Making sense of hybrids
at 11:14am on Tuesday, 4th September 2007
Tomorrow is a big day for science governance anoraks. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority are deciding (in public) whether to allow research on hybrid embryos. The novelty is that their decision comes after months of deliberation - some public, some private, in newspapers and in staged engagement experiments - among experts, policymakers and the public.
For the last couple of years, we at Demos have been speaking to all sorts of organisations, including the HFEA, about how they should make sense of what the science says, what scientists say, what the public thinks and how conversations can be set up. What is clear is that this isn't just a matter of putting the science on one end of the scales and public 'opinion' on the other. For one thing, unless you're the Daily Mail, public opinion doesn't yet really exist on hybrids. Most people wouldn't be able to tell you what they think.
Which is why we need deliberation. Andy Stirling and Tom Shakespeare, both interesting academics in the space between science and society, were talking about this on the radio this morning. As we have said before, this all takes us way beyond evidence-based policy-making. Tomorrow will, in effect be a test case for the new model of scientific governance.
For the last couple of years, we at Demos have been speaking to all sorts of organisations, including the HFEA, about how they should make sense of what the science says, what scientists say, what the public thinks and how conversations can be set up. What is clear is that this isn't just a matter of putting the science on one end of the scales and public 'opinion' on the other. For one thing, unless you're the Daily Mail, public opinion doesn't yet really exist on hybrids. Most people wouldn't be able to tell you what they think.
Which is why we need deliberation. Andy Stirling and Tom Shakespeare, both interesting academics in the space between science and society, were talking about this on the radio this morning. As we have said before, this all takes us way beyond evidence-based policy-making. Tomorrow will, in effect be a test case for the new model of scientific governance.
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