Building on Katherine Dommett’s and Warren Pearce’s recent post on the evidence for public trust in experts, Matt Wood argues that whilst the death of the expert has been oversold, the question of how expertise is put to use in modern democracies remains an unresolved dilemma. Drawing on research underpinning his recent book, Hyper-active Governance, he suggests that competing tendencies […]
Category: public trust in science
“Trust yourself”: how the Citizen Science movement proposes a radical rethink of the relationship between scientists and the public
Was Michael Gove wrong to say the public had “had enough of experts”? Not exactly, argues Peter Dennis. In also appealing to the public to trust themselves, Gove touched a deeper nerve, one running back to Kant, the Enlightenment and intellectual autonomy. However, whereas in Kant’s day the public was the same group of people to whom both political and scientific […]