Final Report (all chapters)

conference. Denmark is the clear leader among these countries, with 19 conferences organized
since 1987. 66
Consensus conferences have a straightforward structure: A steering committee is tasked with
recruiting a panel of laypersons and selecting a group of experts representative of all societal
sectors (industry, science, and consumers groups, among others). The appointment rules vary,
but there is broad agreement among practitioners that the panel members should not have any
ties to the industry being scrutinized, should not represent an advocacy group, and should not
have strong views on the matter under consideration. In other words, they should not be
prejudiced in favor of or against a given technology, and should represent only themselves. A
panel generally consists of 12 to 20 citizens. Organizers often try to assemble a “balanced”
panel, i.e., a panel that is at least somewhat representative of the general public with respect to
key socio-demographic variables such as sex, age, education, and geographical origin.
Operationally, a consensus conference consists of three main stages. In the first stage, the
lay participants have an opportunity to absorb basic scientific facts and uncontroversial technical
details. The learning phase is followed by a deliberative phase, during which the panel has an
opportunity to engage the experts and probe conflicting answers. The deliberative stage is
usually conducted in the presence of a larger audience and representatives of the news media. In
the third and final stage, the panel is charged with preparing a consensus statement. This final
phase takes place behind closed doors.
By all accounts, consensus conferences have a significant impact on both lay participants
and the scientific experts. To lay participants, a consensus conference is a refreshing civic lesson.
Without exception, the participants describe their experience as exhausting but also as a
tremendous learning opportunity. For their part, experts are invariably surprised and impressed
by how quickly laypersons learn to identify weak aspects of a scientific rationale and to question
them in a competent way. Many of them develop a healthy respect for a lay audience’s ability to
probe highly technical issues.
Of more immediate interest to our discussion is the impact that deliberation may have on the
participants’ views and opinions. As much of the work on consensus conferences is descriptive
rather than analytical, answering this question is not entirely possible. Generally speaking, lay
participants take participation in a consensus conference very seriously. Discussions often are
informed by a genuinely disinterested perspective, while strategic behavior and self-interested
motives, if not entirely absent, tend to recede into the background. In this sense, deliberation
comes quite close to the Habermasian ideal of communicative action. On the other end, there is
considerable anecdotal evidence that consensus conferences rarely produce a genuine consensus,
and that consensus statements often are consensual only in name. Panelists have repeatedly
pointed out that these statements must be regarded as a precarious compromise designed to mask
sharply diverging views rather than a genuine expression of unanimity.
66
See http://www.loka.org/pages/worldpanels.htm for details.
274