NSF Award Abstract - #0115258

AWSFL008-DS3

SDEST: Scientists and Policy-Making: Objectivity, Moral Responsibility and Risk

Abstract

As the role of scientists in policy-making has grown over the past half-century, there has been increasing difficulty characterizing how science should be used to formulate public policy, from debates about the role of science in the courtroom to disputes over which science should inform environmental policy. This grant will support philosophical analysis of the role of scientists in public decision-making. For the period of the grant, the investigator will consider central issues that underlie the relationship between science and society, namely the understanding of scientific objectivity, the moral responsibility of scientists, and the proper role of science in risk analysis. Scientific objectivity is often the justification given for why scientists should be heavily involved with public decision-making, but objectivity is a complex concept, and not all aspects are either possible or desirable in the public decision-making setting. A more careful examination of this concept will help clarify what the public role of scientists should be. This public role is intimately tied to the issue of whether and to what extent scientists have particular moral responsibilities to the rest of society. A divergent set of views on this issue have been expressed over the past fifty years, and a more careful examination of these views and the arguments behind them will help determine to what extent and in what situations scientists must consider certain ethical issues. Finally, both of these areas, objectivity and moral responsibility, play a crucial role in how the U.S. conceptualizes the use of scientists in risk analysis for public policy. There has been considerable debate about the appropriate risk decision-making process, and the relationship between scientists and citizens lies at the heart of these debates. Using a wide variety of sources, from scientists, philosophers, historians, and policymakers, to gather the basic arguments and positions, the primary investigator will develop three related pieces of written work on the above topics. These pieces will be submitted to peer reviewed journals for refinement and publication. In addition, these three pieces will become part of a larger written work, for which the primary investigator has additional support from her home institution. This final work should help clarify the historical development of scientists in policy-making, the philosophical understanding of science that shaped that development, and how altering that philosophical understanding should change how scientists function in the public eye.