What Roles Can Lay Citizens Play in the Making of Public Knowledge?

Abstract

While enlisting the labor of nonscientists on a large scale for scientific knowledge making is now commonly praised as citizen science, citizens in those scientific undertakings usually do not contribute what Harry Collins and his colleagues in the Third Wave call contributory expertise and usually do not take part in the technical decision-making process of knowledge production. There are nevertheless other kinds of citizen science, in which participation of nonexperts, though not consistent with the limits imposed by the normative prong of the Third-Wave thesis, should not be judged as per se illegitimate or relegated simply to political actions. I will argue in this article, with the evidence from cases involving nonexperts in scientific truth making, that a different set of prescriptive rules is more warranted: lay citizens should not be denied participation in technical decision making simply because they do not speak the specialist language; the society that lives the form-of-life of Western science has an obligation to provide translation service to those who have stakes and wish to speak on technical questions but do not speak the language of a specialism; lay citizens who make propositional claims with the assistance of translation are only entitled to present their arguments, to question opposing claims, to defend their case, and in the end to receive an explanation of why and how the final decision is made on terms and rules mutually accepted by all parties; political decision making intrinsic to and necessary for the resolution of a technical question should theoretically be open to all, including those who do not speak specialist language, subject only to practical feasibility; disputes over values necessary for resolving a technical question should be properly settled through ideal deliberation under conditions of mutual engagement involving all parties of public life.

• citizen science
• Third Wave
• expertise
• impairment and disability
• metascientific judgment
• framing
• probative scheme of values

Notes

¹ But cf. Bonney, Ballard, Jordan, McCallie, Phillips, Shirk, and Wilderman 2009 , 11, who classify citizen-science projects into three categories: contributory, collaborative, and co-created.

² While the original Third-Wave theory along with its SEE (studies of expertise and experience) scholarship were introduced by Harry Collins and Robert Evans in 2002, they were later joined on some occasions by Marin Weinel to refine and elaborate its contents (Collins, Weinel, and Evans 2010; Collins, Evan, and Weinel 2016). I will call them by the term Third-Wave scholars in this article.

³ They are the cases of crashing fuel flasks and aircraft respectively in 1984 (Collins and Evans 2002: 263–64).

⁴ The MMR vaccine protects against measles, mumps, and rubella. In the late 1990s in the UK, there began a revolt against the administration of the MMR vaccine for fear that it may cause autism in children. Worrying parents demanded research be conducted to investigate the varied possible links between autism and MMR vaccines in typical child populations so that they would know if their particular child might be at more risk than others from MMR before agreeing to the vaccination. The revolt resulted in a drop in MMR vaccination rates and may have been a factor contributing to measles outbreaks in 2008 and 2009. The Third-Wave scholars accused the parents of using the framing of a technological problem to disguise their selfish, unproductive, or even dangerous conduct (Collins 2011: 92; Collins, Weinel, and Evans 2010: 196; Collins and Evans 2015: 121).

⁵ The debate over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil storage and transfer buoy occurred after the platform reached the end of its life and its owner Shell oil company proposed to dump it in the North Sea. Brent Spar was eventually cut up on land because of strong opposition from environmental groups for fear that its dumping could have opened up the floodgates, allowing ocean dumping of various industrial or even nuclear wastes. The Third-Wave scholars (Collins, Weinel, and Evans 2010: 189-91; Collins 2011: 99) lamented that the actual polluting potential of the buoy itself and possible benefits of sinking such equipment in the sea, including providing an artificial reef for fish-breeding and enhancing species diversity, were not fully explored because discussion of those relevant issues were bypassed by a populist appeal to the absolute purity of the sea.

⁶ In 1999, the then-President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki decided not to distribute the anti-HIV/AIDS retroviral drug AZT to HIV-positive pregnant women, even though the mainstream scientific community at that time had already concluded that the anti-retroviral drug is able to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Some reported that Mbeki’s decision was made based on reasoning that, given the multifactorial nature of AIDS etiology, investing in expensive drugs rather than improving poverty-related conditions that exacerbate the causal progression from HIV to full-blown AIDS may not be the most cost-effective way of controlling the epidemic in the country (Wynne 2008). However, the Third-Wave scholars faulted Mbeki based on his speech to his parliament, for pretending that it was based on the technical decision that the safety of the drug was uncertain. Mbeki’s insinuation of the drug’s danger to health in the public address along with his unspoken political concerns gave the impression that the political dimension of a policy decision had been preempted by a technical decision. To the Third-Wave scholars, Mbeki “was involved in fostering the technocracy of the worst sort” (Collins 2014: 98–104; Collins 2011: 94–95; Collins, Weinel, and Evans 2010: 193–94).

⁷ Please refer to Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network for information: roadkill.tw/en/campaign.

⁸ Article 14 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act of Taiwan provides that the administrative authority overseeing a development project may not grant permission for a development activity in cases where the environmental impact assessment authority determines through review that the adverse impact of the development activity outweighs its benefits.

⁹ See http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/133710/0.

¹⁰ The First Draft of Environmental Impact Statement of KKPC, at page 7-105 (2010).

¹¹ The obligation to provide translation service also implies a concomitant obligation to train enough qualified interpreters.

¹² 28 U.S.C. §1827(d)(1)(“The presiding judicial officer, with the assistance of the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, shall utilize the services of the most available certified interpreter, or when no certified interpreter is reasonably available, as determined by the presiding judicial officer, the services of an otherwise qualified interpreter, in judicial proceedings instituted by the United States, if the presiding judicial officer determines on such officer’s own motion or on the motion of a party that such party (including a defendant in a criminal case), or a witness who may present testimony in such judicial proceedings—(A) speaks only or primarily a language other than the English language; or (B) suffers from a hearing impairment (whether or not suffering also from a speech impairment) so as to inhibit such party’s comprehension of the proceedings or communication with counsel or the presiding judicial officer, or so as to inhibit such witness’ comprehension of questions and the presentation of such testimony.”).

¹³ For instance, participants must not rely on false beliefs about the natural world, they must recognize the mutual consequences of the actions and institutional arrangements under discussion, and they must be able to identify the wishes other participants have and how those wishes evolve in the course of the conversation.)

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Wen-Tsong Chiou

Wen-Tsong Chiou is associate research professor of law at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica (IIAS). He joined IIAS in 2005 after a short period of time as a practicing lawyer. His research centers on law and science and the intertwining relationships between the two social systems. Other areas of his research interests include information law, food regulation, and the regulation of human subject research.