Patrick van Zwanenberg

BSE : risk, science, and governance

1. Introduction 2. Analysing the role of science in public policy-making 3. The evolution of UKs agriculture and food policy regimes 4. A new cattle disease 5. The Southwood Working Party 6. Regulatory rigor mortis 7. BSE policy in Continental Europe 8. The aftermath of 20 March 1996 9. BSE and the partial reform of food policy making 10. Summary and conclusions Bibliography Index

Politics of expert advice: Lessons from the early history of the BSE saga

This paper analyses the dynamics of the interactions between scientific and non-scientific considerations in providing scientific advice to policy, focusing on the first scientific committee to advise on BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) policy-making in the UK and the political and social roles it was expected to play, and in practice played, in policy-making. The paper argues that the Committee was both deliberately and inadvertently utilised to provide spurious scientific legitimation for policy decisions which government officials believed ministers, other government departments, the meat industry and the general public might not otherwise accept. It demonstrates how those social roles rendered the spectrum of policy choices available on BSE opaque, allowed officials to undermine the democratic accountability of ministers, and contributed to making a very serious problem considerably worse. Some practical lessons are outlined for the organisation of scientific expertise in political affairs. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Precautionary Risk Regulation in European Governance

This paper develops a sequential model of precautionary risk regulation that contributes substantively and procedurally to the European Commissions position on precaution. At first, four concepts of precautionary policy are distinguished which are taken into account in the conceptualisation of the precautionary risk regulation. The paper then expounds the four key challenges of characterising, evaluating and managing risks: these are seriousness, uncertainty, complexity, and socio-political ambiguity. Subsequently, the architecture of the model of precautionary risk regulation is set out, which is characterised by the following three key stages: screening, appraisal, and management. It additionally includes a design, development and oversight function which ensures that the overall process is robust to changes in circumstances and to the perspective of all interested and affected parties. Afterwards five approaches to risk analysis are elaborated which are integrated in the formal decision analytic concept. They provide tools for assessing, evaluating, and managing serious, uncertain, complex and/or ambiguous risks and include different methods for selecting objectives, assessing and handling data, and finding the most appropriate procedure for balancing pros and cons.

Beyond skeptical relativism: evaluating the social constructions of expert risk assessments

Constructivist analyses of risk regulation are typically agnostic about what should count as robust or reliable knowledge. Indeed, constructivists usually portray competing accounts of risk as if they were always equally contingent or engaged with different and incommensurable issues and problem definitions. This article argues that assumptions about the equal reliability of competing accounts of risk deserve to be, and sometimes can be, examined empirically. A constructivist approach grounded in epistemological realism is outlined and applied empirically to a particular comparative U.S./U.K. case study of pesticide regulation. The article argues that while the scope for interpretative flexibility when addressing risk issues is clearly extensive, it is not unconstrained. By scrutinizing the structure and coherence of particular risk assessments and policy decisions by reference to both empirical evidence and commonly held robust standards of interpretation, the article argues that the U.K. evaluation was not only less precautionary than its U.S. equivalent, but it was also less well constructed and therefore less reliable. Several social and institutional characteristics of U.S. and U.K. policy making are highlighted that appear variously to facilitate or inhibit the production of reliable knowledge and the making of prudent policy decisions.

A crisis of trust: for science, scientists or for institutions?

Stem cell research, xenotransplantation and somatic and germ line gene therapy are examples of emerging technologies that, if successful, will forever change the way we live. But how well does the public understand the benefits and risks of these technologies, and whose responsibility is it to communicate them? Here, Erik Millstone and Patrick van Zwanenberg of the University of Sussex, UK, discuss whether science is suffering because of a lack of transparency in presenting scientific information to its main consumer group—the general public.

Mad Cow Disease — Painting Policy-Making into a Corner

The BSE saga in the UK provides important lessons on the role of governments in risk communication and management during crises, and on the ways in which inappropriate early responses can skew the perceptions of stakeholders, exacerbate conflicts between different interest groups and constrain the governments options for effective action. A brief discussion of the emergence of BSE in the UK cattle herd, and the accompanying policy dilemmas, prefaces an account of how policy‐makers responded to the crisis and communicated about possible risks, the effects on attitudes of stakeholders and the implications for policy. The paper shows that the UK governments risk communication tactics misrepresented the underlying science and failed to take a precautionary approach because scientific uncertainties were concealed and denied. The UK authorities claimed to be protecting public health but in practice they were more concerned to support agricultural markets and minimise state intervention and public expenditure. Regulations that were introduced were too little and too late, and were not properly enforced. Too little was invested in scientific research and the involvement of independent scientists was actively discouraged. The high degree of uncertainty in the prevailing state of knowledge was not acknowledged. Instead of adopting policies that were consistent with the available scientific evidence and understanding, the government merely promulgated the rhetoric of science‐based policy, while discounting relevant scientific evidence and discrediting scientific advice that was inconsistent with its chosen narrative. It chose a narrative of total confidence and certainty, attached to an assumption of zero risk, and then struggled to adopt forms of reasoning that would sustain that position in the face of accumulating evidence to the contrary. Implications for risk communication of adopting a more precautionary approach in such circumstances are discussed.

'European policy on food safety': comments and suggestions on the White Paper on Food Safety.

Abstract The paper provides a summary of the report written for the European Parliaments Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) Programme, as a response to the Commissions 2000 Food Safety White Paper. The White Paper made a series of major proposals, including a plan to set up a new European Food Authority (EFA). This paper summarises the comments and proposals on the background and technical arguments in the White Paper. The key issues in food-related public health, which the EFA will have to address, are reviewed. The role of science and technological information in policy-making on food and health matters is explored, as is the core challenge of how to link nutrition and food safety to give a consumer-friendly public health policy for Europe.

Towards indicators for 'opening up' science and technology policy

M.M. is funded by the Conselleria d’Innovaci´o, Recerca i Turisme of the Government of the Balearic Islands and the European Social Fund with grant code FPI/2090/2018. J.A., M.M., S.M. and J.J.R. also acknowledge funding from the project Distancia-COVID (CSIC-COVID-19) of the CSIC funded by a contribution of AENA, from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the AEI and FEDER (EU) under the grant PACSS (RTI2018-093732-B-C22) and the Maria de Maeztu program for Units of Excellence in R&D (MDM-2017-0711). A.B. and V.N. acknowledge support from the UK EPSRC New Investigator Award Grant No. EP/S027920/1. GG, SH and SM acknowledge support from from NSF Grant IIS-2029095 and the US Army Research Office under Agreement Number W911NF-18-1-0421. A.K. is supported by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship through the Department of Defense.Trabajo presentado en la Plant and Animal Genome XXII Conference, celebrada en San Diego del 11 al 15 de enero de 2014.Chinchilla-Rodriguez, Zaida; Lariviere, Vincent; Costas, Rodrigo; Robinson-Garcia, Nicolas and Sugimoto, Cassidy Rose. (2017). Building ties across countries: International collaboration, field specialization, and global leadership. 23th International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators, STI2018. Leiden, The Netherlands, 12-14 September 2018, p. 1509-1518.Resumen del trabajo presentado al APS March Meeting, celebrado en Baltimore, Maryland (USA) del 14 al 18 de marzo de 2016.The results of the first sampling of myxomycetes from the North of Chile are reported in this paper. The survey forms part of the project Global Biodiversity of Eumycetozoans and is the first of a three phase north-south (more than 5,000 km), transect of the country. This phase was between 18o and 30o South latitudes and encompassed the arid and semi-arid regions known as the Atacama Desert. A total of 24 species of Myxomycetes from 11 genera have been identified from these extreme environments, 14 are new records for Chile and 4 (Badhamia dubia, Didymium synsporon, Echinostelium fragile and Physarum spectabile) are previously unknown for South America. Comments are provided on morphology, distribution and ecology.We introduce a new game to the experimental literature and use it to study how behavioral phenomena affect the tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized management. Our game models an organization with two divisions and one central manager. Each division must choose or be assigned a product. Ignoring asymmetric information, the underlying game is an asymmetric coordination game related to the Battle of the Sexes. In equilibrium, the divisions coordinate on identical products. Each division prefers an equilibrium where the selected products are closest to its local tastes while central management prefers the efficient equilibrium, determined by a randomly state of the world, which maximizes total payoffs. The state of the world is known to the divisions, but the central manager only learns about it through messages from the divisions who have incentives to lie. Contrary to the theory, overall performance is higher under centralization, where the central manager assigns products to divisions after receiving messages from the divisions, than under decentralization where the divisions choose their own products. Underlying this, mis-coordination is common under decentralization and divisions fail to use their information when they do coordinate. Mis-coordination is non-existent under centralization and there is a high degree of truth-telling by divisions as well. Performance under centralization is depressed by persistent sub-optimal use of information by center managers.Trabajo presentado en el Workshop: Groups, Inequality, and Conflict, organizado por el Centre for the Study of Equality, Social Organization and Performance (ESOP), en Oslo durante el 6 de julio de 2017Trabajo presentado al XII Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA), celebrado en Bilbao del 18 al 22 de julio de 2016.Trabajo presentado a la ORCID-CASRAI Joint Outreach Conference & Codefest (Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information), celebrada en Barcelona (Espana) del 18 al 19 de mayo de 2015.4 pags.; 4 figs.; ILRC27, City College of New York, New York City, July 5 - July 10, 2015; http://ilrc27.org/VI Simposio Internacional de Ciencias del Mar - VI International Symposium of Marine Sciences (ISMS 2018), 20- 22 June 2018, Vigo.-- 2 pages16 pages, 9 figures, 6 tables, 44 references.-- E-mail: delrio@irnase.csic.es (J.C. del Rio)Financial support from Mobility Program ‘Salvador de Madariaga 2016’ and State Programme of Research, Development and Innovation oriented to the Challenges of the Society (CSO2014-57770-R) funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain and the Science of Science Innovation and Policy program of the National Science Foundation in the United States (NSF #1561299).

Developing capabilities in the seed industry: which direction to follow?

Since the 1990s, many developing country policy makers have assumed that plant genetic engineering represents the only technological frontier in seed innovation; that it has been the leading technology for improving seeds and agricultural performance in those countries where it has been adopted; and that it is the area of biotechnology in which domestic capabilities in seed innovation should be accumulated. In this paper we challenge all those assumptions through an exploration of the role that both genetic engineering and other seed innovation techniques have played in explaining dynamism in the seed market, and wider agricultural economy, in Argentina, focusing on the case of soy. We argue that existing analyses of the impact of plant genetic engineering in Argentina either ignore the performance gains from seed innovations based on techniques other than genetic engineering or misattribute them to genetic engineering. Our analysis, based on data of registered plant varieties, evidence of agricultural performance in Argentina, and interviews with company managers and public sector researchers, seeks to distinguish between the impacts that different approaches to seed innovation have had on the soy sector. We argue that, from the data available, non-genetic engineering seed innovations appear to have had a very significant direct effect on farm-level soy productivity, much more so than those based on genetic engineering, and that they offer just as plausible a contributing explanation for indirect effects on productivity that are normally attributed to genetic engineering. Our findings are preliminary, but they stand in stark contrast to the very widely held view that genetic engineering has played a central, transformative role in the revitalisation and internationally competitive performance of soy production in Argentina over the last two decades. They also have a number of potential implications for the allocation of resources and policy support to the seed industry, and, more generally to how technological options should be considered and assessed in strategies for developing technological capabilities. Our analysis is framed by and contributes to an emerging body of research within the innovation literature that challenges deterministic, unidirectional approaches to analysing technological change in emerging economies.