Final Report (all chapters)

years away. Again, no scientific background is necessary to inquire about this issue. And by
asking this question, a lay audience is likely to learn a great deal about how scientists set their
research priorities and about the rationales for these choices. Effectively assessing the credibility
of scientific claims certainly is no easy task, but scientific literacy is unlikely to make this job
easier.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that the distinction between the scientifically illiterate public
and informed scientists is itself seriously misleading. In most cases, scientists are just as illiterate
about science as is the public. Knowledge production is so fragmented and specialized that
anyone outside any of the innumerable and often tiny scientific communities – they are so small
that one is tempted to call them cliques – is a scientific illiterate. For example, an average
biologist, just like anyone else without an advanced degree in physics, is very unlikely to know
what a Lorenz transformation is. Yet this is not an arcane piece of mathematics, but the
foundation of Einstein’s special theory of relativity – formulated and published in 1905 and often
taught in physics curricula at the high-school level. Lorenz transformations should not be
confused with the Lorenz effect, named after Edward Lorenz. In the 1960s, Lorenz famously
observed that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing could alter the weather in San Francisco.
Among experts of chaos theory and climatology, this story is a familiar one. Yet few persons
outside of these scientific communities are likely to have heard of this effect. Scientific
(il)literacy is a widespread phenomenon in industrialized societies, but is of very little help in
explaining opposition to scientific and technological developments.
10.7 Key Features of Institutions of Public Consultation
10.7.1 Deliberation: Vehicle of Consensus or Catalyst of Conflict?
We suggest that mechanisms of public consultation should always include a deliberative
phase. There are several good reasons for including deliberation in processes of public
consultation. Deliberation ensures that the participating citizens do not simply offer improvised
answers to complex questions they may never have pondered. Institutions of public consultation
should be designed specifically to elicit informed and reflected opinions. Deliberation ensures
that participants acquire a much deeper and differentiated understanding of the issues involved; it
is the process of familiarization that is likely to produce well-informed opinions. The outcome of
this process cannot easily be dismissed on the grounds that people are in no position to express
informed opinions. This is the feature that sharply distinguishes a traditional survey from a
consultative process.
Unlike opinion surveys, the views gathered through a process of public consultation are
stable, in that they are unlikely to change significantly over time. Deliberation should all but
eliminate the sensitivity of survey results to the wording of poll questions, a problem we have
repeatedly encountered in our discussion of survey data in chapter 8. In sum, by ensuring that the
public expresses its views only after having reflected for some time on various aspects of a
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