Article ID: CBB828766557

Handservant of Technocracy: Public Engagement and Expertise in Heritable Human Genome Editing (2022)

unapi

The place of scientific expertise in democracy has become increasingly disputed, raising question who ought to have a say in decision-making about science and technology, with what authority, and for what reasons. Public engagement has become a common refrain in technoscientific discussions to address tensions in the rightful roles of experts and the public in democratic decision-making. However, precisely what public engagement entails, who it involves, how it is performed, and to what extent it is desirable for democratic societies remain contested matters. Nevertheless, strong commitments to greater public engagement in the governance of science and technology persist. This essay examines expert discussions about heritable human genome editing beginning from the 2015 International Summit on Human Genome Editing through the controversies surrounding of the first CRISPR-edited humans in late 2018 and the subsequent renewed calls for a moratorium on heritable human genome editing. I examine these discussions as example cases in which the right relations among experts, the public, and technoscientific decision-making are actively reconfigured. I argue that rather than expanding the range of included stakeholders, public engagement serves as an enabling handservant of technocracy that reinforces the position of scientific experts in decision-making as both epistemic and normative authorities.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB828766557/

Similar Citations

Article Monamie Bhadra Haines; (February 2019)
Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India (/isis/citation/CBB710438620/)

Article Andrew J. Hogan; (2016)
From Precaution to Peril: Public Relations Across Forty Years of Genetic Engineering (/isis/citation/CBB750225154/)

Article Morgan Meyer; (2022)
Taking responsibility, making irresponsibility: Controversies in human gene editing (/isis/citation/CBB072011815/)

Book John H. Evans; (2020)
The Human Gene Editing Debate (/isis/citation/CBB424000521/)

Article Henry M. Cowles; Chitra Ramalingam; (2022)
Introduction (/isis/citation/CBB356636672/)

Article Harry Collins; Robert Evans; Martin Weinel; (August 2017)
STS as science or politics? (/isis/citation/CBB939789883/)

Article Sergio Sismondo; (August 2017)
Casting a wider net: A reply to Collins, Evans and Weinel (/isis/citation/CBB445744492/)

Article Harry Collins; Robert Evans; Weinel; (August 2016)
STS as science or politics? (/isis/citation/CBB795627192/)

Book Gil Eyal; (2019)
The Crisis of Expertise (/isis/citation/CBB193528078/)

Article Mott Greene; (2022)
Experts, Managerialism, and Democratic Theory (/isis/citation/CBB659481305/)

Article Shobita Parthasarathy; (2022)
How to Be an Epistemic Trespasser (/isis/citation/CBB968694595/)

Article Stephen John; (2022)
The Two Virtues of Science (/isis/citation/CBB589589263/)

Article Nina Frahm; Tess Doezema; Sebastian Pfotenhauer; (January 2022)
Fixing Technology with Society: The Coproduction of Democratic Deficits and Responsible Innovation at the OECD and the European Commission (/isis/citation/CBB550648723/)

Article Durant, Darrin; (October 2011)
Models of democracy in social studies of science (/isis/citation/CBB562394056/)

Article Tiago Ribeiro Duarte; (2020)
Ignoring scientific advice during the Covid-19 pandemic: Bolsonaro’s actions and discourse (/isis/citation/CBB565587316/)

Authors & Contributors
Evans, Robert
Weinel, Martin
Collins, Harry M.
Haines, Monamie Bhadra
Nina Frahm
Tiago Ribeiro Duarte
Concepts
Expertise
Authority of science
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Democracy
Authorities; experts
Controversies and disputes
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
United States
Japan
India
Great Britain
Brazil
Institutions
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Science for the People (SftP)
European Commission
Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules (1975)
Harvard University
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment