1. Is it really asking too much from our collective intellectual
life to devise, at least once a century, some new critical
tools? … The critic assembles … offers the participants
arenas in which to gather.
--Bruno Latour, Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? 2004
4. Well Ordered Science
Science serving a wider public good by choosing
democratically-informed programs of research and techno-scientific
development reflecting the values of scientists and citizens.
6. Science and The Public
What is meant by “the public” and by
“science” in moments of techno-scientific
controversy and engagement?
7. i) Explain unproductive patterns of pubic-science
engagement
ii) Point to democratic possibilities for scientific
knowledge development and dissemination within
science-based institutions
This approach has helped me:
8. 2002
I was practicing genetics and
noticed dissent against biotech and
a pitched public debate.
10. Health Canada has said for years that [GE] can be
safely used, and this is determined by the most
modern scientific information … [GE technologies]
are some of the most stringently regulated
products in Canada and only those products that
meet Health Canada’s strict health and safety
standards are registered for sale and use … The
reality is that it simply isn’t logical to ban these
products.
--Lorne Hepworth, CEO CropLife 2012
11. Dissent stems from the
inability of the public to
understand and agree
with experts
DEFICIT MODEL
Heavily criticized in
intellectual and policy
circles
(Brossard & Lewenstein 2010)
12. DEFICIT MODEL
Informs interactions between policy-makers and
concerned publics in the creation of an expert-only
policy culture
(see Shields & Sanders 2006; Montpetit & Rouillard 2008).
13. Taking [the public] seriously would mean
pandering to a kind of rabid democracy … the
public is incapable of weighing in on the complex
science [of biotechnology].
Canadian Food Inspection Agency worker (quoted, Shields & Sanders 2006)
14. ETHNOGRAPHY (2002-4)
Farmers involved in and around lawsuits
Elmer Laird, 72 years, SK’s first organic farmer
Schmeiser v. Monsanto
Hoffman et al. v Monsanto
15. This public was not against crop biotechnologies per
se but the politics of knowledge surrounding them.
A critique of democratic institutions that appear:
i) closed to alternative risk assessments
ii) blind to the productive frameworks for regulatory science (ex.
corporate data)
16.
17. Biotechnology is a different value system. The
whole value around clean fields, monocultures,
maximizing production, not a weed in sight
… it’s part of a general cultural bias which
permeates the whole agricultural system from
research to implementation towards privatizing,
standardizing and industrializing everything.
Doug Bone, organic farmer, June 2003
18. But why, the farmers ask,
• not study crop biotechnologies in their
broader environmental contexts?
• take a short-term timescale for risk
assessment rather than a longitudinal view?
• is there no process of public deliberation
about these decisions, thus invisibilizing the
fact that these are decisions taken by people
in particular social and political contexts?
19. USING THE LAW TO
MAKE THEIR
KNOWLEDGE and
CONCERNS APPEAR as
POLITICALLY VALID.
20. This [declaration] would compel the Defendants to
submit their engineered gene to a public
environmental scrutiny rather than the behind closed
doors approach they have been allowed to use with
the federal government’s regulatory bodies.
(2004) Memorandum to Federal Court of Appeal, para. 17
21. HOW DO THE COURTS FAIR AS A
PROVING GROUND FOR
DIFFERENT THEORIES OF RISK?
23. CDA is a discourse analytical approach that primarily
studies the way social power abuse and inequality are
enacted and reproduced by text and talk in the social
and political context.
(Teun van Dijk 1998, 1)
24. INTERETIVE APPROACH
Science is open to negotiation with other social
institutions and forms of knowledge (like legal,
farmer/activist)
Similar to STS scholar Sheila Jasanoff (see 1995) and
unlike the majority of academic attention (c.f. de Beer
2007; Garforth & Ainslie 2006; Muller 2006)
Allowed me to chart the processes by which a certain
conception of science was secured through the
language of the law in ways that link to power and
social interests
27. After growing canola over many years, Mr. Schmeiser has
developed his own farming practices particular to the land
that he farms, which practices have withstood
experimentation and the test of time
(2001) Factum to the Trial Court, para. 14
28. Numerous samples were taken … A series of
independent tests by different experts confirmed that
the canola Mr. Schmesier planted and grew in 1998
was 95-98 percent Roundup resistant. Only a grow-
out test by Mr. Schmeiser in his yard in 1999 and by
Mr. Freisen did not support this result
more significant [than Schmeiser’s or Mr. Friesen’s
tests] are the results of genetic testing by staff of
Monsanto U.S. at St. Louis
(2004) Supreme Court of Canada, para. 64
(2002) Federal Trial Court, para. 48
29. It may be that some RoudupReady seed was
carried to Mr. Schmeiser’s field without his
knowledge. Some such seed might have survived
the winter to germinate in the spring of 1998.
However, I am persuaded by evidence of Dr. Keith
Downey…that none of the suggested sources
could reasonably explain the concentration or
extent of RoundupReady canola of a commercial
quality evident form the results of tests on
Schmeiser’s crop
(2001) Factum to the Trial Court, para. 65
30. LEGAL DISCOURSE FURTHERS
A VISION OF EXPERTISE AS
LIMITED TO THE LAB AND OF
THE PUBLIC AS
NON-KNOWLEDGEABLE.
32. EXPERTISE IS IMPORTANT and was part of the
creation of landmark 20th century regulations
and regulatory institutions.
BUT EXPERTISE LOSES LEGITIMACY when its
decision-making frameworks are not made
transparent.
33. CITIZEN-SCIENCE How do you make decisions about investment?
How do you decide which research questions to pursue?
What timeline for risk considerations is appropriate?
www.scorpiomasonry.com
34. CITIZEN
SCIENCE
POTENTIAL
SUSTAINABLE OUTCOMES Florida (1995)
Varlander (2009)
Lorentzen (2008)
Stark & Vedres (2006)
Web-based toolsCurricula and
teaching materials
empowering civic
involvement
St. Thomas Citizen Science Lab
36. BRAND NEW INITIATIVES. LINKED
WITH CURRENT SOCIO-POLITICAL
AND ECONOMIC REALITITES. DIRECT
PARTICIPATION IN DEMOCRACY.
Hinweis der Redaktion
which puts science communications in connection with wider questions of democracy. (discourses relevant to the decision making: define expectations, shape and parameters of power etc. SO incl. regulatory, official agro-economic advice to farmers, and legal).
Myapproach to science communication is that I begin from the premise that there is something particular about science communication.I bring a reflexive politics of knowledge approach to practical and empirical science communication work. This means that I approach communication informed by current theories that take seriously the power of texts in shaping social and cultural life. And, inspired science studies, I look at science as a special set of methods to investigate nature that to some degree reflect culture---say technological ideologies (technologies as engine of national economic competitiveness).
I will flesh this out during my talk while arguing that a reflexive science communication leads us to new possibilities for science-based institutions to move towards a more constructive pattern of scientific knowledge development and dissemination.
On one level these lawsuits are over the problem presented when an object protected by an intellectual property regime has a tendency to move around and reseed itself without intervention (we could call this “contamination” or more neutrally “adventitious spread” and more on this later).
Faced with the challenge of communicating their knowledge as scientific (i.e. politically valid) in the current regulatory regime, the farmers were enacting their democratic demands through the judicial institution in an attempt to open up biotechnological governance to broader public participation. READ QUOTATION
Farmers’ potentially useful and historically-based assessments of risk, their knowledge and their concerns faces a challenge of being communicated as scientific i.e. politically valid knowledge in the current regulatory regime which seems to not have adapted to changes taking place within the theoretical and even public realm regarding science communication.
What about the law as a tool for integrating farmer knowledge into the regulatory discourse?
This is a use of the law implicitly endorsed by the legislative environment for biotechnologies. There is widespread agreement that a failure to devise a novel regulatory structure addressing the unique concerns surrounding biotechnologies in Canada has these technologies vulnerable to litigation ((de Beer? see Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy, 1999)).
PAUSE HERE and then move to next slide
Situated within a politics of knowledge framework, CDA is I was particularly interested to chart what was being inculcated through discourse as legitimate knowledge with an eye on how the text might have been functioning in service of certain interests at the exclusion of others, reproducing particular power dynamics.
Schmeiser described to me his methodologies for seed development that could, following most understandings of science (both commonsense and philosophical), reasonably be called scientific: it is disciplined inquiry and practice aimed at successfully controlling natural processes. An accepted definition of expertise is the mastery of tacit knowledge belonging to the subject matter of particular domains through “common practice” or “enculturation” (Collins 2007, 24). And Schmeiser spends a large percentage of his statements and testimony establishing himself as an expert canola plant breeder and he suggests that Monsanto’s products threaten the products of his experimentation But in their rulings in Schmeiser, the Canadian courts invoke a particularly narrow notion of science and expertise equating science with laboratory-based practices.
Schmeiser described to me his methodologies for seed development that could, following most understandings of science (both commonsense and philosophical), reasonably be called scientific: it is disciplined inquiry and practice aimed at successfully controlling natural processes. An accepted definition of expertise is the mastery of tacit knowledge belonging to the subject matter of particular domains through “common practice” or “enculturation” (Collins 2007, 24). And Schmeiser spends a large percentage of his statements and testimony establishing himself as an expert canola plant breeder and he suggests that Monsanto’s products threaten the products of his experimentation But in their rulings in Schmeiser, the Canadian courts invoke a particularly narrow notion of science and expertise equating science with laboratory-based practices.