Enhancing the Role of Science in Stakeholder-Based
by
Gail Charnley, Ph.D.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
The limited case studies considered here suggest that a key to successful use of scientific information in collaborative decision-making is Democratic Science-using a broadly based deliberative process to help shape the technical analysis. Collaborative, Democratic Science-based decision-making can determine which analytic techniques and information are used, interpret analytic results, and use those results to guide decision-making or re-frame the risk management problem and goals, as necessary. What each of the successful case examples in Section 4 have in common is that stakeholders agreed to use one jointly overseen group of scientists and agreed on what that group of scientists would consider. In that way, stakeholders’ choices were used to establish what the role of science would be in the risk management decision-making process. In each case, science played an important role, but a role that was shaped-through Democratic Science-by stakeholder values to address their concerns. Through Democratic Science, science was also able to inform an evolving understanding of the scope of the problem. The integrity of the science was maintained and its credibility assured because stakeholders were involved in deciding how science would be used to answer their questions and in obtaining the scientific information needed to answer those questions. In other words, the Democratic Science-based case studies described here demonstrate the effectiveness of implementing what the National Academy of Sciences report Understanding Risk called the “analytic-deliberative process” (NRC/NAS 1996) and what the Risk Commission outlined with its framework for stakeholder-based risk management decision-making (Risk Commission 1997).
5.1 Framework for Democratic Science: Combining science and values in decision-making
Page 28 depicts a Framework Democratic Science, or a guide for using stakeholder goals and concerns to guide the use of technical information in risk management decision-making as part of an iterative analytic-deliberative process. In the first step, stakeholder concerns guide the identification of potential risks and clarify risk management goals. In the second step, the questions that must be answered to address stakeholder concerns are articulated. These two steps are critical to clearly understanding the problem before attempts to solve it are made. Next, the factual information needed to answer those questions is identified. Such information need not be solely scientific and might include information about economic impacts, statutory issues, and demographics, for example. Stakeholders then identify and agree on whom should be responsible for obtaining the needed factual information. In several of the case examples described here, a model that seemed to work well involved establishing a group of scientific experts that all stakeholders agreed to; by working closely together through collaborative analysis, the scientists were able to understand the basis for the stakeholders’ concerns and the stakeholders were able to understand the role that science could play and to participate in generating data. After the needed scientific information is obtained, it is combined with other information and used either to re-frame the problem and risk management goals or to guide decision-making.
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A similar model to the Framework for Democratic Science that is recommended here is the model of cooperative discourse, or three-step participation model (Renn et al. 1993, Schneider et al. 1998). In the first step of that model, values and criteria for judging different risk management options are elicited from stakeholders, which in turn are used by a group of technical experts in the second step to guide the development of indicators or measures for evaluating the performance of each option as compared to the evaluative criteria. For the second step, a group Delphi process is used to reconcile conflicts about factual evidence and reach an expert consensus via direct confrontation among experts representing diverse views (Renn and Kotte 1984). In the final step, citizens deliberate to evaluate and design policy options based on knowledge of the likely consequences of each option and on their own values and preferences, with input from the first two steps. The model of cooperative discourse has been implemented in Germany to address energy policies and waste disposal issues and in the US to develop sludge-disposal strategies, with mixed results.
It is important to acknowledge that science may not always be the sole basis for a decision; in many cases, it will be one-but not the overriding-consideration. The goal is to maintain the integrity and credibility of the science and to define a useful role for scientific information in decision-making. That goal can be achieved through collaborative analysis that generates a single body of knowledge that will be accepted by all the groups in a policy debate as a valid basis for negotiations and agreements (Ozawa 1991, Busenberg, 1999). When the adversarial groups involved in a policy debate jointly oversee the research needed to resolve the underlying scientific and other technical issues, they have the means to assure themselves that other stakeholders are not manipulating the analysis. This observation is consistent with the general principal established by other studies of decision-making processes, which have found that when people have an opportunity to participate in a process, they are more likely to view its results as fair and credible (Thibault and Walker 1975).4
The following guidelines will help implement Democratic Science in order to maintain a useful role for science in stakeholder-based decision-making.
1. Research and analysis should respond directly to stakeholders’ concerns.
2. All stakeholders should be involved at the research planning stage.
3. Stakeholders should collaborate with scientists to obtain data and other information.
4. Decision-making should be iterative, with technical information used to guide either decision-making or problem re-evaluation, as necessary.
5.2 Suggestions for further research
Research teams comprising both risk assessors and social scientists are needed. By operating independently, risk assessors have tended to focus on science and decision-making while social scientists have focused on the social determinants of decision-making. More rigorous study of science in stakeholder-based decision-making would be facilitated by both types of scientists working together.
1. The role of science in stakeholder processes. Virtually all of the research that has sought to identify the determinants of successful public participation in environmental decision-making focuses on process-oriented social goals. While some perceive that science suffers in the hands of stakeholders, it is difficult to evaluate that perception objectively using the currently available data base because of the emphasis on social goals as evaluation metrics. Little work has been devoted to evaluating the role of science. Research is needed that includes determinants of how science has been included in stakeholder-based decision-making and how its role has had an impact on process outcomes.
2. Policy disputes resulting from differing scientific interpretations. This report has focused on the role of science in formal, convened, stakeholder decision-making processes. Much of the genesis of the concern over that role results from situations that do not involve formal stakeholder processes. Such disputes involve general disagreements among stakeholders that arise partly due to differences in interpretations of the science that underlies particular actions and partly due to differences in how science is weighed against the many other factors that contribute to decisions about managing risks. A rigorous analysis of the social factors that contribute to differing interpretations of scientific information and how science weighs as a factor in decision-making is beyond the scope of this analysis and worthy of more focused research.
3. Politics versus science. Some cynics argue that most risk management decisions are made on the basis of political expediency and that neither good science nor efforts at stakeholder collaboration have any real influence. More rigorous study is needed to determine whether and to what extent that is indeed the case.
4Interestingly,
the thesis that participation increases credibility is also consistent with
other cases, not discussed here, where community participation in scientific
investigations improved the credibility of the results within an
affected community, but not necessarily within the broader scientific
community. For example, during
the contentious debate that characterized the investigation and litigation
associated with the Woburn, Massachusetts community’s belief that
trichloroethylene-contaminated drinking water was the cause of their leukemia
cluster, the only scientific study that was credible to the community was
“The Harvard Study”. That
study, performed by Harvard School of Public Health scientists, began with a
cooperative agreement regarding the extent and nature of community involvement
in the investigation itself (Brown and Mikkelsen 1990).
It is possible, however, that if the Harvard Study had not supported
the community’s belief regarding a causal association between exposure and
outcome, that it would not have retained its credibility with the community.
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