Science, expertise, and the democratization of the decision-making process

Environmental scholars and practitioners are calling for the democratization of science and expertise. Two of the earliest and most influential arguments toward this end come to us from Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, with their now famous discussion of "postnormal science,'' and Alvin Weinberg, with his well-known distinction between "research'' and "trans-science''. Such positions, however, prove highly problematic. First, while calling for the opening of some questions to nonscientists, they likewise continue to uphold and justify a closed position of science for others. Second, these arguments fail to highlight how prominent fact/value conflation is in such fields as the environmental sciences (through such concepts as "ecological integrity,'' "ecosystem health,'' etc.). This article seeks to redress these problems by shifting attention away from discussions of "science'' to that of "expertise,'' and in doing this, to provide an alternative way of thinking about how to resolve today's environmental problems.