Beyond Speaking Truth? Institutional Responses to Uncertainty in Scientific Governance

Elitist, technical, and positivist models of scientific governance have been subject to much scrutiny and criticism by science and technology studies (STS) for many years. Seminal work in STS has exposed the boundary work through which the distinctions between science and nonscience, science and politics, and experts and lay people are constructed and maintained (to mention only a few: Gieryn 1999; Latour 1993; Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001). A more specific tradition in STS has focused on the relations between science, technology, public policy, government and civil society, and has articulated demands for the acknowledgment of uncertainty and a self-critical stance toward scientific truth claims (Wynne 1993; Collins and Evans 2007), for a broader participation of citizens or lay people