On the limits of public engagement for the governance of emerging technologies

In the first article of the first issue of this journal, Bodmer and Wilkins (1992) discussed what the optimal strategy might be for targeting factual information about science at working class women, a group which survey research had previously identified as being especially low in scientific knowledge. Despite the obvious appeal of targeting this group through a science-themed television drama (“research tells us that these women watch television, particularly programmes like game and chat shows, comedy series and soap operas” p. 8), the authors reported that they had been unable to identify a television company willing to take on the challenge. That, two decades later, such concerns strike the modern reader as amusingly antiquated is testament to the transformation the field has undergone in both content and method during the intervening years. In particular, the founding concern with the public’s apparent ignorance of science is now deeply unfashionable; the suggestion that public opinion might, in some way, be related to what people understand about the technical aspects of science is now widely considered antediluvian. Although the field risks throwing out some potentially interesting babies with the bathwater here, this is not the focus of concern in this short note. Rather, it is the new orthodoxy that has arisen in its stead. In place of the much-lamented ‘knowledge-deficit model’ of the public’s relationship with science and technology have come approaches which, in different ways and to varying degrees, emphasise the importance of ‘two-way dialogue’ between science actors and the public. And, while we may question the extent to which practice has actually kept pace with the participatory rhetoric (Trench, 2008), the content of published articles in Public Understanding of Science confirms the strong underlying trend in the focus of published research. In 1992, just a single article appeared containing the terms ‘public engagement’ or ‘public participation’, a figure which had increased to 43 by 2011. Thus it is that the journal’s very title, if not quite an anachronism, now hardly feels in step with the spirit of the times.

There is much that is to be welcomed in the turn away from naïve deficit model thinking toward more dialogical approaches to the interface between science and the public. However, as the participatory movement attempts the awkward transition from high theory to complex and messy practice, a number of dilemmas are encountered which problematise the notion of public engagement as a potential solution to the ‘wicked’ problems of science governance. In the limited space available here, I wish to connect two such issues: whether public engagement activities, as enacted, live up to the theoretical tenets of deliberative and participatory democracy upon which they are founded; and whether citizens actually favour direct participatory approaches as the mode of science governance.

The idea that science policy-making can be improved through more open dialogue between scientists, policy-makers and the public is, at first sight, uncontroversial. If our ambition is for science policy to enable and encourage technological choices that maximise the public good, who better to ask about which areas of science should and should not be pursued and supported than the public themselves? By opening up science governance to a more diverse range of perspectives, including those of politically and economically marginalised groups, we should expect technology trajectories to be shaped in more socially beneficial directions (Stirling, 2008). And, if public engagement takes place at an early stage in the emergence of a new technology, we might also reduce the prospects of public controversy and opposition, as citizens and stakeholder groups invest more trust in governing institutions and procedures. Given the proposed benefits – better decisions, less controversy, and increased trust – it is little wonder that institutional actors have taken to the public engagement agenda with such alacrity (Einsiedel, 2008).

But how should public perspectives be more adequately represented within the innovation cycle? Here, one might envisage a substantial role for social scientists with expertise in measuring and interpreting public attitudes, values and beliefs. Such a constituency might be called upon to feed the results of high quality quantitative and qualitative research on public values, attitudes and preferences into science policy deliberations. This, however, would be to seriously misunderstand what many influential proponents of public engagement mean by ‘dialogue’. For, the dialogue that is envisaged here cannot be reduced to a simple two-way flow of information, with public perspectives mediated through the filter of social scientific expertise. Rather, to obtain the full mooted benefits of public engagement, it is necessary for scientists and the public to meet directly with one another, in an open and equal exchange of views. In defining engagement as an unmediated exchange between scientists and the public, scholars have drawn, both implicitly and explicitly, on theories of deliberative and participatory democracy (Habermas, 1989; Rawls, 1971), in which direct deliberation is seen as a solution both to the inadequacies of representative democracy and to the vagaries of social choice (Arrow, 1951). The conditions required for attaining the ‘ideal speech community’ within which more socially beneficial choices will be made require more, of course, than simply putting a group of people in a room together to discuss a policy issue. Rather, the alchemic ability of deliberation to yield substantively better decisions will only be delivered when, at a minimum, all potentially affected interests are voluntarily represented and the views expressed by participants are treated equally and with respect by all. These conditions should be expected to result in better quality decisions, in the sense of favouring societal rather than sectional interests, because arguments will be evaluated according to how persuasive they are, rather than on the basis of unequal power relations. An important question for those who advocate direct dialogue between scientists and the public on substantive grounds, then, is whether the sorts of activities that are currently undertaken under the banner of public engagement meet these minimal criteria.

A particular concern in this regard relates to the question of who should take part in engagement activities. Although this will vary according to the particular context, for emerging areas of science such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology (for which direct engagement has been widely advocated), the answer must surely be ‘everyone’. Even if, for expedience, we place an arbitrary national boundary around the problem, this definition would seem to imply the need for inclusion of a representative sample of the general population. And, indeed, the majority of engagement activities appear to acknowledge this, if only implicitly, by attempting to balance the characteristics of participants to those of the broader population through the application of quota controls. The inadequacies of this strategy for obtaining representativeness across all relevant parameters are, however, well known (Jowell et al., 1993; Yeager et al., 2011). Research into the factors associated with attendance at engagement activities shows participants to be disproportionately drawn from groups with higher socio-economic status, greater interest in the topic area, and more strongly held views (Powell et al., 2011).

Concerns about participant selection strategies are compounded by those relating to the methods through which public perspectives are elicited. Most engagement activities do not happen spontaneously but require external organisation and moderation, a job which understandably, often falls to proponents of public engagement. For reasons of both practicality and epistemological orientation, public engagement practitioners tend to favour moderated small-group discussions as the primary method through which dialogue is enabled. The extensive literature on demand characteristics in research on human subjects (Orne, 1962) must, however, raise serious questions about the ability of such procedures to produce outcomes which are not, albeit unconsciously, influenced by the attitudes and orientations of the organising individuals and institutions. Thus it is, that one of the UK Research Council funded ‘Nanodialogue’ events concluded, apparently without irony, that what the public wants is more dialogue about nanotechnology, through the medium of focus groups (Gavelin et al., 2007). A not unreasonable response to such apparent carping about methodological shortcomings is that we should not let perfection be the enemy of the good; any involvement of the public is surely better than none at all? This may indeed be the case, although it must be acknowledged that there is little hard evidence as yet to support the contention (Caswill and Rayner, 2009). Moreover, we cannot discount the possibility that deficiencies in the conduct of small-group engagement activities might result in recommendations which diverge from the preferences of the wider population in potentially significant ways (Binder et al., 2010). That sustained reflection should lead to a shift in preferences is probably to be expected, though the question of legitimacy then turns on whether the broader public view the selected participants as suitable representatives of their interests. And this would seem an unlikely contingency given the currently dominant approach to participant selection outlined above. Be that as it may, justification of direct dialogue as providing a minor, incremental improvement on the status quo may ultimately lead to questions relating to the cost-effectiveness of public investment in these types of activities.

A second dilemma for proponents of direct public engagement derives, ironically, from what one might construe as a lack of critical reflexivity. That is to say, remarkably few attempts appear to have been made to engage the public in dialogue about the sorts of arrangements they would prefer science to be governed by. For this reason, we know rather little about whether the public are as keen on participatory dialogue as those who advocate it as key to democratic governance. What limited evidence there is, however, suggests that citizens are hardly clamouring for direct involvement in policy-making in esoteric and technically difficult areas of science and technology. The fraction of the population who currently volunteer to attend such events is vanishingly small and self-report data from nationally representative surveys reveal a similar widespread unwillingness to ‘get involved’ (Mejlgaard and Stares, 2010). These empirical regularities cannot, of course, be taken to indicate in any straightforward manner that citizens are completely satisfied with the status quo, nor that the institutions and procedures of representative democracy cannot be improved. However, if we are to take seriously the injunction to incorporate public perspectives into science policy-making, it would seem odd to exclude from consideration those preferences which pertain to modes of governance. Similar arguments have, of course, been persuasively advanced in a more general critique of theories of participatory governance (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 2002). There seem no strong grounds for assuming that these should not apply equally to policy-making in the generally low salience area of emerging technologies.

In raising questions about the benefits of public participation in the governance of science, one risks appearing to damn motherhood and apple pie. How, in a democratic polity, can one object to citizens becoming more involved in policy-making in an area that has such demonstrable impact, both positive and negative, on everyday lives? It is important, therefore, to be clear that the questions raised here relate not to whether public perspectives should be central to the development of science policy but to how this objective might best be achieved. The currently dominant approach revolves around institutionally sponsored small-group discussions between self-selected members of the public and willing scientists, generally moderated by proponents of public engagement. These conditions fall some way short of those generally identified as necessary for the substantive benefits of deliberation to emerge. It also implies a model of the ‘scientific citizen’ which sits uncomfortably alongside the fact that a clear majority of the public have no desire to take on the role that participatory modes of governance seek to afford them. If direct public engagement is to deliver on the promise that has been attributed to it, then, the field will surely require a transformation to at least rival the one we have witnessed since the inception of this esteemed journal.