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Science to the rescue or contingent progress? Comparing 10 years of public, expert and policy discourses on new and emerging science and technology in the United Kingdom

Smallman, ML; (2017) Science to the rescue or contingent progress? Comparing 10 years of public, expert and policy discourses on new and emerging science and technology in the United Kingdom. Public Understanding of Science 10.1177/0963662517706452. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Over the past 10 years, numerous public debates on new and emerging science and technologies have taken place in the United Kingdom. In this article, we characterise the discourses emerging from these debates and compare them to the discourses in analogous expert scientific and policy reports. We find that while the public is broadly supportive of new scientific developments, they see the risks and social and ethical issues associated with them as unpredictable but inherent parts of the developments. In contrast, the scientific experts and policymakers see risks and social and ethical issues as manageable and quantifiable with more research and knowledge. We argue that these differences amount to two different sociotechnical imaginaries or views of science and how it shapes our world – an elite imaginary of ‘science to the rescue’ shared by scientists and policymakers and public counter-imaginary of ‘contingent progress’. We argue that these two imaginaries indicate that, but also help explain why, public dialogue has had limited impact on public policy.

Type: Article
Title: Science to the rescue or contingent progress? Comparing 10 years of public, expert and policy discourses on new and emerging science and technology in the United Kingdom
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1177/0963662517706452
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662517706452
Language: English
Additional information: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Keywords: Governance, public dialogue, public discourse, public engagement
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1546385
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