Final Report Editor Ulrike Felt June 2003

Conceptualising the relationships between sciences and publics 33
time also reconstructs the distance – a phenomenon already pointed out in the first part
of the chapter (phase 1).
Paradox 2: Not science produces “hard facts”
but popular accounts of science do so.
When looking at the way scientific results are communicated within the scientific
community in form of publications many analysts have hinted at the fact that the
production process behind the results generally does not become visible. Nothing is
said about the time consuming work, the choices and negotiations throughout the
process of knowledge production, the drawbacks, the costs and manpower involved,
the energy invested as well as the deceptions encountered. It seems for the scientists
important to agree on one single narrative – the publication – telling how “the idea”
became “the result” – fact or artefact. The scientific paper is built in a way to contain
the core elements – the “scientific result” – as well as the boundary conditions under
which validity can be claimed. When such a scientific fact leaves the realm of science
and enters the societal sphere through popularisation it undergoes in this process of
rewriting again a fundamental change. It is first once more decontextualised from its
conditions of production – we learn nothing about the science-in-the-making –, and is
then recontextualised in its societal environment. As a consequence once scientific
results are popularised they generally “loose” the information about the scientific
context of production and the boundary conditions for validity which would allow to
question them and are turned quasi automatically into “hard facts” which can only
either be trusted or not.
Paradox 3: Uncertainties linked to technoscientific developments that have
emerged through an increase in reflexive knowledge
cannot be eliminated through further increasing knowledge.
Living at a time where debates on risks and how to handle them are strongly present in
the public domain, the call for expertise in order to react to these uncertainties is
49
omnipresent. However if we take the thesis of reflexive modernisationTP
PT, the
application of modernist principles to themselves, seriously, then one quickly realises
that we are confronted with increasing uncertainties, closely linked to technoscientific
development. However these uncertainties do not simply exist, but are “fabricated” in
the sense that they come into being, are realised through the production of reflexive
knowledge. To quote Ulrich Beck: “Science (…) provides the means – the categories
and cognitive equipment – required to recognize and present the problems as
49
TP
PT See Beck U. (1992): op.cit. note 12.; Giddens, Anthony (1991): Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and
Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity.