ARTICLE ABSTRACT: In the early 1970s, the idea of precaution "of heeding rather than ignoring scientific evidence of harm when there is uncertainty, and taking action that errs on the side of safety" was so appealing that the US Congress used it as the basis of the toxics provisions of the Clean...Read more
"This article examines some of the interactions between law, science, and society taking place during a trial (in Victorian England). By focusing on a restricted set of scientific and nonscientific actors (the law-set, a derivation of the core-set) engaged in negotiating the meaning,...Read more
"Why do laws and regulations marking boundaries between humans and other animals proliferate amid widespread proclamations of the waning of the species concept and the consensus that life is a continuum? Here I consider a recent spate of new guidelines and regulations in the United...Read more
"This article argues that, in public and policy contexts, the ways in which many scientists talk about uncertainty in simulations of future climate change not only facilitates communications and cooperation between scientific and policy communities but also affects the perceived...Read more
"Human embryos produced in labs since the 1970s have generated layers of uncertainty for law and policy: ontological, moral, and administrative. Ontologically, these lab-made entities fall into a gray zone between life and not-yet-life. Should in vitro embryos be treated as inanimate...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: Results of two survey studies (N = 197 and N = 2037) are presented. It is shown that attitudes of the public about "technology in general" are not stable and can easily be affected by how the subject is introduced. Eight areas of technology are compared on the basis of...Read more
In contested areas of environmental research and policy, all stakeholders are likely to claim that their position is scientifically grounded but disagree about the relevant scientific conclusions or the weight of the evidence. In this article, I draw on a year of participant observation and over...Read more
ARTICLE ABSTRACT: The problem of how to make the transition to a more environmentally and socially sustainable society poses questions about how such far-reaching social change can be brought about. In recent years, lifecourse transitions have been identified by a range of researchers as...Read more
"Quantitative health risk assessment is a procedure for estimating the likelihood that exposure to environmental contaminants will produce certain adverse health effects, most commonly cancer. One instance of its use has been a California air toxics public “right-to-know” law. This...Read more
"Unreasonable expectations about the nature and character of scientific knowledge support the widespread political assumption that predictive scientific assessments are a necessary precursor to environmental decision making. All too often, the practical outcome of this assumption is...Read more
"The theory of boundary organizations was developed to address an important group of institutions in American society neglected by scholarship in science studies and political science. The long-term stability of scientific and political institutions in the United States has enabled a...Read more
