Science 'not enough' to allay fears

Will mobiles be the next trigger for popular distrust of politicians' assurances?

By environment correspondent Alex Kirby

In highly technological societies, governments can no longer rely on science alone to win consent for potentially risky new developments, according to social scientists.

The scientists say more crises of public trust, like those over mad cow disease (BSE) and genetically-modified (GM) food, are almost inevitable.

They think likely candidates for new concern are the safety of mobile telephones, and the effects of chemicals which disrupt human hormones.

And British Nuclear Fuels, now embroiled in a dispute over the falsification of data at its Sellafield plant in north-west England, could be another.

The scientists, from the Global Environmental Change Programme (GECP) at the University of Sussex, are speaking at a conference on sustainability.

Destroying trust

They classify the BSE and GM crises as examples of "soft disasters", which kill few people or even none, but destroy public trust in politicians.

A GECP report last year said the current approach to such risk issues "would inevitably lead to political and environmental crises that emerge only slowly but at great cost to society".

The BSE crisis sowed suspicion

The GECP team, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, says soft disasters require new public policy approaches.

"While enhanced scientific information is important to inform debates, it is not enough on its own to determine the best way forward.

"Research shows that values and subjective factors are central to decisions on such issues, so a new, more transparent and participative style of decision-making is required.

"Scientific institutions need to develop their ability to respond rapidly to emerging risk issues.

Endemic disasters

"There is also an urgent need to develop more sophisticated science that is capable of monitoring and establishing cause and effect around highly complex environmental risk factors."

The GECP scientists say soft disasters "are endemic in highly technologically advanced risk societies. Governments therefore need to develop much better capabilities to handle these issues."

They say ordinary people are not as ignorant about the issues involved in debates like the one over GM foods as politicians are inclined to believe.

Sellafield: a crisis to come?

This is partly because science cannot provide definitive answers about the safety of such new technologies, something which people know from their experience.

Yet public trust is central to effective decisions on risk issues, although it is both difficult to establish and fragile to maintain.

The director of the GECP, Dr Frans Berkhout, told BBC News Online: "The central, co-ordinating parts of government such as the Cabinet Office seem to have grasped the issue.

Few practical changes

"They understand both the importance of soft disasters and the changes needed in how they make decisions.

"Other parts of government are not doing so well. They often acknowledge the value of our analysis, but have made few attempts to tackle the issues in practical ways.

"This is not surprising, as soft disasters are extraordinarily difficult to handle. There are no magic bullets."

The GECP is calling for "a new style of governance in which scientific evidence plays an important but not dominant role. Public values should inform the questions asked of the science rather than being addressed as a token 'add-on'."