Re: RE: RE: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: From Brad De Long

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

> All well-taken.  The political problem, as I see it, is that
> critics of these people have no counter-science, theory, or
> evidence.  They are reduced to emotionalism.  The best they
> can do is ask people like me to find errors in the other
> side's arguments.  But all I can do is find errors given
> the operating premises of the other side, which is like
> spotting them a pair of touchdowns.
>
> mbs
========
[twice in one day somebody stop me...]

Title Protecting public health & the environment : implementing the
precautionary principle / edited by Carolyn Raffensperger and Joel A.
Tickner ; foreword by Wes Jackson
Pub info Washington, D.C. : Island Press, c1999
*****

K. S. Shrader-Frechette
Risk and Rationality
Philosophical Foundations for Populist Reforms


Publication Date: September 1991
  272 pages
Subjects: Philosophy; Ethics; Social Problems; Political Theory
Rights: World

Paperback: $18.95 0-520-07289-8  £13.95

Description | About the Author


Only ten to twelve percent of Americans would voluntarily live within
a mile of a nuclear plant or hazardous waste facility. But industry
spokespersons claim that such risk aversion represents ignorance and
paranoia, and they lament that citizen protests have delayed valuable
projects and increased their costs.

Who is right? In Risk and Rationality, Kristin Shrader-Frechette
argues that neither charges of irresponsible endangerment nor
countercharges of scientific illiteracy frame the issues properly. She
examines the debate over methodological norms for risk evaluation and
finds analysts arrayed in a spectrum. Points of view extend from
cultural relativists who believe that any risk can be justified (since
no rational standards are ultimately possible) to naive positivists
who believe that risk evaluation can be objective, neutral, and value
free. Both camps, she argues, are wrong, because risk evaluation as a
social process is rational and objective, even though all
risk-evaluation rules are value-laden.

Shrader-Frechette defends a middle position called "scientific
proceduralism." She shows why extremist views are unreliable, reveals
misconceptions underlying current risk-evaluation methods and
strategies, and sketches the reforms needed to set hazard assessment
and risk evaluation on a publicly defensible foundation.

These reforms involve mathematical, economic, ethical, and legal
procedures. They constitute a new paradigm for assessment when
acceptance of public hazards is rational, recognizing that laypersons
are often more rational in their evaluation of societal risks than
either experts or governments have acknowledged. Such reforms would
provide citizens with more influence in risk decisions and focus on
mediating ethical conflicts, rather than seeking to impose the will of
experts. Science, she argues, need not preclude democracy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (back to top)
Kristin Shrader-Frechette holds degrees in mathematics, physics, and
philosophy and is Distinguished Graduate Research Professor at the
University of South Florida. She has published five other books and
edits the Oxford University Press series "Environmental Ethics and
Science Policy."