proliferation of organizations who claim credibility because of who they are rather than how they proceed. Thus, the National Academy of Sciences asserts that it is to be believed because it is an “elite organization.” The Office of Technology Assessment is to be believed because it is an independent agency of the U.S. Congress. “Public Interest” groups and Regulatory Agencies are to be believed because they exist only to protect the public interest. Industry is to be believed because of its expertise, etc. Philip Handler in addressing The National Academy Bicentennial Symposium reported the results as follows: But establishing truth with respect to technical controversy relevant to matters of public policy, and to do so in full public view, has proved to be a surprisingly difficult challenge to the scientific community. To our simple code must be added one more canon: When describing technological risks to the non-scientific public, the scientist must be as honest, objective, and dispassionate as he knows he must be in the more conventional, time-honored self-policing scientific endeavor. This additional canon has not always been observed. Witness the chaos that has come with challenges to the use of nuclear power in several countries. Witness, in this country, the cacophony of charge and counter-charge concerning the safety of diverse food additives, pesticides and drugs. We have learned that the scientist-advocate, on either side of such a debate, is likely to be more advocate than scientist and this has unfavorably altered the public view of both the nature of the scientific endeavor and the personal attributes of scientists. In turn, that has given yet a greater sense of urgency to the public demand for assurance that the risks attendant upon the uses of technology be appraised and minimized. And what a huge task that is! To begin this “huge task” the science court was proposed as an experimental means of approaching the problem of achieving higher credibility in the communication between the scientific community and the public. The credibility of its output would not depend entirely on the people involved but would lean on the credibility of a structure incorporating some of society's wisdom in dealing with controversy. EXPERIENCE WITH THE SCIENCE COURT The science court as presented here was formulated by a task force of a committee advisory to President Ford (1). It was suggested by the Task Force that a public meeting be held where opinions pro and con the science court experiment could be aired. This meeting was held 19-21 September 1976 in Leesburg, Virginia, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce, The National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At this meeting the Task Force position was set forth by Richard Simpson, former Chairman of the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, and anthropologist Margaret Mead agreed to present what was intended to be an opposition view. It turned out that by the time she got to the meeting Dr. Mead's views were certainly not opposed to the notion, and in her typical colorful manner she expressed the need for a new institution. We need a new institution. There isn't any doubt about that. The institutions we have are totally unsatisfactory. In many cases they are not only unsatisfactory, they involve a prostitution of science and a prostitution of the decision making process.
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