assets (Boyle 2007) or for a removal of the enclosure surrounding the scientific and
      academic knowledge commons (Kranich 2007).
          The issue of democratization of science is at the core of Wiebe Bijker’s paper
      and a main topic in his intellectual path. His research on the Dutch Health Council
      (Gezondheidsraad), that is extensively reported in the book of Bijker, Bal and
      Hendriks, The Paradox of Scientific Authority (2009), proves to be a general in-
      quiry in the role of expertise and advice in times of democratizing science. In fact
      the issue of democratization of science is intertwined with the question of the ac-
      tors legitimized to contribute to the technoscientific debate: just scientists and
      technicians, also stakeholders, or the affected groups of citizens?
          In their book Rethinking Expertise Harry Collins and Robert Evans afford the
      same issue raising the question about “how we set boundaries around the legiti-
      mate contribution of the general public to the technical part of technical debates”
      (Collins and Evans 2007, p. 113). The question is here an opposite one in compari-
      son with Kranich’s: how to set boundaries, instead of how to remove them. Collins
      and Evans’ point is that in science only those who know what they are talking
      about should have the right to contribute to technical debates, since a general
      openness to everybody’s opinion would subdue the experts’ view to the view of a
      democratic but ignorant mass. This happens as a matter of fact, state the authors,
      because it is usual that politics influence scientific practice (see Shapin 1979). But
      it doesn’t belong to the legitimate intentions of scientists, who try, on the contrary,
      to reduce the influence of politics on their job: “Social studies of science may have
      shown that politics and other mundane influence are intrinsic to scientific
      knowledge, but, like interpretative ambiguity, they should never be extrinsic” (Col-
      lins and Evans 2007, 126). This is why scientific knowledge practices as a matter of
      fact don’t share the democratic setting that is dominant today in politics.
                                                                TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)        133



    Also from Bijker’s paper arises that technoscience is not and should not be a
democratic process in itself. Bijker states that in technoscientific scenes “you can
only have a dialogue once you understand what you’re talking about”. Technosci-
ence tends to be a closed environment where scientists and technicians develop a
scientific or technological issue trying to exclude laypeople from the debate as far
as they aren’t functional to their purpose. This brings technoscience to take up a
secluded space in society and to wield a big power on political decisions though
eluding a democratic legitimacy. It is a main issue in the production of scientific
and technological knowledge the idea that only those who have expertise can de-
cide what is true and what is false, what is due and what is to be avoided. Bijker’s
paper shows how institutions like the Dutch Health Council try to support this is-
sue with the aim of introducing authoritative scientific expertise in the political
debate. They offer a secluded backstage where scientific experts can construct a
common view, that afterwards is offered to the political debate in the front stage
through an advisory report. The conclusions in Bijker’s paper are, with respect to
this, very clear: the Dutch Health Council is undemocratic in the sense that it
“provides a place for scientists to debate, to have controversies about how to in-
terpret scientific evidence, and to translate their knowledge into a serviceable
truth, into an advice that may work for politics”. Such institutions are helpful inso-
far as they can guarantee the construction of a serviceable scientific knowledge, i.e.
useful for policy planning, without falling under politics control, i.e. without being
subjected to the interests of political parties or lobbies and social groups. That is,
they are helpful insofar as they enable to overcome controversial settings as the one
discussed by Bobbio, Guzzetti and Pellegrini on the last issue of this journal. But
this is only possible insofar as they are not democratized in their practices. A se-
cluded space is anything but democratic. The “third position” that Bijker, Bal and
Hendriks (2009) support against pure democracy and pure technocracy consists
actually in this: to detract a discussion from usual democratic dialectic for a while
and subject it to the technocratic one, which takes place thanks to the exclusion of
laypeople; and to reinsert afterwards the discussion in usual democratic dialectic,
namely when experts have reached a shared knowledge and confidence that can be
showed outside as an authoritative advice. Only through such an undemocratic
space technoscience can serve democracy. This is a sort of paradox, but also a clear
phenomenon that Bijker points out in his paper, a social issue in technoscience: it
is only thanks to an undemocratic process that technoscience can be democratized.
    This is why we still have to consider technoscience as an elitist and authoritari-
an body in Western societies. It includes, as such, some political risks that many
sociologists already emphasized by criticizing technocracy. But the right way to
limit the risks of such a technoscientific elitism, claims Bijker, is not to democratize
it. To democratize scientific procedures would destroy the power of science of
producing reliable knowledge and authoritative advice. On the contrary, the right
way is to democratize the procedures of mediation between “scientific knowledge”
(however it has been produced in the backstage) and political needs; but, at the
same time, to save the intrinsic undemocratic character of the production of scien-
tific knowledge in the backstage.
134   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI



          Evidence of this point is easy to find. The Italian university system is today un-
      der huge critiques. Several social subjects in the political institutions as well as in
      the media reinforce the idea that Italy’s university is inefficient, and that its most
      important weak point is the system of recruitment. I think that this happens be-
      cause of the existence of a democratic clue in the recruitment process. In Italy the
      evaluation committees are elected by all professors of the same discipline. This is
      democracy: people are chosen by a majority, and space is opened up for the rise of
      democratic bodies, of such fundamental tools of democracy as groups organizing
      the people’s vote, i.e. parties. However, parties and lobbies are groups of interests,
      and usually the goals they pursue don’t fit with the goals of scientific research. Sci-
      entific careers are influenced by the “democratic” opinion of the majority, and this
      weakens the framework of scientific knowledge production in a systematic way.
          Through recovering the essential role of expertise and advice Bijker imposes a
      turn in his own theoretical position (Bijker, Bal and Hendriks 2009, pp. 153-154).
      A turn that should be regarded as very important. In the Nineties he worked on
      the idea that we must democratize science and technology involving stakeholders
      and citizens in the decisions that have to do with technology and science. We must
      increase, he thought, public participation in the governance of science. Today he
      keeps the same position, but adding a remark: there is a space in technoscience
      that must be preserved against the influence of citizens and stakeholders. The case
      of the Dutch Health Council demonstrates that scientific advice is more effective
      and useful when it is formed according to the rules of scientific discussion, instead
      of the rules of political discussion or those of civic society discussion.
          I think this turn is very important because it brings us closer to a fundamental
      change in science and technology studies. The mainstream of STS still aims at
      showing that technoscience is something different from the front stage it shows to
      the world outside. A lot of studies are carried out to show that there is a backstage
      in science where scientists act in a very different way as they would admit accord-
      ing to the scientific method. In fact they construct knowledge and artefacts by
      weaving social networks. But the very question is now: why is there a front stage
      and a backstage in science? Why do scientists exclude the possibility for politics
      and society to extrinsically influence their work, while in fact they are influenced
      by them? Usual answers to this question are unsatisfying. They refer to such issues
      as prestige or social distinction, not considering that the differentiation between
      backstage and front stage is not a disguise, but a rule that scientists are ready to
      follow although it brings huge costs for them. The front stage builds an ideal
      (called “method”) that imposes strong constraints on the everyday job of a scien-
      tist. Even in the backstage of the Dutch Health Council world there is a tendency,
      a need to bridge the gap between that ideal and the reality of a discussion in a
      committee with colleagues, stakeholders and other subjects. Now, is it functional
      or dysfunctional to have such a front stage, to have such backstage constraints?
      And following precisely which kind of constraints do scientists and people of the
      Health Council act in this way? And above all, are there – as I suggest – social
      mechanisms underlying these relationships, namely mechanisms that binding scien-
                                                               TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)        135



tific practice to an ideal obtain to give more social reliability to the knowledge sci-
entists claim?
    I suggest that we should try to better understand how scientific knowledge is
constructed thanks to social dynamics, and mainly, how it happens that through
social interactions a peculiar kind of knowledge, that we call scientific, arises. In
other words, we should inquire how it happens that a social sphere devoted to the
production of new knowledge claims and actually mostly tries to follow a number
of behaviour rules (an ideal) that in fact cannot guarantee the achievement of any
real truth, of any true knowledge. And yet it does, and doing it produces an ex-
traordinary growth of useful knowledge over time.
136   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI




      Scientific Authority and Responsible Innovation

      Cristina Grasseni


          On May 3rd, 2010, the Giannino Bassetti Foundation for responsible innova-
      tion had the honour of hosting Professor Wiebe E. Bijker at its Milan headquar-
      ters, within the framework of a course in Policy Research launched by IRER (Isti-
      tuto Regionale di Ricerca della Lombardia). Prof Bijker's work on the relationship
      between technology, society and science has much in common with the issues ad-
      dressed by the Bassetti Foundation, especially regarding political and normative
      issues vis-à-vis societal vulnerability in technological cultures.
          In particular, in his 2009 The Paradox of Scientific Authority, The Role of Sci-
      entific Advice in Democracies, co-authored with Roland Bal and Ruud Hendriks,
      the author tackles the issue of the role of scientific advice in risk governance, and
      the question of how democracy can work in a technological culture.
          The paradox of scientific authority, in general, is its strive to maintain power
      whilst its basis – scientific knowledge – has been deconstructed as an unquestiona-
      ble benchmark for claiming authority. Epistemological constructivism as well as
      the political and economic bias of some forms of scientific advice should under-
      mine scientific authority as a blanket category to which one should demand appar-
      ently neutral deliberation on scientific and technological issues regarding society at
      large. As the authors themselves state, “The cases in which scientific advice is
      asked more urgently are those in which the authority of science is questioned more
      thoroughly” (Bijker, Bal and Hendriks 2009, 1).
          Nevertheless Wiebe Bjjker’s ethnographic insight focuses specifically on the
      success, in the very face of such paradox, of scientific advisory bodies such as the
      Gezondheidsraad (the Health Council of the Netherlands). Elaborating on a nu-
      anced notion of “independence” for governing bodies such as the Gezond-
      heidsraad, Bijker addresses the issue of participation, democracy and representa-
      tion.
          My own questions regard the role of scientific advice in democracy as a possible
      instance of “responsible innovation”. Even more so, since in a previous Bassetti
      Lecture Sheila Jasanoff addressed the political implications of society's image of
      science. In her view, bioethics can be studied anthropologically, as a cultural narra-
      tion with normative effects: “collective knowledge ways constitute a culture's civic
      epistemology: they are distinctive, systematic, often institutionalized, and articulat-
      ed through practice rather than in formal rules”(Jasanoff 2005, 255).
          We can see one such culturally-laden civic epistemology at work in the Nether-
      lands: strictly speaking, the Health Council’s mission is “to inform our ministers
      and the two chambers of Parliament about the state of scientific knowledge on is-
      sues of public health, by means of publishing reports”; “to provide cutting – edge
                                                                      TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)       137



perspectives on hitherto unresolved questions” and to publish advisory reports
that contain policy recommendations (Bijker, Bal, Hendriks 2009, 15). But the
question is: how are technological elites held accountable? What is the best rela-
tion between scientific advice and policy making? Which role can STS play in the
politics of modern societies, built on science and technologies? (Bijker, Bal, Hen-
driks 2009, 2-3). My opinion is that Bijker’s research works convincingly at un-
packing the articulations of institutional power: it shows by description where
power lies and how it acts. In this sense, rather than providing a theory of scientific
advising – as this is stated to be the purpose of the book - it certainly succeeds in
introducing an ‘ethnographic turn’ in studying the democratic governance of tech-
nological culture. By this I mean the fact that it introduces us “behind the scenes”
and, through participant observation, it highlights the distance between theory
(The Gezondheidsraad advises the government on the state of scientific knowledge
but does not meddle with politics) and practice: the Gezondheidsraad exercises
freedom of interpretation towards normative social discussions, it is proactively re-
sponsive to its institutional environment and has the capacity to position itself as a
social actor vis-à-vis the debate on Xenotransplantantion, or on Medical Treat-
ment's efficacy versus efficiency. Instead of stressing the un-reconcilable opposi-
tion between the standard view of science and the constructivist view of science as
human handiwork – a construction process involving social dynamics – Bijker’s
approach is anthropological in the sense that it observes and describes first the lo-
cal culture and practices of scientific advising.
    The expression “regimes of collective experimentation”, used in the authorita-
tive STS report chaired by Brian Wynne and presented to the European Commis-
sion as Taking European Society Seriously (2007), recapitulates the challenge. In
fact, the “Science in Society” programme of the European Commission pledged to
increase societal dialogue on questions relative to science, especially with a view to
anticipating fears, encouraging scientific careers and making scientists more aware
of their social role.. European “knowledge society” was in fact to be built, accord-
ing to the Lisbon agenda, on scientific and technological competitivity as a way of
improving the quality of life. In the evolution of the programme, a “milestone
event” was set in March 2005, when the European Commission organised
the Science in Society Forum “to take stock of the developments and achievements
under the new theme. The forum marked a watershed in thinking about Science
and Society. It showed, among other things, that it is not enough to simply inform
the public about scientific advances, but that there should be a real engagement of
civil society and the public”.1




   1
     The Bassetti Foundation participated itself with a case study conducted in collaboration
with Observa on Public Participation and the Governance of Innovation see:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-
society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topic&id=1263&lang=1.
138   BIJKER, VOLONTÈ AND GRASSENI



          Probably with this type of engagement in mind, the European Commission in-
      vited a group of experts in Science and Technology Studies (STS) to conduct a
      specific study on science and governance in June 2005. According to Mariachiara
      Tallacchini, a member of the expert group, "The mandate of the Director General
      of Research for the European Commission was to analyse the growing sense of un-
      ease that pervades the interactions between science and society and to explore
      ways of developing constructive relationships between techno- scientific expertise
      and public fears, with a view to create a more efficient governance in Europe".2
      The expert group was coordinated by Brian Wynne and included several re-
      nowned scholars from the scientific and academic communities, who were in-
      volved in a multidisciplinary discussion.3
          Regarding the role of experts and functionaries, the report stressed how the col-
      lective structures, assumptions, imaginaries and routines through which institu-
      tions exercise governance may be problematic. The production of reports, the
      commissioning of audits, the implementation of protocols and codes of practices
      do not enter a fully legislative pertinence but rather implements styles of govern-
      ance.
          Bijker’s work shows us the nitty-gritty of how one such style of governance ac-
      tually works. The Dutch Health Council positions itself as a social actor, or as a
      “boundary organization” with an agency of its own, deftly used to “co-define” the
      issue, to “land” its reports and to “repair” misinterpretations. Through research
      and personal experience in the Gezondheidsraad, Bijker comes to the conclusion
      that granting a certain degree of “confidentiality” is crucial to allow a subtle
      “boundary work”, resulting in “serviceable truth”.



      2
       “Science and Governance: the provocation of responsibility”, on line article, February 2008
      www.fondazionebassetti.org/ en/ focus/2008/02/ science_and_governance_the_pro.html.
      3
        The expert group included French sociologist Michel Callon, Portuguese lawyer Maria Edu-
      arda Gonçalves, Sheila Jasanoff, professor of science and technology studies at Harvard Univer-
      sity, Belgian economist Maria Jespen, French economist and sociologist Pierre Benoit-Joly,
      Czech sociologist Zdenek Konopasek, German economist Stefan May, Claudia Neubauer from
      the Fondation Sciences Citoyennes in Paris, the Dutch philosopher of science Arie Rip, Karen
      Siune, director of the Danish Centre for Research and Policy Research, Andy Sterling, director
      of Science for the Science Policy Research of the University of Sussex and Mariachiara Tallac-
      chini, professor of Science and Technology and Law at the Catholic University of Piacenza. The
      report was presented in March 2007 in the presence of Goran Hermeren, President of the Eu-
      ropean group for the ethics of science and new technology and Cristine Majewski head of the
      External Relations Unit and administrative board of the European Food Safety Authority. The
      Italian version, translated by Mariachiara Tallacchini, Scienza e governance. La società europea
      della conoscenza presa sul serio (Rubbettino 2008) was presented at the premises of the Gian-
      nino Bassetti Foundation in Milan in February 2008 with the participation of Mariachiara Tal-
      lacchini and Brian Wynne.
                                                             TECNOSCIENZA – 1(2)       139



    What does it mean to be an expert consultant to a decision-maker? Does reli-
ance on expertise constitute a challenge to representative democracy in itself? Or
do we need to safeguard a protected space in which accuracy, responsibility and
authoritativeness finally result in some kind of accountability? These are open
questions, finding specific answers in concrete contexts. They were met for in-
stance by Daniel Mulhollan, Director of the Congressional Research Service of the
Library of Congress at a seminar of the Bassetti Foundation in December 2008
(www.fondazionebassetti.org). Both the CRS and the Dutch Health Council seem
to thrive in “relative seclusion”. In other words, Bijker grants that “institutions
with confidential internal processes are necessary for proper functioning of democ-
racy at the level of technological cultures” (Bijker, Bal, Hendriks, 2009, 166) but
that “the democratic character of scientific advice must be found in the way in
which scientific advisory reports function within a broader process of governance
of technological cultures” (p.1).
    The same questions find different solutions in the grounded practices expressed
by distinct political and institutional cultures. Therefore, an encompassing answer
seems to lie in a catalogue of best practices and of well-rehearsed and nuanced rou-
tines rather than in a general theory of scientific advising. But Wiebe Bijker shows
us how to extract useful analytical categories from the quagmire of ethnographic
narration and the serendipity of institutional normalization.




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          Wiebe E. Bijker University of Maastricht
          Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
          PO Box 616, 6200 – MD Maastricht
          Email: w.bijker@maastrichtuniversity.nl

          Paolo Volonté Politecnico di Milano
          Dipartimento Indaco
          Via Durando 38/a, 20158 – Milano
          Email: paolo.volonte@polimi.it

          Cristina Grasseni Università di Bergamo e Fondazione “Giannino Bassetti”
          Dipartimento di Scienze della Persona
          P.zle S. Agostino 2, 24129 – Bergamo
          Email: cristina.grasseni@unibg.it
