Class 8: Dialogue for policy

If the public are knowledgable and capable in dealing with science, then why shouldn't we involve them in science policy? And how could we do this?

These were the big questions of today's class. The work of critical authors - and the fact that we live in a democracy, and that millions of pounds of taxpayer's money goes to pay for public science - points us towards the need to engage publics in the science policy process. What this means in practice, we seemed to decide, varies from case to case.

A key point in solidifying these arguments was the 2000 House of Lords Third Report on Science and Society, which argued that "...direct dialogue with the public should move from being an optional add-on to science-based policy-making and to the activities of research organisations and learned institutions, and should become a normal and integral part of the process." A few years later, Demos argued that this dialogue should move 'upstream', to early in a technology's development, rather than just being tacked on at the end.

There are lots of ways of doing this. Participation mechanisms vary from e-consultation to consensus conferences to science shops to small group deliberations. The important thing is to fit the mechanism to the situation and to be clear about the aims and outcomes. As the GM Nation? debate proved, people rapidly lose patience with being engaged merely for PR purposes...