Max
08-08-2003, 07:12 PM
Scientists debate value of citizens' advisory panels
By Robert S. Boyd
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Scientists perform many wonders, but sometimes they scare the dickens out of people. Genetic tinkering, radioactive nuclear waste, cloning, embryonic stem cells, robots that reproduce themselves and other high-tech developments have stirred widespread distrust and alarm.
To address such fears, the National Science Foundation, an arm of the federal government, is experimenting with a system of citizens' advisory panels that it hopes can help head off future eruptions. The panels consider the ethical, social and practical implications of new technologies and recommend policies that might reduce misunderstanding and obstruction.
For example, the worldwide uproar over genetically modified foods - crops whose genes have been artificially altered - has wrecked foreign markets for some American products. Resistance to so-called "Frankenfoods" also is spreading in the United States. Billions of dollars are at stake.
"We don't want another backlash like the one over genetically modified foods," said Jane Macoubrie, the leader of the NSF project at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "Current practices are producing a hostile public and decreasing trust in government and science. Citizens perceive technology as out of control."
Each panel consists of 15 nonexpert volunteers who spend three months studying a particular controversy. They read background materials, question authorities representing various points of view, debate among themselves and try to reach a consensus. Finally they write a report offering their advice on the issue to policy-makers such as state governors and members of Congress.
The first of these advisory panels recommended, among other things, that the government tighten regulations for growing genetically modified foods and require the products to be labeled clearly, so shoppers could choose to avoid them.
Some European countries require such foods to be labeled. Canada is considering a voluntary system. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration so far has declined to require labeling.
At a hearing before the House of Representatives Science Committee in April, Langdon Winner, a political scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., said citizens' panels would "establish a voice for ordinary folks." He urged Congress to "to create ways in which small panels of ordinary, disinterested citizens, selected in much the way that we now choose juries, (can) be assembled to examine important societal issues."
The House passed a bill in May directing the government to seek the public's advice on nanotechnology, the fast-developing science of the extremely small.
The bill, which hasn't passed the Senate, is a response to fears roused by such books as "Prey," a science-fiction thriller by Michael Crichton in which murderous "nanorobots" run amok.
"Why not include the public in deliberations about nanotechnolgy early on in the process, rather than after the products reach the market?" Winner asked.
Macoubrie's group conducted two preliminary "Citizens Technology Forums," as they were formally called, last year. Six more are under way at North Carolina State and a nationwide trial is planned for next year.
For the first conference, panelists met face-to-face. The others are being conducted mostly over the Internet, a novel use of high technology to counter fears about high technology.
"Citizens, scientists and policy makers are all dissatisfied with the status quo," Macoubrie, a specialist in communications theory, said in a telephone interview. "Citizens are afraid. Scientists think uninformed citizens are incompetent to comment on technology. Policy makers are besieged on all sides. Everybody sees a problem. No one is happy."
So the NSF asked North Carolina State to devise a process that would minimize these problems by giving citizens unbiased, factual information on which to make sound decisions. It's modeled after a similar process that's been used in Denmark for 15 years.
"Once people have knowledge they get over their fears," Macoubrie said.
Patrick Hamlett, the director of the Program on Science, Technology & Society at North Carolina State, said consensus conferences were far different from hired pollsters telephoning people at dinnertime, or from political focus groups, which spend a couple of hours in an evening on a topic.
The NSF-sponsored panels spend three weekends over the course of two months, for a total of 20 hours, considering their assigned issues, plus time studying on their own. Panelists are selected from volunteers who respond to newspaper ads. They are paid $500 for their participation.
"We are trying to measure what the average citizen who bothered to study an issue would think about it," Hamlett explained.
What impact the conferences will have on public policy remains to be seen. "When I wake up at night, that's what bothers me," Hamlett said.
One skeptic on the Science committee, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., scoffed that they will "just give the nuts a podium."
Macoubrie, the project leader, is undeterred.
"I believe that high-quality citizen decisions can come out of these conferences," she said.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6463875.htm
By Robert S. Boyd
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Scientists perform many wonders, but sometimes they scare the dickens out of people. Genetic tinkering, radioactive nuclear waste, cloning, embryonic stem cells, robots that reproduce themselves and other high-tech developments have stirred widespread distrust and alarm.
To address such fears, the National Science Foundation, an arm of the federal government, is experimenting with a system of citizens' advisory panels that it hopes can help head off future eruptions. The panels consider the ethical, social and practical implications of new technologies and recommend policies that might reduce misunderstanding and obstruction.
For example, the worldwide uproar over genetically modified foods - crops whose genes have been artificially altered - has wrecked foreign markets for some American products. Resistance to so-called "Frankenfoods" also is spreading in the United States. Billions of dollars are at stake.
"We don't want another backlash like the one over genetically modified foods," said Jane Macoubrie, the leader of the NSF project at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "Current practices are producing a hostile public and decreasing trust in government and science. Citizens perceive technology as out of control."
Each panel consists of 15 nonexpert volunteers who spend three months studying a particular controversy. They read background materials, question authorities representing various points of view, debate among themselves and try to reach a consensus. Finally they write a report offering their advice on the issue to policy-makers such as state governors and members of Congress.
The first of these advisory panels recommended, among other things, that the government tighten regulations for growing genetically modified foods and require the products to be labeled clearly, so shoppers could choose to avoid them.
Some European countries require such foods to be labeled. Canada is considering a voluntary system. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration so far has declined to require labeling.
At a hearing before the House of Representatives Science Committee in April, Langdon Winner, a political scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., said citizens' panels would "establish a voice for ordinary folks." He urged Congress to "to create ways in which small panels of ordinary, disinterested citizens, selected in much the way that we now choose juries, (can) be assembled to examine important societal issues."
The House passed a bill in May directing the government to seek the public's advice on nanotechnology, the fast-developing science of the extremely small.
The bill, which hasn't passed the Senate, is a response to fears roused by such books as "Prey," a science-fiction thriller by Michael Crichton in which murderous "nanorobots" run amok.
"Why not include the public in deliberations about nanotechnolgy early on in the process, rather than after the products reach the market?" Winner asked.
Macoubrie's group conducted two preliminary "Citizens Technology Forums," as they were formally called, last year. Six more are under way at North Carolina State and a nationwide trial is planned for next year.
For the first conference, panelists met face-to-face. The others are being conducted mostly over the Internet, a novel use of high technology to counter fears about high technology.
"Citizens, scientists and policy makers are all dissatisfied with the status quo," Macoubrie, a specialist in communications theory, said in a telephone interview. "Citizens are afraid. Scientists think uninformed citizens are incompetent to comment on technology. Policy makers are besieged on all sides. Everybody sees a problem. No one is happy."
So the NSF asked North Carolina State to devise a process that would minimize these problems by giving citizens unbiased, factual information on which to make sound decisions. It's modeled after a similar process that's been used in Denmark for 15 years.
"Once people have knowledge they get over their fears," Macoubrie said.
Patrick Hamlett, the director of the Program on Science, Technology & Society at North Carolina State, said consensus conferences were far different from hired pollsters telephoning people at dinnertime, or from political focus groups, which spend a couple of hours in an evening on a topic.
The NSF-sponsored panels spend three weekends over the course of two months, for a total of 20 hours, considering their assigned issues, plus time studying on their own. Panelists are selected from volunteers who respond to newspaper ads. They are paid $500 for their participation.
"We are trying to measure what the average citizen who bothered to study an issue would think about it," Hamlett explained.
What impact the conferences will have on public policy remains to be seen. "When I wake up at night, that's what bothers me," Hamlett said.
One skeptic on the Science committee, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., scoffed that they will "just give the nuts a podium."
Macoubrie, the project leader, is undeterred.
"I believe that high-quality citizen decisions can come out of these conferences," she said.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6463875.htm