Keywords
Decision-Making
Science and Technology
How to Cite
Abstract
The paper’s goal is to present the main points of the discussion about expertise and the role of experts in decision-making based upon Dorothy Nelkin’s and Helga Nowotny’s work on the subject. Through literature review, we briefly present the history of the Social Studies of Science and Technology. Next, we explore the topic of expertise and the role of experts as an object of study and delve into the implications of increased involvement of scientists in controversial areas, discussed by Dorothy Nelkin in “The Political Impact of Technical Expertise”, published in 1975, and Helga Nowotny in “Democratizing expertise and socially robust knowledge”, published 2003. We conclude that the expertise-knowledge-decision-making relationship is a topic that is being explored by the Social Studies of Science and Technology field for decades and is still under discussion. The contribution of the studies explored is to recognize that the mobilization of scientific knowledge as expertise in controversial issues is inherently conflicting and permeated by uncertainties, and identifying and reporting on such uncertainties must be part of the solution of such controversies, overcoming the idea that the role of science is to reduce the uncertainties to zero.
References
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