Whom to trust? Public concerns, late modern risks, and expert trustworthiness
Whom to trust? Public concerns, late modern risks, and expert trustworthiness
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DOI：
10.1023/b:jage.0000017391.41994.d2
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发表时间：
2004-01-01
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
Munnichs, G
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Munnichs, G
本文讨论了在何种条件下，利用专家知识可以对公众对高科技、晚期现代风险的关注作出适当的反应。科学的风险评估不止一次引发了专家的争议。当这些争议发生时，广大公众——作为媒体的观众——面临着一种矛盾的局面：一方面，它必须依赖大众媒体所代表的科学家的专业知识，但另一方面，在缺乏任何明确标准来判断这些主张的情况下，它又被相互竞争的专家主张所迷惑。那么问题来了，公众可以信任哪些专业知识？我认为，专家争议不能通过诉诸中立、公正的专业知识来解决，因为在应用环境中对专家知识的每次使用都与规范性和评估性假设密不可分。然而，专家贡献的这种承载价值的本质并不一定迫使我们采用相对主义的专家知识概念。它也不意味着普通公民积极参与科学风险评估——就像一些作者似乎建议的那样。专家陈述的价值负载或党派性质需要一个专家和反专家都能参与的不偏不倚的专家争论过程。此外，专家的承诺不会成为质疑专家贡献的理由，反而可能提高公众的可信度，因为它扩大了所考虑的观点的范围，以包括公众关注的问题。与（部分）公众有同样担忧的专家可以在专家争论的层面上表达这些担忧。因此，支持者和反对者都能接受的广泛的专家争论是公众信任的先决条件。
This article discusses the conditions under which the use of expert knowledge may provide an adequate response to public concerns about high-tech, late modern risks. Scientific risk estimation has more than once led to expert controversies. When these controversies occur, the public at large - as a media audience - faces a paradoxical situation: on the one hand it must rely on the expertise of scientists as represented in the mass media, but on the other it is confused by competing expert claims in the absence of any clear-cut standard to judge these claims. The question then arises, what expertise can the public trust? I argue that expert controversies cannot be settled by appealing to neutral, impartial expertise, because each use of expert knowledge in applied contexts is inextricably bound up with normative and evaluative assumptions. This value-laden nature of expert contributions, however, does not necessarily force us to adopt a relativist conception of expert knowledge. Nor does it imply active involvement of ordinary citizens in scientific risk estimation - as some authors seem to suggest. The value-laden, or partisan, nature of expert statements rather requires an unbiased process of expert dispute in which experts and counter-experts can participate. Moreover, instead of being a reason for discrediting expert contributions, experts' commitment may enhance public trustworthiness because it enlarges the scope of perspectives taken into account, to include public concerns. Experts who share the same worries as ( some of) the public could be expected to voice these worries at the level of expert dispute. Thus, a broadly shaped expert dispute, that is accessible to both proponents and opponents, is a prerequisite for public trust.