In the United States we trust citizens -- without any special training or education -- to elect government leaders, to decide the outcome of criminal and civil trials and to vote on important questions in state and local elections. But can ordinary citizens make good decisions about complex scientific issues, like genetically modified food, human cloning or environmental toxins?
Ida-Elisabeth Andersen, a sociologist and project manager with the Danish Board of Technology, thinks so. And some Cornell researchers agree. On June 14 in the Plant Science Building, the Cornell Environmental Outreach Group (CEOG) hosted a symposium on innovative methods of citizen participation called "Why Ask Them? Citizen Participation in Technology Assessment." Andersen, who has been organizing consensus conferences and other participation efforts in Denmark since 1988, was the keynote speaker.
The Danish model of citizen participation in assessment of science and technology has been gaining the notice of U.S. scientists and policymakers. In the method, which has been used by the Danish government for more than a decade, groups of representative citizen-volunteers are recruited to participate in "consensus conferences" to advise politicians on socially important scientific questions. While a panel of scientific experts is on hand to advise and educate the volunteers, the final report containing recommendations for the government is drafted entirely by the citizens.
Consensus conferences are quite different from public participation through hearings typical in the United States and provide a way to hear from citizens who do not have a particular point of view on the issues but are willing to learn, think and advise. The Danish citizens work over three weekends to learn about and debate the issue and to develop the report that reflects the opinions of "just plain folks."
Other panelists at the Cornell symposium were Bruce Lewenstein, associate professor of communication and science and technology studies; Rebecca Nelson, associate professor of plant pathology; and David Pelletier, associate professor of nutritional science.
The idea that non-expert citizens are capable of making informed decisions about science and technology is foreign to most scientists, said Andersen. "In the first years of our work with consensus conferences, we could send shock waves through an auditorium of international experts when we presented the idea that lay people could make important contributions to technology assessment."
However, said Lewenstein, ordinary citizens bring important perspectives that might be missing from assessments conducted by experts. "We should be thinking about models that recognize that lay people have their own expertise, and particular contexts in which they make decisions," he said.
Although the idea of citizen technology assessment is relatively new in the United States, a few trial projects are under way. Last year, North Carolina State University hosted a consensus conference, the North Carolina Citizens' Technology Forum, on the topic of genetically modified food. This April, another assessment method called a "scenario workshop" addressed sustainable town planning in Lowell, Mass.
Andersen currently is on leave from the Danish Board of Technology to advise the Lowell project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and co-hosted by the Loka Institute and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
Andersen's visit to Cornell was the first official public event for CEOG, which was formed a year ago as a follow-up to a series of seminars sponsored by the Cornell Center for the Environment in the spring of 2001 on "Where Science Meets Policy." This interdisciplinary group of faculty members is interested in how university science influences public policy. The group aims to maximize the impact of university science on community and government environmental decision-making by developing effective communication between the public and university researchers and educators.
Ellen Harrison, coordinator of CEOG and director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute at the Center for the Environment, believes that input from citizens could be valuable for the university as it works to define its own mission. "Maybe we can use the consensus conference model to try to help the land-grant university set its agenda," she said.
Harrison is critical of scientists' tendency to dismiss the role that citizens have to play in making science and technology decisions.
"Decisions about technology and the environment involve values and judgments that are not technical. And what has happened is that we pretend that isn't so," she said. "Bureaucrats and technocrats believe that it's their role to make decisions that, in fact, have value judgments embedded in them."
Andersen agrees. "Our vision is that input from citizens can be used for more-longsighted, more-comprehensive and sustainable technological and social development," she said. "We think that society cannot afford to say 'No, thank you' to that."
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