Experts
Challenging the received wisdom
We rely on experts more and more. But we trust them less and less.
- The expert patience programme When you have a hammer of a pamphlet, every story looks like a nail. On Friday, we launched The Received Wisdom - Opening up expert advice. In the papers, Richard Doll's (expert par excellence) reputation was taking a battering, vCJD was back in contaminated blood and the expert report of the TeGenero inquiry was described as a whitewash. At the same time, the mobile phones health scare was sinking its nails into Wi-Fi as it slowly died. continue reading on 12th December 2006
- NICE drugs, if you can get them Lead story on the breakfast news this morning was the battle between Alzheimer's patients and NICE, the body set up to "rationalise" the provision of medicines. We talked about this case a year ago, when the guidance was being reviewed for the first time, in The Public Value of Science.We were particularly interested in the involvement of the upstreamly-engaged Alzheimer's Society in the debate, via their QRD network. But the example is perhaps more relevant to our forthcoming... continue reading on 11th October 2006
- Knowing and Doing I'm dead excited about a new project we've just begun on experts and the public. The good folk of Defra have asked Demos and Liverpool University to consider how lay people can play a part in expert scientific advice.Many moons ago, when memories of BSE, GM, mobile phones and MMR were still fresh, I looked at this kind of thing as an academic. Social scientists have been saying for years that we need to think about expert advice differently. Thankfully, our project is being led by Alan Irwin... continue reading on 24th March 2006 Comments (1)
- Knowing your unknowns Intriguing piece in Scientific American by three RAND bods about a new approach they've developed to thinking about the future. It concentrates not on prediction of the future but working out the implications of actions taken today on the long term future by testing them against a load of scenarios to see which one is most 'robust'. More here.[via Future Now] continue reading on 11th April 2005
- Illness, Expertise and Charlie Hodgson's floppy foot. There was some ham-fisted criticism of such policies on the grounds that they somehow undermined the authority of science. But, more interestingly, there were valid questions about how such attempts to engage publics should be implemented. Many people?s criticisms seemed to suggest that the top-down programme forced both patients and doctors to behave in a certain, prescribed way. This raises important questions?Should public engagement experiments be seen as instruments or opportunities? Real... continue reading on 14th February 2005 Comments (1)