Knowledge, TechnologyandLawThe relationships between knowledge, technologies, and legal processes arecentral totheconstitutionof contemporarysocieties. As such, theyhavecome to provide the focus for a range of academic projects, across interdisci-plinary legal studies and the social sciences. The domains of medical law andethics, intellectual property law, environmental law and criminal law are justsome of those within which the pervasive place and impact of technoscienceis immediately apparent. At the same time, social scientists investigating themaking of technology and expertise in particular, scholars working withinthe tradition of science and technology studies frequently interrogate howregulation and legal processes, and the making of knowledge and technolo-gies, are intermingled in complex ways that come to shape and define eachother. This bookcharts theimportant interfacebetweenstudies of law,science and society, as explored from the perspectives of socio-legal studiesandtheincreasinglyinfluential fieldof scienceandtechnologystudies. Itbrings together scholars from both areas to interrogate the joint roles of lawand science in the construction and stabilization of socio-technical networks,objects, and standards, as well as their place in the production of contempo-rary social realities and subjectivities.Emilie Cloatre is a Senior Lecturer in Kent Law School at the University ofKent.Martyn Pickersgill is Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in BiomedicalEthics intheCentreforPopulationHealthSciencesat theUniversityofEdinburgh.Law, ScienceandSocietyseriesGeneral editorsJohnPaterson Julian WebbUniversityof Aberdeen, UK Universityof Melbourne, AustraliaLaws role has often been understood as one of implementing political deci-sions concerning the relationship between science and society. Increasingly,however, as our understanding of the complex dynamic between law, scienceand society deepens, this instrumental characterisation is seen to be inade-quate, but as yet we have only a limited conception of what might take itsplace. If progress is to be made in our legal and scientific understanding ofthe problems society faces, then there needs to be space for innovative andradical thinking about law and science. Law, Science and Society is intendedto provide that space.The overarching aim of the series is to support the publication of new andgroundbreaking empirical or theoretical contributions that will advanceunderstandingbetweenthe disciplines of law, andthe social, pure andapplied sciences. General topics relevant to the series include studies of: law and the international trade in science and technology; risk and the regulation of science and technology; law, science and the environment; the reception of scientific discourses by law and the legal process; law, chaos and complexity; law and the brain.Titles in this series:Absent EnvironmentsTheorising environmental law and the cityAndreas Philippopoulos-MihalopoulosUncertain Risks RegulatedEdited by Ellen Vos and Michelle EversonThe Regulation of Animal Health and WelfareScience, law and policyJohn McEldowney, Wyn Grant, and Graham MedleyKnowledge, Technology and LawEdited by Emilie Cloatre and Martyn PickersgillThis page intentionally left blankKnowledge, TechnologyandLawEditedbyEmilieCloatreandMartynPickersgillFirst published 2015by Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RNand by Routledge711 Third Avenue, NewYork, NY 10017a GlassHouse BookRoutledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2015 Emilie Cloatre and Martyn PickersgillThe right of Emilie Cloatre and Martyn Pickersgill to be identified asauthor of this work has been asserted by them in accordance withsections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, orother means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopyingand recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, withoutpermission in writing from the publishers.Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks orregistered trademarks, and are used only for identification andexplanation without intent to infringe.British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British LibraryLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataKnowledge, technology, and law / edited by Emilie Cloatre, MartynPickersgill.pages cm. (Law, science, and society)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-415-62862-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-203-79760-0 (ebk)1. Technology and law. 2. Science and law. I. Cloatre, Emilie, editor ofcompilation. II. Pickersgill, Martyn, editor of compilation.K487.T4K59 2014340'.11dc232014013342ISBN: 978-0-415-62862-4 (hbk)ISBN: 978-0-203-79760-0 (ebk)Typeset in Galliardby FiSH Books Ltd, EnfieldContentsNotes on contributors ixAcknowledgements xiIntroduction 1EMILIECLOATREANDMARTYNPICKERSGILLSECTION1Law, expertiseandpublicparticipation 151Science, uncertainty and the normative question of epistemicgovernance in policymaking 17SUJATHARAMAN2Contingent participation: imaginaries of sustainabletechnoscientific innovation in the European Union 33MARKL. FLEARANDTHOMASPFISTER3The voice of silence: UK patients silent resistance to theassisted reproduction regulations 50ILKETURKMENDAGSECTION2Objectsandepistemologiesincriminal law 694Unchaining research: processes of dis/empowerment and thesocial study of criminal law and investigation 71BARBARAPRAINSACK5Making the colposcope forensic: the medico-legalmanagement of a controversial visualisation device 86GETHINREES6Telling tales: some episodes from the multiple lives of thepolygraph machine 104ANDREWBALMERSECTION3Regulation, ethicsandvalues 1197Through the thicket and across the divide: successfullynavigating the regulatory landscape in life sciences research 121GRAEMELAURIEANDSHAWNH. E. HARMON8Misconduct hunting: research integrity via law, science andtechnology 137MARIE-ANDREJACOB9Financial derivatives and the challenge of performation:where contingency meets contestability 154DONATELLAALESSANDRINISECTION4Law, technoscienceandthestabilizationofknowledge 17110Epistemic jurisdictions: science and courts in regulatory(de)centralisation 173DAVIDE. WINICKOFF11Un-knowing exposure: toxic emergency housing, strategicinconclusivity and governance in the US Gulf South 189NICHOLASSHAPIRO12A likely story: HIV and the definition of disability in UKemployment equality law, 19962005 206EMILYGRABHAM13Paper prototypes 223ALAINPOTTAGEIndex 239viii ContentsNotes on contributorsDonatella Alessandrini is Reader in Lawin Kent LawSchool at theUniversity of Kent.Andrew Balmer is Simon Research Fellow in Sociology at the University ofManchester.Emilie Cloatre is a Senior Lecturer in Kent Law School at the University ofKent.MarkL. FlearisaLecturerintheSchool of LawatQueensUniversityBelfast.Emily Grabham is a Reader in Law in Kent Law School at the University ofKent.Shawn H.E. Harmon is Lecturer in Regulation and Risk in the School ofLaw at the University of Edinburgh.Marie-AndreJacobisaSeniorLecturerintheSchool of LawatKeeleUniversity.Graeme Laurie is Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in the School of Lawat the University of Edinburgh.Thomas Pfister is Director of the Energy Cultures Research Group in theDepartment of Social Science at Zeppelin University.Martyn Pickersgill is Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in BiomedicalEthics in the Centre for Population Health Sciences at the University ofEdinburgh.AlainPottage is Professor of Law in the Law Department at the LondonSchool of Economics and Political Science.BarbaraPrainsackisProfessorof SociologyattheDepartmentof SocialScience, Health and Medicine at Kings College London.Sujatha Ramanis Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Trust MakingScience Public ResearchProgramme inthe Institute for Science andSociety (ISS) at the University of Nottingham.GethinReesisLecturerinCriminologyintheDepartmentofSociology,Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Southampton.Nicholas Shapiro is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Sociology Departmentat Goldsmiths, University of London.Ilke Turkmendag is a Research Associate in the Department of SociologicalStudies at the Universtiy Sheffield.DavidE.Winickoff is Associate Professor of Bioethics and Society in theDepartment of Environmental Science, PolicyandManagement at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.x ContributorsAcknowledgementsWearegrateful, most of all, toour contributors: for their efforts, ideas,excitement, and patience during the process of this book project. Weacknowledge too the work of Colin Perrin, Rebekah Jenkins, and the otherstaff at Routledge who have facilitated its production. We would also like tothank the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for sponsor-ing the Technoscience, Law and Society Research Network. This providedaforumforandfurtherpropelledanumberofscholarlyengagementsthat generateddebateandexchangewhichinformedthecontentsof thisvolume.MartyngratefullyacknowledgestoothesupportoftheWellcomeTrust. Last, we are indebted to our home institutions who have generouslysupported us in this endeavour: the University of Kent and the University ofEdinburgh.This page intentionally left blankIntroductionEmilie Cloatre and Martyn PickersgillThe relationships between knowledge, technologies, and legal processes arecentral totheconstitutionof contemporarysocieties. As such, theyhavecome to be the focus for a range of academic projects, across interdisciplinarylegal studies and the social sciences. Legal scholars are commonly drawn toexploring the legal developments that respond to or are shaped by scientificinnovation. The domains of medical law and ethics, intellectual property law,environmental law and criminal law are just some of those within which thepervasive place and impact of technoscience is immediately apparent. At thesame time, social scientists investigatingthe makingof technology andexpertise in particular, scholars working within the tradition of science andtechnology studies (STS) frequently interrogate how regulation and legalprocesses, and the making of knowledge and technologies, are intermingledin complex ways that come to shape and define each other.The interrogation of law, science, and technology has also worked torender problematic any notion that these are tightly bounded things alwaysalready out there in the world, waiting patiently for analytic attention. Wemight, perhaps, broadly agree on what law and technoscience look like, butseekingtoprovideminuteandenduringdefinitionsonlyfurtherpluralizestheir ontologies. Accordingly, we are sceptical about the possibility of defin-itively specifiying the natures of knowledge, technologies, and legal processes even as we necessarily hold on to imaginaries of each of these in order towork and to live.It should be clear, then, that our intention with this book is certainly notto produce any kind of schematic about how law, science, and technol-ogy should relate to one another. Our project is a little different, and in somesenses it is modest: to bring together a range of perspectives on these enti-ties,inordertobegintoapprehendhowdifferentepistemiccommunitiesmight talk about them and their relationships, and hence how they are talkedintoexistence. Suchinterdisciplinaryconversations aroundtechnoscienceand law can, we believe, enable the issues at stake to be considered in morecritical depth, and bring to light some of the complexity of the interactionsbetween what we know, how we do things, and how we think we should live.Our modest agenda, then, enables us tobemoreambitious: byelidingresponsibility for answering standard normative questions, we seek to ener-gize reflection regarding (and perhaps the transformation of) thefoundations upon which normativity is usually enacted.Scholarship that speaks to our concerns has already been undertaken by arange of authors, and we have no wish to reinvent the wheel. We want toacknowledge our, and our contributors, intellectual debts. In particular, thesettlement of rules and the making of knowledge in the contexts of law andscience have been drawn into conversation (Latour 2002); the patterns thatemergeintheinteractionbetweenlegal institutions, scientificknowledge,and technological innovation have been interrogated (Brownsword andYeung2008; Jasanoff 1997; AronsonandCole 2009); andconceptualinsights from STS have become increasingly deployed to explore the makingof legal andpolitical norms andpractices (Riles 2011; deGoede2012;Pottage 2012).Theseexplorationshavebeenundertakenwithinavarietyofareas, fromenvironmental regulations, to the practices of biomedicine, as well as in thecontext of information technology and financial regulations. Medical devices,energy saving technologies, computers, lie detectors, stem cells, and other arte-facts, both spectacular and mundane, are now increasingly regarded as being atleastpartlydefinedbyandconstitutedthroughtheirlegality. Inthemessynetworks that stabilize these objects, legal processes thus come to be anothersite of entanglement between materials, techniques, cultures, and institutions,that are inherently contingent on the deployment of knowledge and technolo-gies, and established and emerging forms of expertise. Technoscience and law,ratherthanleaningoneachotherasindependentspheresofnorm-making,come to co-produce each other (Jasanoff, 2004), while remaining defined byparticular systemic modes of enunciation that participate in performing theirown uniqueness (Luhmann 1995; Pottage 2012).Scholars have devoted much attention to the links between new scientificpossibilities and emerging normative conflicts (as the history of the regula-tionof reproductivetechnologieshasdemonstrated, forexample; RagonandFranklin1998)andtothevarioussetsofsocial,legalanddemocraticquestionsraisedbysignificantevents, ordisasters(Petryna2002). Atthesame time, studies of practices that are, for different communities, everyday,mundane, or discrete have increasingly enriched our understanding of themany locations in which the entanglement of law and technoscience is visi-ble, and of the various surfaces upon which the production of knowledges isscaffolded, and even concretised, by legal events (Jacob 2012; Riles 2011;Cloatre 2013). Historical engagements with law and expertise demonstrateboth the transformation of these over the years through the mutations of theother (Jasanoff 1997), and the great extent to which certain types of tensionsand opportunities persevere (Leclerc 2005).As we intimated above, underlying much of the questioning of the links2 Emilie Cloatre and Martyn Pickersgillbetween law and science are issues pertaining to the nature of each institu-tion.Theportrayaloflawandscienceasseparatefieldsofknowledgeandactivity once dominated and, to an extent, continues to be evident within the legal literature. This resulted in a set of normative claims (persistent inmuchpublic andlegal discourse) regardinghowlegal processes should(better) emulate the methods of science, and its quest for truth rather thansettlement. Similarly, we can see that law is consistently called to be moreresponsive to technoscientific developments, and even to reformulate its ownlogics withregardtonovel (andtentative) knowledgeclaims (Pickersgill2011). As Sheila Jasanoff puts it:The representation of law and science as fundamentally different enter-prises has given rise to two strikingly recurrent themes in legal writingabout science: that of thecultureclash betweenlawyers (or legallytrained bureaucrats) and scientists, and the corollary that the culture oflawshouldstriveasfaraspossibletoassimilateitselftothecultureofscience when dealing with scientific issues.(Jasanoff 1997: 7)STS-inflected studies of law and science have for some time challenged theseclaims: the possibility, and desirability, of law becoming more scientific orbeingmademoreauthoritativethroughincorporatingscientificclaimsormimicking its epistemic norms becomes increasingly questionable. STS hasdemonstrated how science is produced through a heady mix of professionaldis/agreement, themanagement of uncertainty, thedance betweentheobserver and the observed and between the measure and the measured, thesilencingofsomevoicesandtheamplificationofothers,andtheongoingintertwinement of the material and the semiotic. Increasing attention to therole of legal discourse within this cocktail has been suggestive of the extentto which law and science exist in a relationship of co-constitution, or entan-glement. Accordingly, early normative claims that law should (or even could)follow science in such predetermined ways became less compelling.This reimagining of the relationship between law and technoscience alsobearssignificanceinrelationtoourunderstandingof lawandof broaderdebateswithininterdisciplinarylegal studies.Theworkoflawandsocietyscholarship, legal anthropology, critical legal scholarship, feminism, and racetheory, amongst others, has enjoined questions about what we take law toactuallybe, overthesameperiodof timeasSTSwasdeconstructingandredefining the identities of science (e.g. Constable 2007; Silbey and Ewick1998). Traditional engagements with the impact of law, in turn, came to bechallenged by more fluid understandings of its modes of operation, and itsco-constitutive entanglement with routinized practices, complicating furtherthe and society aspect of legal studies (e.g. Cloatre 2008, 2013; Pickersgill2013a; Jacob 2012). For Alain Pottage,Introduction 3thereisindeedmoresocietyinlawthanthereisinthesocietythatisinvoked by studies in law and society. Ironically, however, the effect isactually a retrenchment of the premise that law exists as a singular socialinstance that it is the business of the theorist to explain.(Pottage 2012: 179)Accordingly, many assumptions have come to be scrutinized about how lawfunctions, about its actual or imagined role, and about how norms and deci-sions are shaped or made. Laws internal machinery has been interrogated,andtheself-constitutionof lawas asystemof knowledgeandauthorityfreshly perceived. The externalities of law, and the meanings law adopts ineverydaylife, haveexpandedwhatourunderstandingof whatlegal spacemight encompass (Sibley andEwick2000). Just as boundaries betweenscienceandsociety,natureandculture,thatwereonceregardedasbrightand sharp were progressively shown by STS to be fuzzy (at the very least),interdisciplinaryscholarshiparoundthelaw has madethepossibilityofclearly delineating between this and the spaces it inhabits increasinglyquestionable.We followthis position below, and argue that the insights of STScontribute to a radical revisiting of the making and meaning of law a proj-ect we call, following other expansions of the remit of STS (e.g. MacKenzieet al. 2007), social studies of law. Explorations in law and technoscience,and the joint insights of STS and interdisciplinary legal scholarship inunpackingthe processes throughwhichknowledge is made andsocietyordered, have indeed opened up significant possibilities for questioning thenature of legal processes and the production of technoscience. Before turn-ing to this general claim, however, we engage in further detail with three keyelements that interrogations of knowledge, technologies, and law invite us toconsider.Understandingsof progressandregulatoryframingsMuch of the debate surrounding law and science has revolved around howlaw responds, or ought to respond, to new scientific developments, risks, andopportunities. The conversations here have often been loaded with signifi-cant policy pressures, with governments having to balance ethical concernswith the possibilities offered by new and at times controversial technolo-gies. Thetruism that law fails to keep up with scientific and technologicalinnovations has long been deconstructed, as the co-production of law andscience, and their inherent interdependency, have progressively beenproposed as a more adequate way of imagining these interactions (Jasanoff2004).A range of studies have explored how balances are made between contrast-ing interests regarding perceived needs to enable yet control new4 Emilie Cloatre and Martyn Pickersgilltechnologies, and between the rights and duties of citizens as well as hownew technologies themselves transform or re-embed particular understand-ingsof citizenship(FlearandPickersgill 2013; Flearetal. 2013; Jasanoff2011). Genetic technologies have been at the centre of many of these explo-rations,andthepasttwentyyearshaveseenaninflation ofthenumberofpublic debates that surround new scientific opportunities, and the normativechallenges that they raise. The regulation of science, and regulation throughscience, is nonetheless at stake in policy choices made far beyond these exam-ples; for example, when choosing which clean energies to facilitate, how toregulateindustriesinthefaceof climatechange, orhowtoengagewithnuclear energy.These questions all contain complex sets of issues relating not only to therole of law, but also to ideas of development and progress, and of the futuresthat societies accept, imagine, or strive for. Rather than being simply abouteither constraining or fostering innovation, normative responses to scienceand technology can come to establish new social understandings of who weare, and how we hope to live. Legal engagements with technoscience there-fore entail particular visions of society, and imply exclusions and silencing, aswell astheoccasional (re)involvementofvariousgroupsandinterests(cf.Minnow 1991). The regulatory framing of new technology becomes a usefulsite to explore how citizens contribute to social futures, how these are consti-tuted, and what is gained or lost in different types of regulatory strategies.Additionally, issues of social justice and (re)distribution are inherently entan-gledinregulatorychoices,asismostvisibleindebatesaboutpatentsandownershipoverbiotechnologyandpharmaceutical products(e.g. Hayden2003;Pottage2006).Eachstrategydeployed,andthebalancingofrightsand duties that are attached to technoscientific activities, will presume partic-ular notions of (un)fairness and (in)justice, and either challenge orperpetuate patterns of exclusion and inequality. The interrelationshipbetween law and scientific innovation is therefore complex, multilayered, andentangled within both choices about technological futures and, morediscreetly, about citizenship and social justice.Expertise, citizens, andthemakingof lawThe questioning of expertise is also central to exploring the deployment oflaw, and legal bureaucracies, and has been achieved most thoroughly in thecontext of thecourtroom. There, theways inwhichlegal andscientificknowledges construct and imagine their own spheres of authority, or achievea particular result, have been charted in contexts ranging from criminal totort to environmental law. STS scholars have demonstrated how the value ofexpert knowledge, andof particular technologies, inthe context of thecourtroom, is itself dependent on negotiation and resolutions that happenboth within and outside the courts (Jasanoff 1997). Visions of both law andIntroduction 5science in which these are, respectively, conceived of as pure constructions ofjustice, or of truth, have progressively been rendered more complicated thanearly narratives of trials might have implied.Explorations of expertise and the roles played by experts in broadly legalsettings havealsoopenedupdebates onthenatureof democracies. Thedemocratic premise of equal participation in the political sphere is often atstake in a context of (real or perceived) increased reliance on experts in deci-sion-making. At one level, the issue here is to reflect on the balancing thatmust, or can, be operated between democratic expectations and the necessityof grounding decision-making in informed knowledge. STS scholarship hasreconstructed and enriched questions pertinent to this debate. Highlightingthe contingency of knowledge, and the entanglements between epistemol-ogy, power andpolitics, leads, for example, tomuchreflectiononhowexpertise is mobilizedandframedby governments (local, national, andsupranational). Thenotionof expertiseitself appears (perhaps unsurpris-ingly) moreproblematicthroughanalyticengagements withinstances ofknowledge-making and institutional involvement by lay-experts (Callon etal. 2009; Epstein 1996). Finally, the idea of the public, and its homogene-ity and positionality with regard to new scientific evidence, has been refined.Indeed, it has beenpluralized, withthetermpublics employedwithinrecent scholarship to underscore the intrinsic heterogeneity of communities,subject positions and identities that are present within the public. Overall,theconnectionsbetweenknowledgeandlaw-makingappeartobreakandreformboundaries inways that arecontinuous withbroader patterns ofpower and exclusion that are not specific to technoscience, though at timesare amplified by the temptations of technocratic decision-making.Interrogatingtheinterlinksbetweenexpertknowledgeandthelawhasmoved from imagining legal and scientific expertise as independent spheresto revisiting them as entangled sites of reciprocal production. As neither lawnor science are perceived as isolated sites of social action, questions shift fromhow expert knowledge can best be used, to how the joint works of law andscience proceed to the validation and leveraging of knowledges, oftenrestructuring highly political debates into seemingly technical ones. Tensionsre-emerge when this mobility of politics is made apparent for example bythedisplacementtoeithercourtsorexpertcommitteesof highlypoliticalissues.ThinkingaboutlawandmaterialityEngagingwithlawandtechnoscienceinvitessignificantattentiontosocialpatterns, events, norms, and citizens, as developed above. However, it alsorequires a shift of attention to material sites of production, and deployment,of bothlegal andepistemicprocesses. Indeed, theroleof materialityinshaping, conditioning, and mediating the construction and action of law has6 Emilie Cloatre and Martyn Pickersgillbeen rendered visible by many commentators (Pottage and Sherman 2010;Cloatre and Dingwall 2013; Jacob 2012). This is in part a consequence ofthe progressive permeation of STS within the study of law. As the social studyof technoscience has carefully drawn out the many ways in which materialitymatters, the seizing of this importance by interdisciplinary legal scholars hasopened avenues for new interrogations of the law. Examining specific sites ofentanglement of law and technoscience therefore bring to the fore the signif-icance of materiality in the production of norms and the deployment of law.This provides forms of questioningthat havenot traditionallymobilizedlegal scholars, butwhicharenowincreasinglyseenasrelevant. ForJavierLezaun:The effacement of the labour involved in making legal categories mate-rial is evident in the lack of attention of legal scholars to the fabricationof the artefacts that incarnate legal entities. Even when the focus is onstandardization, or harmonization, the emphasis tends to be on theproduction of texts, rules, and criteria in other words, on processes ofwriting that continue and resemble the textual fabrication of the law.(Lezaun 2012: 38)Nevertheless, the claimthat materiality has largely beenassociatedwithtextual materiality inlegal scholarship, thoughcertainly once true, nowneeds to be nuanced slightly. Increasingly, attention is being paid to how lawbecomes entangled in other kinds of objects. Much of this has been stimu-lated by wider interest in actor-network theory and posthumanist philosophy(Barad2007), andanincreasedattentionwithinpolitical theory totheimport of matter (Bennett 2007).This critical reflection is important not only as a way of paying attention tothings, butalsobecausetheyoftensuggestaradical reimaginingofsocialontologies(Barad2007). Withinthesebroadertheoretical movements, theattentionpaidtomatter withinlegal scholarshiphas progressively movedbeyond the materiality of texts and towards the broader set of materials thatconditions the day-to-day activities of lawyering (Latour 2002; Riles 2000). Afurther shift directed attention to reflecting on how materials themselves cometo embed particular legal scripts and histories, or come to be formed, accepted,and transformed by legal processes (Cloatre 2013; Jacob 2012; Lezaun 2012).In turn, the material environment of the law, and the shaping of environmentsthrough the law, have been shown to be essential aspects of our understand-ings of the nature of legal processes (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos 2013). Themethodological implications of material explorations of law are, in turn, signif-icant, privileging critical and ethnographic approaches to legal processes andfostering further links between legal scholarship and the anthropologies of lawand science (e.g. Jacob and Riles 2007).Overall, at stake in these STS-inflected studies of law are the meanings ofIntroduction 7things in the shaping of legal processes, and in turn the significance of thelaw in producing forms of materiality and the inevitable interrelationshipsbetweenthese. Suchexplorations reveal howmaterials becomesites thatproduce, stabilize, and perpetuate particular kinds of power, and help renderapparent (potential) displacements of traditional forms of political action.Objects become socially charged both in regards to what they project of thelaw, and in what they enable (users of) the law to do.Social studiesof lawSomeof thecorecontributions of STStothewider social sciences andhumanitieshavebeenthegenerationofnewformsofcritical engagementwith the institutions of science and the social meanings of technology butalso, more broadly, the close documentation of how power/knowledge aremade and deployed in processes of ordering the social. In doing so, STS hasparticipated in challenging and deconstructing categories of sometimesentrenched beliefs, norms, and practices, unmaking assumptions as to whatconstitutes their foundations. When associated with the rich tradition of crit-ical forms of legal scholarship for the constant interrogation of the meaningand nature of law, of what does (or does not) set it aside from other socialinstitutionsandregimesofnormativity(Pickersgill 2012),STSopensupquestions about theboundaries of thelegal space, andenjoins us toaskagain: what is law?We suggest that articulatinglegal scholarshipandSTS has necessaryconsequences for understandings of law and inevitably results in deep chal-lenges to its institutional uniqueness and singularity as an object of study. Ifthe insights of STS are taken seriously, and integrated with the understand-ings of legality unfolded through conceptual and empirical interdisciplinarylegal scholarship, law seems to become a set of fluidly defined associationswithin shifting networks, even though its language, institutional landscapes,and modes of deployment may appear specific (or perhaps, more appositely,peculiar). Inotherwords, lawcanbereimaginedasco-constitutedratherthanpresupposed, inthewaythat social relations andobjects aremoregenerally, and this has significant implications for its study.STS thus allows for a radicalization of the question of law and, as Pottagesuggestswhenreflectingspecificallyonmateriality, pushesustoquestionwhether a deep engagement of law and STS more generally might not actu-ally lead to the dissolution of law as a social instance? (Pottage 2012: 180).Indeed, if our focus of inquiry turns towards the subtle processes of makingand ordering that scholars within STS have tended to pay attention to, thevision of law as a predetermined institution becomes difficult to sustain, asthe legal space becomes reimaginedas being itself constitutive of, andsubjectedto, broaderandfluidmaterial-semioticinteraction. Processesofsettlement can be unpacked in order to explore how things fall into place in8 Emilie Cloatre and Martyn Pickersgilla particular way, through the joint work of law, science, and other entangledprocesses, but the idea of law that transpires from each of these instances isto be determined rather than assumed. It is the analytic agenda that falls outfromthissetof propositions, withitsmethodological corollaries, thatweterm the Social Studies of Law.Workthat wemayretrospectivelycharacterizeas social studies of lawalready exists, of course, some of which is referred to above. It has also takentheformof what AnneliseRiles (2005) calls areturntothetechnical;enabled through a closer engagement with practices and the micro, and arenewed focus on the details of how legal technicalities and the routinizedpractices of lawyers matter to broader questions about society. There, STS-inflected studies of the law commonly meet the concerns of legalanthropology, as everyday praxis becomes intrinsic to the constitution of lawanditssocialrole.Theanalysisoflegalprocessesthusbecomesinherentlydependent on the repeated unpacking of a range of assumptions, discourses,practices, and objects. This, in turn, enables the exploration of the making ofparticular forms of knowledge (both legal and technoscientific), and of thewaysnorms, institutions, andthedeploymentoflegal rulesareinherentlyentangled in social, political, and material orders. Enjoined here is a concep-tual shift to regard law as a fluid notion that acquires its strength and stabilityby a range of means (verbal, institutional, textual, material ) through spaceand time. The methodological implications of this approach bear considera-tion, as (for instance) a microscopic examination of legal processes becomesa valuable tool through which to interrogate the contingent nature of law.If law is, or becomes, something different, through comprehension of itsentanglement with other sets of cultural or social practices, then this, as wehave suggested above, makes it by nature a fluid object, hard to seize andonlytemporarilystabilized. Nevertheless, theerosionof boundaries thatdelineate law fromother performances of the social does not mean,however, that technical manifestations of either law or science become irrel-evant or redundant for the observer. Just because law and its boundaries areperformed by societal praxis does not mean that it is irrelevant: it is a thingthat is important because it is believed by many to be a thing that is impor-tant. Both the thingness and the import are worthy of attention in terms oftheirconstruction, andthenormsandvaluesthattheycreate, propel andchallenge.Knowledge, technoscience, andlawTheoverridingaimof this book, therefore, is tomapout contemporarythemes andissues that emergefromthecloseinterrogationof thelinksbetweenlaw, technologiesandformsofknowledge, acrossthematicfieldsand disciplinary boundaries. As the dynamics between law and technosciencedevelop as foci of growing academic interest and, it should be noted, ofIntroduction 9policy and civil relevance it remains difficult to find overviews of the rangeofapproaches,ideas,methods,andconceptsthatshapeanddirectit.Thisbook seeks to display some of the diversity of strategies, preoccupations, andconceptsthatanimatethescholarshipinthisarea, aswell aswehopeprovide a means of propelling further theoretical and empirical work in whatwe have referred to as the social studies of law.Thechapterswhichfollowaredividedintofoursections,reflectingkeyquestions and domains of analysis in law and science scholarship.Section1, Law, expertise and public participation,interrogatestherela-tionships between expert knowledge and public involvement in legalprocesses and decision-making. In Chapter 1, Science, uncertainty and thenormative question of epistemic governance in policymaking, SujathaRaman interrogates the foundation of public participation in the productionof scientific knowledge, through insights from STS and political theory. Indoing so, she reflects on the complex role publics play in science-based deci-sion-making. This, inturn, opensupimportant questionsontheroleofexpert knowledge in public policy, and the positionality of publics in demo-cratic decision-making. Mark Flear and Thomas Pfister continue thisthematic focus in Chapter 2, Contingent participation: imaginaries ofsustainable technoscientific innovation in the European Union. Here, theyfocus more specifically on processes of inclusion and exclusion that operatein regulatory decision-making. Looking at the example of EUpolicy-making, they explore how a narrow definition of sustainable development,basedonspecifictechnoscientificimaginaries, hasnarrowedthespaceforpublic participationinEUenvironmental decision-making. Inher essay,Chapter 3, The voice of silence: UK patients silent resistance to the assistedreproduction regulations, Ilke Turkmendag interrogates the nature ofparticipation itself. She achieves this through a case study of how would-beparents engaged with the UK removal of spermdonor anonymity.Turkmendag illustrates how discreet forms of resistance and discontent weredeployed in response to the new law, offering a rich illustration of the subtleways in which publics elect to participate in shaping legal processes.In Section 2, Objects and epistemologies in criminal law, contributions turnto explorations of the making and stabilization of knowledge, and of tech-nologies of evidence, inthecourtroom. Focusedspecificallyoncriminaljustice settings, a central focus of much scholarship on law and science, thissectionalsoraisesbroaderissuesabout theroleof technoscienceinlegalsettlement. Insights from STS are used by Barbara Prainsack in Chapter 4,Unchaining research: processes of dis/empowerment and the social study ofcriminal law and investigation, to unpack some of the key assumptions andcategorizations that underlie commentaries on criminal justice and forensicscience. Focusing on two notions the nature of convictions and of convicts,on the one hand, and the role of forensic DNAas a technology ofindividualization, onthe other she questions howSTS tools canbe10 Emilie Cloatre and Martyn Pickersgilldeployed to critically interrogate unexamined assumptions about the natureof criminal justice processes. A focus on contested criminological technolo-gies is continued in Gethin Rees analysis of the colposcope in the context ofrapetrials.InChapter5,Makingthecolposcopeforensic:themedico-legal managementofacontroversial visualisationdevice, Reesanalysesitsusage and unveils some of the controversies and contestations that surroundit and which play out amongst particular communities of clinical, scientificand legal practice. He demonstrates how these debates are rooted in deeper,conflicting visions of the role of forensic medical practitioners in rape trials.Contest and controversy are also of import in Chapter 6, Telling tales: someepisodes from the multiple lives of the polygraph machine. Here, AndrewBalmerexaminesthehistoryofthestabilizationofanothertechnologyofevidence: the polygraph. His critical analysis demonstrates how a story thathas often been told as a determined process of technological development isinfact highlymessy, complex, andmultidirectional. Balmer suggests thatacknowledgingthemultiplelives of technologies is animportant part ofmaking sense of their role in legal systems.Section 3, Regulation, ethics and values, provides explorations of the entan-glement of regulation and governance with other discourses of normativity,andtheir practical andpolitical implications. InChapter 7, Throughthethicket and across the divide: successfully navigating the regulatory landscapein life sciences research, Graeme Laurie and Shawn Harmon document someof the potential discrepancies between what the law dictates, and what scien-tists feel is required to govern their work. Looking at the particular exampleof the regulatory separation between tissue and data, they argue for a moreresponsive approach to the legal governance of science. Marie-Andre Jacobturns tothe regulationof researchinChapter 8, Misconduct hunting:research integrity via law, science and technology. Specifically, she isconcerned with how integrity is governed. Jacob explores how self-regulationthroughtechnologies has become a central aspect of the governance ofresearch integrity. In doing so, she questions the boundary between legal andtechnological modes of regulation, andbetweenlawandscience inthemaking of ethical norms for scientific practice. The analysis of how a set offinancial technologiesfinancial derivativescanbeunderstoodasvalue-making technologies is the core of Chapter 9, Financial derivatives and thechallenge of performation: where contingency meets contestability, byDonatella Alessandrini. Employing insights from literatures in the social stud-iesoffinanceandpolitical economy,shechallengestheboundarybetweentechnologies and practices. In turn, Alessandrini asks, and helps us to answer,questions about how new forms of regulating and formatting markets can bederived from this understanding of derivatives in their complexity.Finally, contributions in Section 4, Law, technoscience and the stabilizationof knowledge, focus on the making of knowledge, and the joint roles of law andtechnoscience in producing and stabilizing forms of knowledge. DavidIntroduction 11Winickoff, inChapter 10, Epistemic jurisdictions: science andcourts inregulatory (de)centralisation, articulates the role of science in complexmodels of multi-level governance. Looking at examples from the regulationof food and climate change, he demonstrates how regulatory science shapessites of global governance, and mediates jurisdictional conflicts. In Chapter11, Un-knowing exposure: toxic emergency housing, strategic inconclusivityandgovernanceintheUSGulf South, NicholasShapirointerrogatestheproduction of certitude in legal processes surrounding chemical exposure inemergencyhousingintheUSGulf South. Hetracestheroleof scientificclaims in processes of un-knowing in federal governance and court proceed-ings, andexplorestheinterplaybetweenscientificandlegal knowledgesingenerating (un)certainty. Another uncertain relationship between science andlaw is set out by Emily Grabham in Chapter 12, A likely story: HIV and thedefinition of disability in UK employment equality law, 19962005. Here, byexploringthepositionof HIV/AIDs patients inthefaceof employmentequality law, she problematizes in particular the making of legal temporalitiesin the set of legal and medical discourses, objects and practices that matteredtothelegal processesatplay.Consequently,sheprovokesusintothinkingmore deeply about the dynamics between law and time. Finally, in Chapter13, Paper prototypes, AlainPottage analyses the nature of patents, byconsidering patent texts as prototypes. Looking back at the history of patentjurisprudence, anddrawingonSTSandrelatedtheoretical approaches, heexplores how a logic of prototyping and reproduction is a central aspect of theconstitution of patents, the implications of this for the position of ideas andtechniques in the making of inventions, and what this might suggest for ourunderstanding of patents as a particular legal and technoscientific object.Overall, the chapters chart some of the contemporary directions taken byscholarship in law and science, and start to articulate the variety of challengesthat emerge when seeking to critically engage with legal and scientific insti-tutions, processes, norms, andpractices. Althoughthecontributors sharesimilar concerns for the complexity andfluidity of these, questions areapproachedfromavarietyofconceptual perspectives, whichspeaktoandcomplement each other, and together represent a vantage point from whichwemightbetterviewthisstill emergingfieldofintellectual enquiry. Asaresult, we hope that this collection will enrich conversations both in inter-disciplinary legal studies andinSTS, andprovide a platformfor futuredebates and critical interrogations of the movements exemplified in the vari-ous case studies elaborated herein.ReferencesAronson, J. D. and Cole, S. A. (2009) Science and the death penalty: DNA, inno-cence, and the debate over capital punishment in the United States, Law & SocialInquiry, 34(3): 60333.12 Emilie Cloatre and Martyn PickersgillBarad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: QuantumPhysics and theEntanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press.Brownsword, R. and Yeung, K. (eds) (2008) Regulating Technologies: Legal Futures,Regulatory Frames and Technological Fixes, Oxford: Hart.Callon, M., Lescoumes, P. and Barthes, Y. (2009) Acting in an Uncertain World: AnEssay on Technical Democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Cloatre, E. (2008) TRIPS and pharmaceutical patents in Djibouti: an ANT analysisof socio-legal objects, Social and Legal Studies, 17(2): 26387.Cloatre, E. (2013) Pills for the Poorest: AnExplorationof TRIPSandAccess toMedication in Sub-Saharan Africa, London: Palgrave Macmillan.Cloatre, E. andDingwall, R. (2013) Embeddedregulation: themigrationofobjects, scripts and governance, Regulation and Governance, 7(3): 36586.Constable, M. (2007) Just Silences: the Limits andPossibilities of ModernLaw,Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.De Goede, M. (2012) Speculative Security: The Politics of Pursuing Terrorist Monies,Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Epstein, S. (1996)ImpureScience: AIDS, ActivismandthePolitics ofKnowledge,Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Flear,M.L.andPickersgill,M.D.(2013)Regulatoryorregulatingpublics?TheEuropean Unions regulation of emerging health technologies and citizen partic-ipation, Medical Law Review, 21(1): 3970.Flear, M. L., Farrell, A., Hervey, T. K. and Murphy, T. (eds) (2013) European Lawand New Health Technologies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hayden, C. (2003) WhenNature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking ofBioprospecting in Mexico, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Jacob, M.-A. (2012) Matching Organ with Donors: Legality and Kinship inTransplants, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Jacob,M.-J.andRiles,A.(2007)Thenewbureaucraciesofvirtue,Political andLegal Anthropology Review, 30(2): 18191.Jasanoff, S. (1997) Science at the Bar: Law, Science andTechnology inAmerica,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Jasanoff, S. (ed.) (2004) States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and SocialOrder, London: Routledge.Jasanoff, S. (ed.) (2011) Reframing Rights: Bioconstitutionalism in the Genetic Age,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Latour, B (2002) La fabrique du droit, Paris: La Decouverte.Leclerc, O. (2005) Le juge et lexpert. Contribution ltude des rapports entre le droitet la science, Paris: LGDJ.Lezaun, J. (2012) The pragmatic sanction of materials: notes for an ethnography oflegal substances, Journal of Law and Society, 39(1): 2038.Luhmann, N. (1995) Social Systems, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Mackenzie, D., Muniesa, F. and Siu, L. (2007) Do Economists Make Markets: On thePerformativity of Economics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Minnow,M.(1991)Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion and AmericanLaw, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Petryna, A. (2002) Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl, Princeton, NJ:Introduction 13Princeton University Press.Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. (2013) Atmospheres of law: senses, affects,lawscapes, Emotion, Space and Society, 7(1): 3544.Pickersgill, M. (2011) Connecting neuroscience and law: anticipatory discourse andthe role of sociotechnical imaginaries, New Genetics and Society, 30(1): 2740.Pickersgill, M. (2012) The co-production of science, ethics and emotion, Science,Technology & Human Values, 37(6): 579603.Pickersgill, M. (2013a) How personality became treatable: the mutual constitutionof clinical knowledgeandmental healthlaw, Social Studies of Science, 43(1):3053.Pickersgill, M. D. (2013b) Sociotechnical innovation in mental health: articulatingcomplexity, inFlear, M. L., Farrell, A., Hervey, T. K., andMurphy, T. (eds),European Law and New Health Technologies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.32342.Pottage, A. (2006)Toomuchownership: bioprospectingintheageof syntheticbiology, BioSocieties, 1(2): 13759.Pottage, A. (2012)Thematerialityof what?, JournalofLawandSociety, 39(1):16783.Pottage, A and Sherman, B. (2010) Figures of Invention: A History of Modern PatentLaw, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Ragon, H. and Franklin, S. (1998) Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power, andTechnological Innovation, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Riles, A. (2000) The Network Inside Out, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Riles, A. (2005) A new agenda for the cultural study of law: taking on the techni-calities, Buffalo Law Review, 53: 9731033.Riles, A. (2011) Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoninginthe Global FinancialMarkets, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Silbey, S. and Ewick, P. (1998) The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life,Chicago: University of Chicago Press.14 Emilie Cloatre and Martyn PickersgillSection 1Law, expertise and publicparticipationThis page intentionally left blankChapter 1Science, uncertainty and thenormative question ofepistemic governance inpolicymakingSujatha RamanIntroductionWhat role should science play in the making of law and public policy? Thequestionisrelevantforatleastthreereasons.First,sciencebothidentifies(e.g., potential hazards to health and the environment) and generates prob-lems (e.g., potential hazards posed by research and associated technologies),and policymakers are increasingly required to acknowledge and enable theirgovernance. Second, science offers more detailed knowledge on the specificnatureofproblems(e.g.,atwhatleveldosomepotentialhazardsbecomesignificant?), ways of addressing them, and their impacts (e.g., might we beable to clean up pollution with microbial forms?). Nor is this restricted tohazards alone or tothe natural sciences, as the social/economic/policysciences alsoidentify, generate, specifyandoffer solutions toaspirationsaround finance, social security, education, health and so on. Third, the ques-tion has become resonant in wider public discourse especially in the UK, withgovernment science advisors, scientists and science popularizers, politicians,journalists and academics debating the subject.1In this context, I will explorehowwemightthinkabouttherolethatscienceshouldplayinthepolicycontext from an STS and socio-legal studies standpoint.In a recent example of the wider debate over science and policymaking,astronomer/broadcaster BrianCoxandactor/writer RobinInce (2012)point out that sciencederives its status as thebest availableapproachtounderstanding nature from the fact that its findings are regularly subject totestingandrevisioninthefaceof newevidence.2Science, itappears, can1 For example, the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology publisheda widely cited report on Science and Society in 2000 in the context of controversy over therole of science advice in the BSE crisis and protests over GM crop trials. The think-tankDemos published several reports on science policy and specific areas of policy in the 2000sas did a number of learned societies including the Royal Society. In the 2010s, blogs onscience policy matters appear regularly in the Guardian and elsewhere on the internet.2 The status of social science as a scientific way of understanding social phenomena is morecontested even fromwithin, but the broad acknowledgement that it involves or should involvesystematic methods (thus meriting the status of specialist knowledge) is less controversial.therefore offer the groundingrequiredfor policymakingbecause of therigour of its standards for generating knowledge. However, STS studies castdoubt on this type of argument for science-based policymaking (e.g., Irwin2008; Jasanoff 1991; Sarewitz 2004; Weingart 1999; Wynne 2010). In thischapter,Iexaminethegroundsforthiscritiqueandoutlineanalternativenormative perspective on science-in-policymaking that builds on an emerg-ingpolitical theoryof scienceanddemocracy(e.g., Brown2009; Guston2000; Jasanoff 2003a, 2003b, 2013). This perspective is concerned with theneed for what I call epistemic governance or the governance of knowledge-for-governance.I suggest that, contrary to common assumptions that STS seeks todispense with or downplay science altogether, a key insight fromSTSresearch is that the scientific knowledge which is important for policymakingis a distinctively hybrid object straddling both science and politics. In prac-tice, someof thishybridityhasbeenlost intechnocraticdiscourseaboutsoundscience whichhas inturnledtosuggestions for areturntotheprimacyofelectedlaw-makerswithalesserroleforscience.However,thenotion that science-in-policymaking is a hybrid form of expertise highlightsthe role of delegation as a principle of liberal democracy. I will explore theimplications of the notionof expertise as delegatedauthority (Jasanoff2003a) for how we think about problems of scientific uncertainty and publicinvolvement around decision-making in technical domains.First, a few clarifications are in order. A variety of knowledge claims maybe advanced in policymaking processes some of them dubious or openlycontestedwithoutchangingthepolicydecisionstheyhavebeenusedtojustify.3But if we are interested in the role that knowledge ought to play inpolicy, thenwewant toknowhowthis knowledgeis produced, what itconsistsof, howreal andpotential disagreementsaremanaged, andwhatforms of evidenceareacceptable inpluralisticsocieties (Jasanoff 1991).This is the domain of epistemic governance or the governance of knowl-edge-for-governance.4Whilegovernanceinpracticeinvolvesdiverseactorswithin and beyond the state and this is no less characteristic of knowledgeissues (Irwin 2008), I focus on the normative challenges for science adviceproduced through and for the state.18 Sujatha Raman3 For example, some of the evidence used by Coalition government ministers in the UK atthe time of writing to justify economic austerity, social security cuts or sweeping changesin education has been challenged but to no policy effect.4 Thetermscience-basedpolicymakingorscientificgovernancearecommonlyusedtosignal this domain, but since STS scholars take issue with the received view of science andopen up the question of how different knowledge claims should be engaged with in poli-cymaking, epistemic governance captures it better.Technocracy, decisionismandpopulism?Normativemodelsof science/policyThe headline of Cox and Inces (2012) opinion-piece is as follows: politiciansmust not elevate mere opinion over science (italics mine).5The phrasing oftheir normative position is telling where politics is represented as embod-ied in a specific group of people (politicians), science lacks similar grounding.Aside from mentioning two famous scientists, the opinion-piece pits politi-cians against science as a rarefied force. But if the production of science forpolicy is a social activity as STS and socio-legal scholars highlight, any norma-tive model needs to be grounded in a sense of how science is embodied andmadematerial tolegislative/political questions. Inthissection, Iexaminewhy the normative questionof howscience shouldrelate topolicy hasbecome a question about the proper role of experts vis--vis law-makers andthe public, and consider three ways in which this relationship has been tradi-tionally conceptualized.If science is taken to be the body of knowledge produced by researchersand contained in journals, then as Stehr and Grundmann (2011) argue, it isunlikelythatmuchofthiscanbedirectlyrelevanttopolicymaking.Whenscience puts new problems on the policy agenda such as climate change orwhen evidence of global warming is challenged, it is expertise that is centre-stage, or, more specifically, experts who interpret, translate and putknowledge in context for policymaking and policy debate (Stehr andGrundmann 2012). Individual studies cannot be the basis of policymakingsince any one study of, say, the link between hurricanes and global climatechange or the risk of transmission of a new cattle disease to humans willneed to be interpreted and put in context. In practice, policymakers mightattempt to ground their decisions in a single piece of evidence, but from anormative standpoint, they need to consider expert judgement on the cred-ibility of evidence, the standards to which any one study was done and howits findings compares with others, and how to interpret the implications ofmultiple sources of evidence. In this respect, the notion of science-based orevidence-based policymaking can be misleading if it implies that evidencespeaks for itself unmediated by particular agents.So, while political actors may appeal to the science or scientific evidencefor grounding policy claims, academic debate on this question has come torevolve around how we ought to understand the role of experts who medi-ate that evidence and how this role should be positioned in relation to thepublicandpolicymakers(e.g., Collinsetal. 2010; StehrandGrundmann2012; Jasanoff 2003a; Kitcher 2001; Turner 2003). To make sense of whatisatstakehere,itisworthconsideringtwoclassicnormativepositionsonexperts-in-policymaking: technocracy and decisionism(Weingart 1999).Science and uncertainty 195 Though their argument is perhaps more complex than suggested by the headline.Althoughtheseemergedinrelationtotheroleof bureaucrats, theyhavebeen translated to make sense of experts, and more recently, experts provid-ing scientific advice to government. The technocratic model associated withComtesseventeenth-centuryvisionislooselydefinedasrulebyasecularpriesthood of experts (sociologists in his account) while Webers decision-istmodel putpolitical leadersontopinthattheywereexpectedtofirstdefine the goals of policy while experts (bureaucrats in his account) wereconfined to supplying knowledge of the means for achieving them and moni-toringimplementation(Millstone 2007).6Webers notionof value-freesciencerestednot somuchonafear that reliableknowledgewouldbecorrupted by politics but on a desire to keep science out of important value-based judgements which Weber saw as the proper domain of sovereign rulers(Proctor 1991). Decisionismtherefore presumes a clear divide betweenvalues (the domain of politics) and facts (the domain of science). By contrast,theoriginal Comteanvisionblurredtheboundarybetweenexpertiseasascientific project and a political one (Fuller 2007). Derived from a belief inthe superiority of expert judgement over both the sovereign and the popu-lace, technocracy in this sense would give experts the responsibility for valuejudgements as well as factual ones.The normative case against technocracy in the sense of simply leavingpolicy decisions in the hands of experts without political or public oversight is straightforward. Technocracy assumes elite privilege, the notion that aclassofpeopleissomehowspeciallyequippedtothepowersofreasoningrequired for decision-making (Brown 2009; Kitcher 2001). In contempo-rarydiscourse, it is raretofindarticulations of apureComteanvision.Rather,theComteaninclinationco-exists withtheWeberianinawaythatallows technocratic advocates to clearly separate politics as arbiter of value-basedchoices andscienceas provider of facts (whichmaybesubject torevision, but which is held to be the most reliable knowledge available at anypoint in time).Forexample, CoxandInce(2012)observethatpoliticiansarefreetodisregard scientific findings and recommendations, but they then argue thatpoliticians must clarify in scientific terms what it is they are disregarding andwhy. They acknowledge that policy responses toproblems identifiedbysciencearenotjustscientificonessincetheyhavemoral, geopolitical andeconomic elements but they see policy and wider political debate on valuejudgements andchoices for actioncomingaftersciencehas suppliedthe(value-neutral)facts. Thetypical argument hereis: politicianscanchoosewhat to do about climate change or decide how to regulate GM crops, butthey must proceed on the basis of sound science which confirms that the20 Sujatha Raman6 It should be noted that the term technocracy emerged later in the twentieth century, butits roots are usually traced to Auguste Comte and Henri Saint-Simon.risk ofGMcrops islowandthatofclimatechangeishigh.7Thispositionaccommodatesdecisionisminonesense(electedpoliticianshaveultimateresponsibility for policy decisions in existing democracies), and a version oftechnocracy based on the virtues of sound science rather than of a group ofpeople who are supposed to embody science. Appealing to elite privilege isnolongerneeded, it appears; instead, wehavetechnocracy-without-tech-nocrats, reconciled with the demands of a democracy-of-elected-rulers.On occasion, the technocratic/decisionist nexus has translated intocampaigns for getting more people with scientific training into Parliament,the logic being that these political agents would also be scientific agents andhence able to make science-based decisions.8This has the virtue of at leastpartly recognizing how science is embodied. But neither version of contem-porary technocratic philosophy engages adequately with the implications forpolicymaking of scientific disagreements and value judgements withinscience,nordoesitconsiderthelimitsofdecisionismifthismeanssimplyleaving decisions to politicians. Before exploring this further, we might ask:are there normative alternatives beyond technocracy or decisionism?A third model is commonly characterized as populism, usually by way ofcritiquing the concept of public involvement in policymaking rather than toadvance it. STS scholars have been charged from within the discipline of fail-ing to stand up to the dangers of populism (e.g., Collinset al. 2010) andfrom outside for promoting relativist/postmodernist approaches to knowl-edge (Kuntz 2012; Taverne 2005). Later I will show why this is a misreadingof STS contributions; for the moment, let us consider the normative case forinvolving the public at all in science-based policymaking.Over twenty years ago, the American political scientist, Peter May, set outtheproblemofwhathecalledpolicies-without-publics(May1991).9Mayarguedthat technical matters suchas natural andtechnological hazards,biodiversity, endangered species and innovation policy carried few incentivesfor the formationof organizedpublic groups toparticipate actively indebate.10Perceived as remote from everyday concerns with high costs associ-ated with participation for limited benefit, these domains were dominated byScience and uncertainty 217 Cox and Ince use the example of climate change, but see Wynne (2010) for a comparisonof how science-based arguments for policy are articulated in the case of climate change asopposed to GMOs.8 For example: http://societyofbiologyblog.org/do-we-need-more-scientists-in-parlia-ment/ (accessed 21 September 2013).9 In keeping with the pluralist tradition in political science, he defined publics (rather thanthe public) as professional associations, producer groups, consumer groups, tradegroups, public interest groups, neighborhood groups, or other groups surroundingcommon issue interests (May 1991: 190).10 May citedearthquakes, mass-producedvaccines andhouseholdradonas examples ofhazards. He also added budget policy, an area defined by economics, but one I am brack-eting for reasons of space.scientific/technical communities withpolicydiscussions occurringinthebackwaters of political institutions (May 1991: 194). Yet, far from being atechnocratic paradise, policy domains without publics lacked adequate mech-anisms for identifying key issues, defining problems and designing policies.For May, actively engaged publics were essential for policymaking even indomains permeated by scientific and technical matters. His argument was lessabout concerns over elite privilege and more about the substantive matter ofadequacyof knowledgefordecision-making. WritingintheSTStraditionbut drawingfromDewey, Marres (2007) makes asimilar argument thatpublic involvement in policymaking is important for issue formation. Thesearenot populist arguments inthesenseof just leavingdecisions tothepeople but rather arguments for acknowledging the factual and value-basedcomplexity of policy matters.Indeed, despite their prevalence, all three models technocracy, decision-ism, populismareeasytoattackinsofarastheyrest onthemisleadinglanguage of leaving decisions to one group of agents or the other. In therestofthechapter, Iwill elaboratewhySTSoffersnormativeinsightsformaking a place in policymaking for science without technocracy, the publicwithoutpopulism,andthepolitical processwithoutdecisionism.Science-based democratic policymaking may well be a good model to aspire to solong as we are clear about what we mean by science and by democracy andhow these are embodied in practice. To unpack this, the next section consid-ers insights fromover thirty years of STS research on science andpolicymaking.Uncertaintyandthehybridobjectof science-in-policySTS insights on science-in-policymaking are rooted in controversies over riskassessment in regulatory policy, especially around environmental issues.Indeed, Mays account of the absence of publics around environmental regu-lation is at odds with numerous experiences detailed in this literature of howscience has been openly contested rather than been left in institutional back-waters, generating uncertainty about the validity of specificscientific/evidentiaryassertionsusedtounderpindecisions. Thesestudiesalso highlight why the public legitimacy of science advice and policymakinghas been called into question for failing to engage adequately with the basisfor these contestations. Appeals to sound science have been problematizedin the process. As I detail below, the key insight from these studies is abouthow uncertainty has been managed rather than the fact that it exists.Sincethe1970s, atleastintheUSA, publicdebatewasamplyevidentaroundprocessesforregulatingpotential environmental hazards(Jasanoff1990). Ratherthanprovidingthebasisforpublicagenciestodepoliticizedecision-making, science became embroiledinpolitics as citizen-groupschallenged the evidence used to make policy on hazards of industrial22 Sujatha Ramanchemicals, nuclear power plants, construction of airport runways and otherostensiblyesotericmatters. Likewise, industrygroupswhoquestionedtheneedfor regulationbyusingrival scientificstudies tochallengeevidenceofferedof hazardalsopoliticizedscience, a patternthat persists today.Discussions over the credibility and policy implications of different scientificstudies that might have been expected to remain within closed circles weremade public by groups from different sides of the political spectrum.By contrast, systems of regulation in Europe at the time seemed to fit theclosed, depoliticized policymaking style described by May but these too cameto be challenged. For example, Horlick-Jones and de Marchi (1995) warnedthat high-profile controversies were eroding the credibility of science adviceandthreateningtotransformEuropean-style negotiateddecision-makingintoUS-style gridlock. The linkacknowledgedin1996betweena fataldiseaseincattle(BSE)anditsvariantinhumans(v-CJD)provokedwide-spread criticism of earlier government attempts to downplay the risk. As wellas BSE, controversies involvingtheroleof science, scienceadvisors andorganized publics in policies related to pesticides, genetically modified crops,vaccination, climatechange, classificationof drugs andother issues haveopened up the question of the role that science plays and should play in poli-cymaking. In this context, there are concerns that science is being politicizedwiththeevidencecherry-picked tosuitspecificideological interestsanduncertainties exaggerated even where there is insufficient warrant.11Early STS work highlighted several examples of such deliber-ate/intentional politicization of science-in-policy, but located this outcomein the nature of science itself. Relevance to policy destroyed the mechanismsbywhichscientistsachieveconsensus(CollingridgeandReeve1986),andthe simultaneous increase in policy involvement by scientists accompanied byadecliningcapacitytoresolvepolitical conflict becameacentral paradox(Weingart 1999). The point here is that science requires some level ofcontainment or suspension of critique in order for knowledge claims to becertified; these claims retain authority insofar as their underlying assumptionsremain tacit. But when the political stakes are high, the likelihood of theseassumptions being scrutinized and contested is also high if only because it ispossible to make different assumptions and draw different inferences(Collingridge andReeve 1986). Whenstakes are high, the relationshipbetweenscienceandpolicybecomes over-critical, i.e., characterizedbyendless debatebetweencompetinginterest-groups over technical points.Sarewitz (2004) however, traces the difficulty of grounding policies insciencetoanexcessof objectivity ratherthanpolitical differencesalone.Thisarisesfromtheinternal complexityofscience(andultimately, natureScience and uncertainty 2311 See Cox and Ince (2012); also the argument set out by former UK Chief Scientific Advisor,John Beddington (2011).itself), since, for example, molecular biologists and ecological scientists studythe hazards of GMOs differently with different criteria for what counts as ahazard and as evidence that one exists. For Sarewitz too, the difficulties ofscience-based policymakingarisefromamistakenviewthat sciencecanprovide a firm basis for decisions.However, others sharing the emphasis on tacit assumptions that underpinscience (and which when made explicit are potentially open to contestation),highlight the distinctive nature of scientific work taking place at the inter-face with policymaking. Rather than making a case for limiting the role ofscienceperse, theseauthors makeonefor limitingtheroleof scientism(Wynne2010).Thismeanspayingattentiontohowuncertainty,scientificdisagreementandplural inputsareframedandmanagedintheprocessofgenerating knowledge for policy. Independent advisory committees consti-tutedbythestate, researchdivisionswithingovernmentdepartmentsandtrans-national advisory bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC) produce regulatory science which is different fromacademicscienceasitisspecificallygeneratedtoanswerpolicyquestions.Informedbysuchconceptsasboundarywork(lookingempiricallyathowboundaries between science and non-science are drawn in different instancesoften using different standards) and framing (asking how a policy questionand the role of scientific knowledge in addressing that question are implicitlydefined in some ways as opposed to others), this research highlights ways inwhich regulatory science can be understood as a hybrid of factual and value-based judgements (e.g., Irwin 1995, 2008; Jasanoff 1990; Wynne 1992).For example, inthecaseof climatescienceandpolicy, theknowledgeclaims at stake are different from purely scientific ones (e.g., how has globaltemperaturechangedover time? what is therelationshipbetweencarbondioxide and global temperature change?). In science-in-policy, the questionsare instead: how significant is the relationship between carbon dioxide andtemperature change for policy? What sort of standards and actions are appro-priate?Whobearstheburdenofprooforhowistheburdendistributed?Howshouldtheknowledgeclaimsofdifferentpartiesbeengaged?Thesequestions are hybrids of science/politics and cannot be addressed entirely byeither side (Jasanoff 2013).In practice, regulatory science has not always acknowledged or engagedsufficiently with different claims frompublics, underlying value-basedassumptionsinscientificassessments, orwiththelimitsandconditionsofexpert judgements (Irwin 1995; Jasanoff 1990; Stilgoe et al. 2006; Wynne2010). For example, whereprobabilisticjudgements areinvolved, differ-ences between using frequency data where these exist and Bayesianjudgements (which are based on expert interpretations) have invited scrutiny.Likewise, different value judgements are involved in preferring Type 2 (falsenegative) versus Type 1 (false positive) errors in statistical hypothesis testingof hazards (Jasanoff 1991). This typeof conditionalityof claims is often24 Sujatha Ramaninvisible in invocations of sound science. For example, Irwin (1995)showedthatforfarmworkers,therecommendedmethodofsprayingthe2,4,5-T pesticide assumed by the Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP)simply bore no resemblance to conditions on the ground. The ACP arguedthere was no evidence to link miscarriages/birth deformities highlighted byworkers to pesticides, but this judgement was based on laboratory conditionswhichwereradicallydifferentfromworkingconditions.STShasthereforehighlighted differences between risk (where the parameters are known andestimates canbemadewithconfidence) andmorecomplexsituations ofuncertainty, ignoranceandindeterminacywheretheseconditions donothold (Wynne 1992).Importantly, this line of workalsoconsiders howuncertainty canbeproducedandperpetuatedbyactors whoinsist onabsolutist standards ofscientific proof . Like scientists in the wider debate have argued, decision-making requires some closing down of uncertainty as well as due recognitionof tacit assumptions of scientific claims that might be open to challenge. Butwhat tends to be missed is the point that uncertainty is only a problem for atechnocratic philosophy that claims science can supply value-free facts as thebasis for policy. Epistemicdoubt is amplifiedwheresciencebears suchaburden, Wynne (2010) argues, at the expense of the broader public judge-ments required for collective decision-making. Some scientists have, ofcourse, acknowledged the distinctive nature of science produced for policy.Indeed, nuclear physicist, Alvin Weinberg (1972) was one of the first to makethepointwithhisconceptof trans-science. IntheUKdebateondrugspolicytriggeredbythegovernmentsackingitschief advisor, DavidNutt,science writer Sue Blackmore acknowledged that there was little in sciencethat was pure fact; the advisory committee in question necessarily engagedwith judgements about what to count as harm and how to weigh differentharms as well as physiological evidence.12DrawingonSTSwork, climatescientist Mike Hulme (2009) makes a crucial point: scientific knowledge istransformed through its interaction in the social world and what will countas knowledgefor policymaybedifferent fromwhat counts as suchforresearch/academic science. What thenarethenormativeimplications oftheseinsights onthenatureof scientificknowledge(or moreaccurately,expertise) produced for policymaking?Backtodecisionism?Or, epistemicgovernanceasaproblemof delegationFrom the above diagnosis, different conclusions have been drawn on the rolethatsciencecanandshouldplayindecision-making. OneresponseseemsScience and uncertainty 2512 www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/drugs-science-evidence (accessed21 September 2013).perilously close to decisionism; for example, the argument that if science istoo complex and plural to be able to underpin policy decisions, policymak-ers must first sort out what are really value-based conflicts using the normalnegotiating procedures of democratic politics (Collingridge and Reeve 1986;Sarewitz 2004). This seems to re-draw the boundary between factual claimsand value choices, only giving primacy to the latter and a notion of politicsthat is stripped of the ability to draw on the former. By contrast, Collins etal. (2010) strongly underline the need for scientific expertise in policymak-ing,butstilldosoonthebasisofacleanseparation betweentheroleforexperts (provide facts) and the role for politics (adjudicate on values). Pielke(2007) acknowledges the difficulty of this boundary, but his normative vision especially in domains where there is strong disagreement on both factualandvaluequestionsisoneof scientistsbeinghonestbrokers betweendifferent policy options with their varying knowledge bases rather than advo-cating a particular position.Butthereturntodecisionismfailstogettotheheartof theideathatscience in the sense of expert advice for policymaking is supposed to bea form of reason, a hybrid of scientific and political or value judgement. Inaddition to transforming the received view of science-in-policymaking, thisnotion also provides the normative ballast to challenge politics as business-as-usual bargaining. Although bargaining may be the normal mode ofgovernmental politics, the notionof politics assumedinthe debate onscience advice must allow for aspirations of legitimacy. Legitimacy necessar-ilyinvolves normativejudgements of better or worsedecisions (not leastfrom publics who may wish to challenge business-as-usual politics), judge-mentsthatrelyonknowledgeasEzrahi (1990)writingontheoriginsofliberal-democraticthought clarifies. Ezrahi highlights akeyphilosophicaltension in the eighteenth century between, on the one hand, the values ofliberty, equality and Enlightenment notions of contingency, and on the otherthe case for order and governance. If absolutist rule was no longer justifiableintheabsenceofadivinelyordainedvisionoftheworld,ifpeople(male,property-owning)arefreeandequal andcapableofdisagreeingwitheachother, how then was order possible or even justifiable? How could a selectfewbelegitimatelyresponsiblefor governingtherest? Puttingasidetheexclusions embedded in the definitions of freedom and equality at the time,the answer for classical theorists of liberal democracy came from the ScientificRevolution. The notion of modern, experimental science as producinguniversal (depersonalized) knowledge through methods that were transpar-ent to all made it possible to develop a case for liberal-democratic rule basedonpublicknowledgeaccessibletothegovernedandwhererulersactionswere observable by citizens.So, the expectation that public knowledge informs the practice of govern-mentandthatthispracticecan,inprinciple,beevaluatedbythepubliciscentral to the normative idea of liberal democracy. This means the question26 Sujatha Ramanof the proper role for science-in-policymaking cannot be resolved by givingprimacy in Weberian-decisionist fashion to a fact-free politics in response tothe tribulations of value-free notions of technocracy/scientism. How thoughcanthecentralproblemforepistemicgovernance,namely,theuncertaintyentailed by multiple knowledge claims on a policy issue and the potential fortacit assumptions in any of these to be contested, be addressed? The princi-ples I outline below are threefold.First is the normative principle of transparency in mechanisms for handlingpluralityof knowledge. Advisoryinstitutionsalreadyhavemechanismsfordealingwithepistemic disagreement amongst experts, for better or forworse. These may differ across regulatory cultures as Jasanoff (1991) shows,highlighting the problems of overly formal, quantitative methods for resolv-ing discrepancy between different studies that needed to be aggregated todetermine carcinogenic risk(inher case study). Rule-basedriskanalysisattracted criticism for false precision, the failure to be transparent about valuejudgements made in statistical assessments, and ironically, for being insuffi-ciently scientific inits inability tobe responsive tonewknowledge. Bycontrast, the informal, negotiated methods of British regulatory culture havealso been critiqued for the failure to consider public and scientific challengesto established risk assessment based on animal models in toxicology for regu-lation of industrial chemicals (Diggle 2007). This again underlines the needfor reasoned judgement and for this judgement to be more transparent toexternal scrutiny. Hulme (2009) notes that the use of subjective (Bayesian)assessment to estimate risk of future events in the face of uncertainty is anacceptedmethodinscience; likewise, whenstakesarehighandthereisaneed for timely decisions to be made, methods to develop consensusamongst conflictingexpert assessments maybeentirelyjustified. But thesubstantivelegitimacyof suchresolutions of uncertaintyrests onmakingtheir basis public, evenif transparency cannot guarantee the closure ofcontroversy outcomes in practice will rest on how different political actorsmobilize in response.Second, normative principles including transparency are necessarily inter-preted in the context of judgement about what is the public interest. Theremay be good reasons to limit or challenge demands for transparency if thesearise from purely private-corporate interests oriented towards the deliberatedeconstructionof scientificevidencetowardoff regulation(seeJasanoff2006). Inaddition, criteriaforwhatcountsasgoodjudgementwill varyacross political systems (Jasanoff 2005), thoughthesecaninturnevolvethroughexperienceanddebateasweseeintheUKcase. Aninterest innormative principles does not mean that these differences should be erased.Thirdandmostimportant, focusingonexpertsratherthanscienceinpolicymaking brings to the forefront the delegation of specialist judgementsto experts on par with more widely recognized forms of delegation of deci-sions by the public to elected representatives. Expertise is a formofScience and uncertainty 27delegatedauthority (Jasanoff 2003a)whichmeansthatthoseinvolvedinproducingregulatory science throughtheir role inadvisory bodies andscience-based administrative agencies are specifically authorized to produceknowledge in the public interest. This delegation of expertise in turn invitesaseriesof political questionssimilartothoseraisedaroundmorefamiliaradministrativeresponsibilitiesinliberal-democraticsocieties(Brown2009;Guston2000; Jasanoff2003a). Howadequatearethestructuresthroughwhich delegation is institutionalized? How do agents to whom specific rolesare delegated fulfil their role or, how accountable are they to the system fromwhich they derive their authority to offer advice?If public knowledge for policymaking has been delegated to experts, towhomareexpertsaccountable?Insofarasthedebatearoundscience-in-policymakinghas beenframedinterms of science or evidence, thetypical response is that experts are ultimately accountable to Nature (thusmakingit difficult toseewherethepublicfits in), whilepoliticians areauthorized by the people to act on their behalf (Cox and Ince, 2012). Butifregulatoryscientistsproduceknowledgetoaddressquestionsofpublicand policy interest, these experts are indeed accountable to the public. Theideais not that arepresentativesampleof publics must beonadvisorypanels, but that publics have the right to speak back, to challenge, to artic-ulate different positions, to raise alternative interpretations of the evidence,or to rein in the power of experts. The public do not give up that right they grant to experts a carefully circumscribed power to speak for them onmatters requiring specialized judgement (Jasanoff 2003a: 158, italicsmine).Insum,expertadvisorsstraddlethescience/politicsinterfaceinsofarasthey are capable of speaking authoritatively on the public good, though theymay sometimes fail in this task (in the sense of speaking only for a limited andcontestablevisionofthepublicgood,e.g.,whatisgoodforUKplc)ormake unwarranted assumptions about what publics want or will accept. Inthe course of this, they are called upon to open up science and scrutinizethe basis of conflicting knowledge claims, but also close down some of thisuncertainty indelivering their judgements for policymaking. Howtheyperform and manage this tension lies at the heart of the normative challengeof epistemicgovernance. Unlikescientists, expertadvisorsarerequiredtoengagewithchallengesbypublicswhomayemergearoundspecificissues(but are not expected to be necessarily represented in all expert committeesas caricatured in discussions of public participation). Where they havefocused on too narrow a range of scientific and public inputs, they have beenfoundwanting; likewise, theirrolehasbeenproblematicwhentheyhavefailed to adequately bound the problem of scientific disagree-ment/uncertainty for policy (in their role as experts, not as academicscientists for whom endless disagreement is not, in principle, a problem). So,if theproblemof epistemicgovernanceis oneof delegationof specialist28 Sujatha Ramanknowledge to experts, then the issue on which STS sheds light is the natureand manner of public accountability of experts. Accountability in the delib-erative democratic tradition is understood in terms of giving public reasonsfor judgements whichdemonstratehowmultipleperspectives havebeenengaged with. Hence, to the extent that public challenges to expert claimsreceive an adequate response, such challenges may actually strengthen expertauthority (Brown 2009: 217).ConclusionRobertDahl, distinguishedtheoristof democracy, definesdelegationasarevocable grant of authority, subject to recovery by the demos (Dahl 1997:114). Building on an emerging political theory of expertise in STS, I haveargued that it is this issue which has been at the heart of recent normativecontroversy around the role of science-in-policymaking. Although STSresearch highlights scientific uncertainty and articulates a case for opening upscience-in-policy to wider public input, this analysis has been carried out inthe context of how regulatory science has worked in practice and how itoughttoworkinordertofulfil akeyroleattheinterfaceof science, thepublic and policymaking. This is fundamentally a question of the necessarydelegationof specialistknowledgetoexpertise, thenatureof thatknowl-edge, the question of who counts as an expert, and the need for governmentscience advisors in liberal democracies to recognize and engage with multi-ple criteria for knowledge (including within science).In conclusion, I turn to key dilemmas that arise in response to this accountof epistemicgovernanceasahybridof science, politicsandpublics. First,does the notion of delegating knowledge for policymaking to experts implya return to assumptions of elite privilege? If as I have argued, delegation restson the public having the right to speak back, elite privilege is not an issue.Rather, delegationrests ontheinevitableepistemicdivisionof labour incomplexsocieties anda political structurefor governingthis systemforobtaining specialized knowledge for policymaking.Second, the case for public engagement around science-based policymak-ing has been challenged on very different grounds: one, that in the absenceof clear limits, science is devalued and governance degenerates into populism(Collins et al. 2010); two, and on the contrary, that it idealizes democraticcitizens, manyof whomareunabletoinhabit theroleof scrutinizer ofscience (Kerr 2004) and three, that it depoliticizes governance by seeking totamegenuineconflicts(ThorpeandGregory2010).Fromtheperspectiveset out in this chapter, public engagement involves far more and less thanimplied by these very different critiques. The concept is far less radical thanimplied by a cartoon-vision of participation in which citizens are put in theposition(or giventhe burden) of decidingonmatters of scientific factincluding those on which they have little knowledge. But it is more radicalScience and uncertainty 29in the sense that more is demanded of expert committees to whom epistemicjudgementsaredelegated. Expertcommitteesarecalledupontobecomemorediversemini-republics (Brown2003; Jasanoff 2003a), toconsiderdifferent ways of framing the issues at stake and interpreting the facts thatmatter (Jasanoff 2003b), and negotiate collective judgements which clarifyhowtheyreconciledifferent ways of conceptualizingthepublicinterest.None of this means that publics decide or that these mini-republics absorb andtherefore displace political conflict. Rather, the notionof publicengagement helps articulate the essential nature of public delegationofexpertise to authorized groups, the demands arising from this relationship,its limits and its possibilities.Third, the focus on scientific advisory systems which sift the knowledgethat has already been produced by science does not address the fundamentalquestion of how science itself is to be organized. For example, some arguethat there needs to be greater political representation in decisions about thekindof scientificknowledgetofundinorder tocopewiththesystemicmarginalization of some questions (Brown 2009; Fuller 2007). Fourth, andrelatedtotheaboveisthequestionofhowpoliticalinstitutions shapetheindependenceof expertise. So, isit evenpossibleforexpertstobeinde-pendent in a depleted public sector and in the context of demands for scienceto contribute to UK plc? If scientists conduct their work in partnership withstate and corporate interests as Hind (2012) argues, can expertise be inde-pendent or impartial? Delegation only works when there is the possibility toholdtoaccount.Formal accountabilityrequirementsonlyworkifthereisscrutinybycitizensandaresponsebyofficials(Brown2009).ButHindspoint is that the public needs the means for this to happen, i.e., to form apublic. In the present era, this is a challenge of tall order but one that furtherreinforces the need for independent expertise.ReferencesBeddington, J. (2011) We needbothscepticismandconsensus, NewScientistwww.newscientist.com/blogs/thesword/2011/02/science-scepticism-and-consens.html (accessed 30 August 2013).Brown, M. B. (2003) Science in Democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Collins, H., Weinel, M. and Evans, R. (2010) The politics and policy of the ThirdWave: new technologies and society, Critical Policy Studies, 4(2): 185201.Collingridge, D. and Reeve, C. (1986) Science Speaks to Power: The Role of Experts inPolicy Making, London: Pinter.Cox, B. and Ince, R. (2012) Politicians must not elevate mere opinion over science,NewStatesmanwww.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/sci-tech/2012/12/brian-cox-and-robin-ince-politic