Peter Weingart

Risks of communication: discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media

This paper summarizes the results of a research project analyzing communication about global warming among those in the fields of science, politics, and the media in Germany between 1975 and 1995. The methodology of discourse analysis has been applied to investigate the changing perceptions of climate change over time and the ways in which it became an important issue on Germanys political agenda. The first part of the paper will briefly introduce the underlying theoretical assumptions and explain the multiple steps by which data covering a period of two decades have been collected and analyzed. In the second part, the paper will provide the reader with the main research results, indicating the usefulness of distinguishing among the separate discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media. The results suggest that there are specific discourse dynamics common to each of the three spheres, as well as some important disparities among them. These findings will be illustrated by a selection of examples typical of the samples analyzed. Finally, the third part of the paper will discuss the broader theoretical and practical implications of these results, which suggest that modern societies must cope not only with environmental risks but also with the risks inherent in communication.

Scientific expertise and political accountability: paradoxes of science in politics

Two paradoxes form the nucleus of the problems of scientific expertise and policy-making. The first is the simultaneous scientification of politics and the politicisation of science. This has destructive effects: the increased use of scientific expertise by policy-makers has not increased the degree of certainty, in fact it becomes delegitimating. This gives rise to the second paradox: despite the loss of authority of scientific expertise, policy-makers do not abandon their reliance on existing advisory arrangements, nor do the scholars adapt their ideas on science and its relation to politics. How can this stability be achieved? How can science-politics be institutionalised? Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

From “Finalization” to “Mode 2”: old wine in new bottles?

Discussions about “new forms of knowledge-production” refer to purportedly fundamental changes in the organization of science. A closer look reveals that these changes pertain to a particular sector of science, i.e. policy-related fields. It is suggested that a better understanding of the kind and scope of changes would be achieved by viewing them as resulting from a “scientification” of society and a correlate “politicization” of science, both of which processes signify the emergence of the knowledge society. Ironically, the “finalization thesis”, which foresaw much of this two decades ago, met with opposition, while the new claims were embraced. This is explained by the context of legitimation

Science and the media

Abstract The traditional view of the popularization of science, if it was ever correct, is being challenged in the new arrangement between science and the media. The paper discusses the changes in that arrangement and gives three particular cases of what is termed an increasingly closer science–media-coupling : pre-publication of results in the media, the role of media prominence in relation to scientific reputation, and the cassandra syndrome in some areas of research, i.e., the initiation of catastrophe discourses in order to catch public attention. The coupling with its problematic consequences seems inescapable given the increased dependency on public support on the part of science, and the medias enhanced role in providing legitimation.

Democratization of Expertise?: Exploring Novel Forms of Scientific Advice in Political Decision-Making

Preface vii Chapter 1: Whats New in Scientific Advice to Politics? Introductory Essay 1 Sabine Maasen and Peter Weingart Chapter 2: Bioethical Controversies and Policy Advice: The Production of Ethical Expertise and its Role in the Substantiation of Political Decision-Making Alexander Bogner and Wolfgang Menz Chapter 3: Advisory Systems in Pluralistic Knowledge Societies: A Criteria-Based Typology to Assess and Optimize Environmental Policy Advice Harald Heinrichs Chapter 4: Institutional Design for Socially Robust Knowledge: The National Toxicology Programs Report on Carcinogens David H. Guston Chapter 5: Representation, Expertise, and the German Parliament: A Comparison of Three Advisory Institutions Mark B. Brown, Justus Lentsch and Peter Weingart Chapter 6: Expertise and Political Responsibility: The Columbia Shuttle Catastrophe Stephen Turner Chapter 7: Knowledge and Decision-Making Frank Nullmeier Chapter 8: Science/Policy Boundaries: A Changing Division of Labour in Dutch Expert Policy Advice Willem Halffman and Rob Hoppe Chapter 9: Inserting the Public Into Science Heather Douglas Chapter 10: Between Policy and Politics Or: Whatever Do Weapons of Mass Destruction Have to Do With GM Crops? The UKs GM Nation Public Debate as an Example of Participatory Governance Simon Joss Chapter 11: Participation as Knowledge Production and the Limits of Democracy Matthijs Hisschemoller Chapter 12: Judgment Under Siege: The Three-Body Problem of Expert Legitimacy Sheila Jasanoff List of Authors Biographical Notes Author Index

The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge

I: The Institutionalisation of the Sciences: Changing Concepts and Approaches in the History and Sociology of Science.- The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge.- The Social Construction of Science: Institutionalisation and Definition of Positive Science in the Latter Half of the Seventeenth Century.- Problems of a Historical Study of Science.- Scientific Ideology and Scientific Process: The Natural History of a Conceptual Shift.- II: Social Relations of Cognitive Structures in the Sciences.- Ontological and Epistemological Commitments and Social Relations in the Sciences: The Case of the Arithmomorphic System of Scientific Production.- Cognitive Norms, Knowledge- Interests and the Constitution of the Scientific Object: A Case Study in the Functioning of Rules for Experimentation.- Changes in the Social and Intellectual Organisation of the Sciences: Professionalisation and the Arithmetic Ideal.- What Does a Proof Do If It Does Not Prove? A Study of the Social Conditions and Metaphysical Divisions Leading to David Bohm and John von Neumann Failing to Communicate in Quantum Physics.- III: Social Goals, Political Programmes and Scientific Norms.- The Political Direction of Scientific Development.- Scientific Purity and Nuclear Danger: The Case of Risk-Assessment.- Creation vs Evolution: The Politics of Science Education.

Of power maniacs and unethical geniuses: science and scientists in fiction film

New knowledge has met with ambivalence, as is documented in myths ever since that of Prometheus. This ambivalence is also apparent in the representations of science in literature and the popular media, most prominent among them movies. Shelley’s Frankenstein has become the icon of the “mad scientist” as depicted by filmmakers ever since the 1930s. To trace such patterns of ambivalence and stereotypes of scientists and science in fiction film, 222 movies were analyzed. It is apparent that modification of, and intervention into, the human body, the violation of human nature, and threats to human health by means of science are depicted as the most alarming aspects of scientific inquiry. The threat is dramatized by being associated with the image of the scientist as pursuing the quest for new knowledge in secrecy, outside the controls of academic institutions and peers. Scientific research as perceived by fiction film is seldom a venture across the boundaries of the permissible.

Verwissenschaftlichung der Gesellschaft - Politisierung der Wissenschaft

Zusammenfassung Die Wissenschaftskritik richtet sich auf die Forschung selbst und wird in Form von Kontrollen institutionalisiert. Der Frage, ob sich damit ein neues Arrangement zwischen Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft ankündigt, wird anhand der Analyse zweier Prozesse nachgegangen: der Verwissenschaftlichung und damit der Delegitimierung gesellschaftlicher Werte und Institutionen und der gegenläufigen Politisierung von Wissenschaft. Die Wissenschaft scheint ethischen Bezügen nicht entrinnen zu können, auch dann nicht, wenn sie sie szientistisch zu begründen sucht. So bleibt der Konflikt unaufgelöst.

Fraud: causes and culprits as perceived by science and the media Institutional changes, rather than individual motivations, encourage misconduct

Almost 2 years after Woo Suk Hwang and colleagues published groundbreaking work on the creation of human embryonic stem‐cell lines, an investigation committee from Seoul National University, South Korea, announced that much of the research had been fabricated. Human embryos had not been cloned and stem‐cell lines had not been derived from patient‐specific somatic cells. Science retracted the two articles concerned, and Hwang and several members of his research team were later indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement of research funds and violations of bioethical laws. In the aftermath of this case, many scientists expressed concerns that the public image of science, and of stem‐cell research in particular, had been tarnished. “Scientists fear that the episode will damage not only public perceptions of stem‐cell research, but sciences image as a whole” (Check & Cyranoski, 2005). Others were more optimistic and hoped that the case would “serve as an antidote to the ‘tabloidization’ of stem‐cell research and … make the public conscious of the fact that the science is difficult” (Snyder & Loring, 2006). Some simply regarded the race as open again: “At one point, the research community thought that we might have, in Hwang, a technical virtuoso. Now we recognize that we all remain on an equal footing” (Snyder & Loring, 2006). The Hwang case provides a good example of how the scientific community and the mass media deal with fraudulent behaviour in science. Both give the impression that misconduct is committed mainly by individuals who have lost—or never had—a scientific ethos, while reassuring the public that fraudulent scientists are ultimately caught and punished. Indeed, agencies dealing with cases of scientific misconduct, such as the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in Rockville, Maryland, and the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Bonn, also proceed on the assumption that misconduct …

Metaphors--Messengers of Meaning: A Contribution to an Evolutionary Sociology of Science.

Based on the idea that the central link between science and society is one established by a diffusion of knowledge, the authors present an outline of what might be called an evolutionary sociology of knowledge. The proposal is first to make use of the concept of metaphor whose characteristic features are well known within the literary realm. By introducing an unfamiliar analogy into a new context, both the metaphorical concept and the context challenge eventually may change each other. The authors claim that knowledge transfers, in general, might be analyzed in a similar fashion. Second, such a metaphor analysis of units of knowledge should be combined with discourse analysis as well as central concepts of evolutionary theory to uncover the institutionalized mechanisms by which certain bodies of knowledge become processed selectively.