Privileging process over fact': the Sydney water scare as 'organised irresponsibility'

The Sydney water scare shares with numerous contemporary policy issues a complex intermeshing of ‘fact’ and ‘value’. An examination of the institutional reforms that resolved this matter shows the ‘appeals to the facts’ that dominated contemporary commentary to be both misleading and counterproductive. The emphasis on process that emerges reflects recent approaches to science in policy which, in acknowledging a key role for values, privilege decision processes over technical analyses, highlight community involvement, and stress discursive procedures and fora over more conventional rational choice models of decision making. Ultimately we need to reconceive the fact/value distinction and how it frames science in politics.