Science and values in risk assessment: The case of deliberate release of genetically engineered organisms [Book Review]
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Rafael De Clercq
Jack Alan Reynolds
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Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 9 (1):42-60 (1996)
To make more responsible decisions regarding risk and to understand disagreements and controversies in risk assessments, it is important to know how and where values are infused into risk assessment and how they are embedded in the conclusions. In this article an attempt is made to disentangle the relationship of science and values in decision-making concerning the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment. This exercise in applied philosophy of science is based on Helen Longino's contextual empiricism which attempts to reconcile the objectivity of science with its social and cultural construction. Longino distinguishes different levels of research on which values apparently contextual with respect to a given research program can shape the knowledge emerging from that program. Her scheme is applied for locating and identifying the values that affect environment risk assessments of the field experiments with GMOs. The article concludes with some provisional suggestions for the decision process and the role of scientists in it.
|Keywords||applied philosophy of science science in policy risk assessment fact-value dichotomy biotechnology genetically modified organisms deliberate release|
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Daniel Gregorowius, Petra Lindemann-Matthies & Markus Huppenbauer (2012). Ethical Discourse on the Use of Genetically Modified Crops: A Review of Academic Publications in the Fields of Ecology and Environmental Ethics. [REVIEW] Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25 (3):265-293.
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