What do you think?
Rate this book
Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society
A new model for the relationship between science and democracy that spans policymaking, the funding and conduct of research, and our approach to new technologies
Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, depends on knowledge provided by scientists and other experts. Meanwhile, contemporary political life is increasingly characterized by problematic responses to expertise, with denials of science on the one hand and complaints about the ignorance of the citizenry on the other.
Politics and Expertise offers a new model for the relationship between science and democracy, rooted in the ways in which scientific knowledge and the political context of its use are imperfect. Zeynep Pamuk starts from the fact that science is uncertain, incomplete, and contested, and shows how scientists’ judgments about what is significant and useful shape the agenda and framing of political decisions. The challenge, Pamuk argues, is to ensure that democracies can expose and contest the assumptions and omissions of scientists, instead of choosing between wholesale acceptance or rejection of expertise. To this end, she argues for institutions that support scientific dissent, proposes an adversarial “science court” to facilitate the public scrutiny of science, reimagines structures for funding scientific research, and provocatively suggests restricting research into dangerous new technologies.
Through rigorous philosophical analysis and fascinating examples, Politics and Expertise moves the conversation beyond the dichotomy between technocracy and populism and develops a better answer for how to govern and use science democratically.
Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, depends on knowledge provided by scientists and other experts. Meanwhile, contemporary political life is increasingly characterized by problematic responses to expertise, with denials of science on the one hand and complaints about the ignorance of the citizenry on the other.
Politics and Expertise offers a new model for the relationship between science and democracy, rooted in the ways in which scientific knowledge and the political context of its use are imperfect. Zeynep Pamuk starts from the fact that science is uncertain, incomplete, and contested, and shows how scientists’ judgments about what is significant and useful shape the agenda and framing of political decisions. The challenge, Pamuk argues, is to ensure that democracies can expose and contest the assumptions and omissions of scientists, instead of choosing between wholesale acceptance or rejection of expertise. To this end, she argues for institutions that support scientific dissent, proposes an adversarial “science court” to facilitate the public scrutiny of science, reimagines structures for funding scientific research, and provocatively suggests restricting research into dangerous new technologies.
Through rigorous philosophical analysis and fascinating examples, Politics and Expertise moves the conversation beyond the dichotomy between technocracy and populism and develops a better answer for how to govern and use science democratically.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published December 21, 2021
9 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 5, 2025
Poorly argued by someone who would let science get further bastardized by the political winds of ill-informed citizens. You can't vote on gravity but Pamuk might disagree. Here is the sentence that sums up the argument of the book (page 101): "Political parties, legislators, and special interest groups can be entrusted with the proper handling of expert advice to select the appropriate means for realizing citizens' aims." I will let you ponder the implications of that claim. No empirical evidence mind you. Just a statement like injecting bleach will get rid of COVID, or taking hydroxychloroquine will treat COVID. The author generally states that juries do an adequate job comparing judges' decisions to those of the juries. She cites an 80% concordance from one study. If you agree that judges are always correct then that means out of every 10 major decisions, juries are wrong in two of them. Hardly an endorsement of competence. Would you take a 20% chance on playing Russian Roulette? Second, the author does not cite evidence unfavorable to her argument. She doesn't address venue shopping, where plaintiff attorneys seek to file cases in more favorable locations. How does science differ in Mississippi versus Manhattan? Embarrassing to see an academic write such a poorly argued book that is tantamount to giving armchair quarterbacks the platform of why their favorite team should have run a specific play, except lives will be injured in Pamuk's case. I would love for her to take her argument to a National Academy Of Sciences Meeting and see the reception she would get for it. If there is ignorance of science the answer isn’t democracy, it’s enhancing the skill levels of the citizens who need a working understanding to make effective decisions. Life is politicized enough, but somehow politicizing science instead of the happy-speak of Pamuk calling it democracy would lead to a further erosion of trust in science.
February 26, 2023
Pamuk's "Politics and Expertise" is an impassioned, wide-ranging tour of views on the interface between science and society. Touching on a large number of questions that each make up entire subfields (e.g., values in science, public engagement, science funding), the book takes on a very ambitious scope of topics and literatures in service of its central argument: science must be more scrutinized, critically examined, and held accountable by a democratic society.
This is, of course, a relatively agreeable thesis: much of the field of STS has been arguing this for since the science wars, and even those who critique this thesis (e.g., third wave of science studies folks) share the democratic values that Pamuk claims to defend (and just argue we need to achieve the democratic ideals of science in slightly different paths).
One of the biggest contributions of this book is its thoroughly sourced footnotes. Pamuk has managed to marshal examples from a really wide set of literatures, and the footnotes and citations alone are a treasure trove for the reader. Even if you're deeply familiar with Science & Technology Studies, Philosophy of Science, and Science Policy, there will be some citations that push at your reading lists in interesting ways. This makes it a valuable resource and I've assigned one of the chapters in my class a result... while I disagree with some of the book, the citations are most useful.
I think Pamuk also makes several arguments that are insightful and helpful. Pamuk's take on the curatorial role of public engagement coordinators is excellent (we've argued this in Reynolds et al, as did Caroline Lee in her excellent "Do It Yourself Democracy"). I was delighted to find Pamuk's articulation of the importance of dissenting opinions, which is a point I've tried to make in several advisory settings over the past several years. In these and more, I found myself nodding along and appreciative of Pamuk's very articulate expressions of these ideas.
At the same time, though... in teaching a science policy class this semester, we've routinely encountered the same critique with our readings: these analyses and prescriptions would have been believable in 2015, but don't really hold water in 2023. After a Trump presidency, in a world in which we got bored & tired of acknowledging an ongoing pandemic (despite it killing thousands of Americans alone each week), where unregulated AI and algorithms are wreaking havoc, and where it's relentlessly clear that the vast majority of the public's only use for "science" is as a motivated-reasoning exercise to rhetorically shore up their preferred course of action... it's just hard to feel any sort of hope in these prescriptions.
In the epilogue, which applies the theory of the book to the COVID-19 pandemic that emerged at the late stage of writing, Pamuk writes "...COVID-19 thus reinforced a central message of this book: it is crucial for non-scientists to scrutinize the assumptions that scientists make, understand the uncertainty of their claims, and be clear about the issues upon which they're completely ignorant" (p. 198). But, it's just wildly unclear to me that citizens are at all interested in this kind of civic-minded exercise, let alone equipped to do it. And, when Pamuk holds up Ioannidis and the Great Barrington Declaration as examples of the kind of dissent she calls for (albeit with caveats), it raises red flags about what the real project is here. And, oddly, Pamuk's worries seem to stem from the potential of too many left-wing scientists rather than, say, the fact that COVID policy was largely set by corporate interests, a relentless lack of imagination, and the abandonment of any pretence of 'public' in 'public health.'
And, look: I agree... there is an awful lot of bad science policy out there. I think Pamuk's examples of the abuses of COVID-19 modelling in the epilogue are good illustrations of this. But, where I think the argument fundamentally goes awry is in diagnosing this as a /scientific/ problem, rather than a /political/ or /civic/ or /societal/ one. In my view, it's the relentless quantification; the privileging of economics-style mentalities of governance; even the very view that ultimately science will save the day (if only put through a science court)... rather than, in my opinion, the more fundamental failures: that we seem to have given up any pretence of actually wanting to solve societal problems and of caring for each other. A science court doesn't create a compassionate society, nor does it address the fundamentally flawed power dynamics and political mechanisms that give us the terrible decisions of today: it just provides a slow way of getting to the same kind of definitionally moderated outcomes of other forms of public engagement.
So, in the end, my review is a blend of 4- and 2- stars. There are some great arguments and the excellent set of footnotes that make this very much a four-star book. But, at the same time, the book doesn't quite unlock what we need from political scientists coming into STS. STS has never had a problem offering optimistic ideas of how we can tame science and put scientists in their place. What it lacks is meaningful political theory about how to actually deal with the real power that exists in the world, and turn these fantasies of direct democracy into actual, real-world institutions. Pamuk takes a step forward on that front (with identifying the value of dissenting opinions and a science court), but doesn't actually flesh out how these institutions could be built in a way that deals with the real, relentless power structures in the world.
This is, of course, a relatively agreeable thesis: much of the field of STS has been arguing this for since the science wars, and even those who critique this thesis (e.g., third wave of science studies folks) share the democratic values that Pamuk claims to defend (and just argue we need to achieve the democratic ideals of science in slightly different paths).
One of the biggest contributions of this book is its thoroughly sourced footnotes. Pamuk has managed to marshal examples from a really wide set of literatures, and the footnotes and citations alone are a treasure trove for the reader. Even if you're deeply familiar with Science & Technology Studies, Philosophy of Science, and Science Policy, there will be some citations that push at your reading lists in interesting ways. This makes it a valuable resource and I've assigned one of the chapters in my class a result... while I disagree with some of the book, the citations are most useful.
I think Pamuk also makes several arguments that are insightful and helpful. Pamuk's take on the curatorial role of public engagement coordinators is excellent (we've argued this in Reynolds et al, as did Caroline Lee in her excellent "Do It Yourself Democracy"). I was delighted to find Pamuk's articulation of the importance of dissenting opinions, which is a point I've tried to make in several advisory settings over the past several years. In these and more, I found myself nodding along and appreciative of Pamuk's very articulate expressions of these ideas.
At the same time, though... in teaching a science policy class this semester, we've routinely encountered the same critique with our readings: these analyses and prescriptions would have been believable in 2015, but don't really hold water in 2023. After a Trump presidency, in a world in which we got bored & tired of acknowledging an ongoing pandemic (despite it killing thousands of Americans alone each week), where unregulated AI and algorithms are wreaking havoc, and where it's relentlessly clear that the vast majority of the public's only use for "science" is as a motivated-reasoning exercise to rhetorically shore up their preferred course of action... it's just hard to feel any sort of hope in these prescriptions.
In the epilogue, which applies the theory of the book to the COVID-19 pandemic that emerged at the late stage of writing, Pamuk writes "...COVID-19 thus reinforced a central message of this book: it is crucial for non-scientists to scrutinize the assumptions that scientists make, understand the uncertainty of their claims, and be clear about the issues upon which they're completely ignorant" (p. 198). But, it's just wildly unclear to me that citizens are at all interested in this kind of civic-minded exercise, let alone equipped to do it. And, when Pamuk holds up Ioannidis and the Great Barrington Declaration as examples of the kind of dissent she calls for (albeit with caveats), it raises red flags about what the real project is here. And, oddly, Pamuk's worries seem to stem from the potential of too many left-wing scientists rather than, say, the fact that COVID policy was largely set by corporate interests, a relentless lack of imagination, and the abandonment of any pretence of 'public' in 'public health.'
And, look: I agree... there is an awful lot of bad science policy out there. I think Pamuk's examples of the abuses of COVID-19 modelling in the epilogue are good illustrations of this. But, where I think the argument fundamentally goes awry is in diagnosing this as a /scientific/ problem, rather than a /political/ or /civic/ or /societal/ one. In my view, it's the relentless quantification; the privileging of economics-style mentalities of governance; even the very view that ultimately science will save the day (if only put through a science court)... rather than, in my opinion, the more fundamental failures: that we seem to have given up any pretence of actually wanting to solve societal problems and of caring for each other. A science court doesn't create a compassionate society, nor does it address the fundamentally flawed power dynamics and political mechanisms that give us the terrible decisions of today: it just provides a slow way of getting to the same kind of definitionally moderated outcomes of other forms of public engagement.
So, in the end, my review is a blend of 4- and 2- stars. There are some great arguments and the excellent set of footnotes that make this very much a four-star book. But, at the same time, the book doesn't quite unlock what we need from political scientists coming into STS. STS has never had a problem offering optimistic ideas of how we can tame science and put scientists in their place. What it lacks is meaningful political theory about how to actually deal with the real power that exists in the world, and turn these fantasies of direct democracy into actual, real-world institutions. Pamuk takes a step forward on that front (with identifying the value of dissenting opinions and a science court), but doesn't actually flesh out how these institutions could be built in a way that deals with the real, relentless power structures in the world.
October 15, 2023
Με την παραδοχή ότι η αβεβαιότητα διαδραματίζει κεντρικό ρόλο στην επιστήμη η συγγραφέας διερευνά τις κρίσεις των επιστημόνων σχετικά με τι είναι σημαντικό και πως συγκλίνουν μονομερώς προς την επιδίωξη ορισμένων στόχων έναντι άλλων. Αναλύει ποια είναι η σχέση της επιστήμης με την πολιτική και πώς παίρνει η κεντρική εξουσία αποφάσεις με γνώμονα τις επιστημονικές προτάσεις και ανακαλύψεις. Προτείνει την άμεση συμμετοχή των πολιτών και την δημιουργία ενός δικαστηρίου της επιστήμης κατά αντιστοιχία με το ορκωτό δικαστήριο . Την εποχή που τελείωνε το βιβλίο της ξεκίνησε η πανδημία και βρήκε την ευκαιρία να προσθέσει ένα τελευταίο κεφάλαιο για να αναλύσει μέσα από το θεωρητικό της πλαίσιο τα γεγονότα που συγκλόνισαν τον κόσμο . Ενδιαφέρον, αντικειμενικό, που ίσως κουράσει σε ορισμένα σημεία από τις υπεραναλύσεις και την επανάληψη των κεντρικών θέσεων της συγγραφέως.
March 20, 2022
A very informative, if very academic, work that increased my scope of consideration in the relationship between science, technology, technocrats and democracy
January 7, 2023
Very important book. I wish there was a non-academic summary or article for the general public.
September 29, 2023
Interesting examination of the tensions between politics and science, with proposals about how to overcome them.
Want to read
November 9, 2023Teaching this book next semester in my seminar on Public Trust in Science.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews