Science, Technology, and Society

1. Because technology is embedded within a social context, it is influenced by social, political, and economic interests and its transfer from one social system to another can be problematic.
2. Expert opinion regarding the production of technology does not necessarily imply expert opinion regarding the use and transfer of technology.
3. Evaluation of technology is exceedingly difficult, and depends upon a wide range of indicators, including ones outside the domain of science (e.g., is legalized abortion moral?).

Social scientists should pay greater attention to:

1. the 'political economy' of the scientific laboratory,
   
2. the organization and culture of private sector research and development,
   
3. the impact of public interest groups on science and technology,
   
4. integrating other social sciences into the sociology of science, and
   
5. building linkages between the sociology of science and public policy makers who influence the direction of science and technology.

The Philosophy of Technology

1. From the Classical perspective, technology is neither good nor bad, but a simple derivation from the immutable laws of the universe.
2. From the Enlightenment perspective, science provides a means to dominate nature through an ongoing process of improving technology and solving social problems.
3. From the Critical perspective, technology is created by and for the benefit of the power elite who use technology to exploit resources from the less powerful.
4. Risk is not necessarily a neutral language. It might represent the deeply interested knowledge of those who are able to command it.
5. "The real uncertainty at stake in the language of risk is the relationship between power and democracy."

The Philosophy of Science

1. It is impossible for science to be objective, value-free, and unbiased.
2. The best approach to achieving as much objectivity as possible is to rely upon the intersubjective opinion of the community of scholars.
3. The community of scholars, however, harbors inherent biases characteristic of all human collectivities.
4. If science is inherently biased, then so is technology in its development, assessment, dissemination, and management.

Social Philosophy

1. The social structure paradigm views society as if it were a living organism. Society is conceptualized as having parts, or institutions (i.e., economy, religion, education, family, politics), wherein each part performs an essential function and works in harmony with the other institutions for the benefit of the whole society. This emphasis on society as a whole means that technologies are evaluated for how they benefit the overall efficiency and productivity of the society in meeting its needs for survival.
2. From the critical perspective, society is a system of competing parts in conflict for scarce resources. All social systems are considered to have a small minority of power elites who control most of the functions of society. All social action, including the development and dissemination of technology, takes place within an arena of conflict and exploitation of secondary segments of society by dominant segments of society.
3. The human agency paradigm focuses not upon societal institutions or power relationships within society, but upon interactions among the members of the society. It addresses issues of how people make the rules that determine which technologies will be adopted and which ones will be rejected.

Risk Assessment

1. Technical approaches to risk assessment attempt to identify hazard, the probability of technology failure.
2. Cost-benefit approaches estimate potential costs, including the costs of potential technology failure, in relation to potential benefits of a technology.
3. Psychological approaches focus on how knowledge acquisition and emotions affect public perceptions of technology risk.
4. Sociological approaches note that risks are socially constructed through people's interactions with others. Perceived social acceptability plays an important role in public risk assessments.
5. Cultural approaches point out that moral and ethical issues affect public perceptions of a technology.
6. All approaches to risk assessment have benefits and drawbacks.
   
7. All approaches are necessary for a complete understanding of risk.

Critiques of Risk Assessment

Part I

Can we assess risk better? John Adams notes that sometimes the public and scientific experts differ in their evaluations of technology risk. This disagreement occurs, in part, because the public uses a wide variety of criteria, including some nonscientific criteria, in its evaluations of risk. Adams suggests keeping in mind the following observations on the evaluation of risk by technical experts:

1. Remember, everyone else is seeking to manage risk, too.
   
2. They are all guessing; if they knew for certain, they would not be dealing with risk.
   
3. Their guesses are strongly influenced by their beliefs.
   
4. Their behavior is strongly influenced by their guesses and tends to reinforce their beliefs.
   
5. It is the behavior of others, and the behavior of nature, that constitute the actual risk environment.
   
6. It will never be possible to capture "objective risk."

Part II

The approach taken to risk assessment influences what is assessed and the outcome of the assessment. In this section, we discussed how approaches to risk assessment differ.

1. The technical approach implies communication strategies that educate the public about technical risk assessments. When risk assessments become public and consumer perceptions do not coincide with actual risk, then, from the technical perspective, acceptance of a new technology can be unnecessarily delayed or implementation can become more expensive than necessary. Thus, public rejection of the logic of technical risk assessments is considered to be irrational. Risk communication strategies focuses upon educating an ignorant and sometimes irrational public about actual risk. Strategies seek to reduce outrage based upon inaccurate perceptions so as to retain a focus on actual risk.
2. The psychometric approach seeks to identify the cognitive, emotional, and social-demographic determinants of public perceptions of risk. Why do we respond to risks in the way we do? Why do public perceptions of risk differ so greatly from those of technical experts? The psychometric approach has discovered how outrage factors affect public responses to risk and developed strategies for overcoming public resistance to new technologies. Risk communication strategy seeks to reduce outrage by appealing to the public's sense of voluntariness, control, fairness, and moral responsibility in technology development and dissemination.
3. The social process approach begins with the premise that risk and technology are social processes rather than physical entities that exist independently of the humans who assess and experience them. Risk communication is viewed as interactive among technicians, the public, and organizations that have a vested interest in gaining either adoption or rejection of the technology. This approach thereby emphasizes the free exchange of ideas and mediation of sometimes competing agendas regarding risk assessment and management. The focus is more upon the quality of discourse rather than the substance of the arguments themselves.

Risk and Public Policy

1. Public policy is formulated within the context of risk perceptions, which, in turn, reflect the public's opinions of the quality of risk assessment.
2. Risk assessors and the public face dilemmas (i.e., fact-value, standardization, contributor's, de minimis, and consent) in their attempts to balance technical evaluations with the public's desires for nontechnical input into risk assessment.
3. Accusations directed at a skeptical public delivered by technical experts assert that the public is anti-technology, are remote from power and influence, will never be satisfied with anything but 100% safety.
4. Attributions of motives to laypersons oftentimes are inappropriate and unfounded.
5. Sometimes developed countries explain away unethical dissemination of known hazardous technology to developing nations with rationalizations (i.e., isolationist, social-progress, countervailing benefits, and consent) about their efforts at promoting progress.
6. The government and industry should recognize that minimizing harm is more important than providing good, protect the public, assist consumers in their self-determination, and stress the importance of values and long-term economic gain vs. short-term economic benefits.

Risk and Public Discourse

1. Risk management has become increasingly politicized and contentious. Controversy and conflict might have become too pervasive. It might be that the quality of society erodes with too contentious public discourse about technology policy.
2. Risk controversies are not about science versus misguided public perceptions of science, wherein the unwashed public needs to be educated about "real" risks. Rather, risk controversies are struggles over whom will define risk.
3. Disparities between "real" and "perceived" risk might engender public discourse that, itself, is a risk to the social fabric of society.
4. The pervasiveness of media attention to technology and risk assessments destroys trust because most of what the media reports is trust-destroying news.
5. The increasing complexity of technological innovations and societal division of labor leaves citizens in a position of not knowing much about highly complex and potentially dangerous technologies. They must rely upon their judgments about whom to trust.
6. The public is not irrational in their skepticism about complex technologies, but rather cautious in deciding whom to trust in their understandable state of ignorance about these technologies.
7. The public and scientists rely upon social as well as technical criteria to evaluate risk.
8. Claims that the public is irrational in part are responsible for increasingly contentious debate about complex technologies.
9. Some special interest groups profit from fear mongering within this atmosphere of ignorance and fragile trust.
10. The media have a difficult job of presenting varying viewpoints on technical issues.
11. The concept recreancy refers to institutional failure resulting either from lack of competence and/or fiduciary responsibility, to refer to societal-level inadequacies in risk assessment, management, and communication.
12. Improving societal-level capacity in risk assessment, management, and communication requires social scientists to assess the level of recreancy in American society, become more aware of societal-level influences on risk assessment, management, and communication, and build institutional capacity to facilitate wise technology policymaking.

The Media and Risk Management

1. The Natural History Explanation posits that risk communication occurs in four stages: pre-problem, alarmed discovery, awareness of technological fixes, and loss of interest in the topic.
2. The Public Arena Model posits that risk issues must compete with other newsworthy items for mass media exposure. Risks associated with complex and controversial technologies might be covered in the media, but their length of coverage and degree of exposure depends upon other topics of the day.
3. The Hoopla Effect refers to heightened awareness of controversy due to media reports of controversy.
4. Research shows that negative media information carries disproportionate weight in influencing initial public opinions of technology.

Risk Communication

Risk communication is the exchange of information and opinions concerning risk and risk-related factors among risk assessors, risk managers, consumers, and other interested parties. The goals of risk communication are to:

1. Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the risk analysis process,
2. Promote consistency and transparency in arriving at and implementing risk management decisions,
3. Promote awareness and understanding of the specific issues of the risk analysis process,
4. Strengthen the working relationships and mutual respect among risk assessment and management participants,
5. Exchange information among interested parties to risk analysis and management, and
6. Foster public trust and confidence in risk analysis and management.

Essential aspects of proper risk communication include knowing the audience, involving scientific experts, establishing expertise in communication, being a credible source of information, sharing responsibility, differentiating between science and value judgment, assuring transparency, and placing risk in perspective.

The following elements should be included as part of a risk communication program:

1. knowing the nature of risk,
2. knowing the nature of the benefits,
3. knowing the uncertainties in risk assessment,
4. pursuing risk management options,
5. recognizing barriers to risk assessment, and
6. recognizing barriers associated with human agency,

Strategies for effective risk communication include:

1. gathering background information,
2. preparation of technical facts,
3. recognition of outrage conditions,
4. two-way communication, and
5. review and evaluation of previous communication.

Strategies for mitigating negative consequences of a risk crisis include:

1. Describe in an open and honest manner the extent of the crisis and measures being taken to control it.
2. Inform the public about how to reduce their risk exposure.
3. Help the public identify the hazard and how to avoid it.
4. Describe how to prevent further exposure to the risk.
5. Provide complete, up-to-date, and accurate information about the crisis.
6. Keep messages simple.
7. Choose and rely upon a media spokesperson.
8. Acknowledge prior misbehavior.
9. Acknowledge current problems.
10. Share control and be accountable.

Diffusion of Innovations

1. The mistake made most often in attempts at technology transfer is to assume that transmission of the scientific facts about the technology will be sufficient to gain adoption of it.
2. To effectively gain adoption, one must influence the social comparison process, understand the innovation-decision process, assist in easing the transition to the new technology, and mitigate negative consequences associated with new technology adoption.
3. Diffusion is a process whereby an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time within social systems.
4. An innovation is an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new. Innovations can be material or nonmaterial.
5. Innovations vary in relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.
6. Mass media presentations create awareness, disseminate hardware, software, and innovation-evaluation messages, and provide feedback to potential adopters about those who have adopted. Because they create awareness, mass communications place some pressure upon opinion leaders to make decisions about a new technology.
7. Interpersonal communications between experts and the public, opinion leaders and the public, and among friends and family are equally as essential as mass communications in bringing about new technology adoption.
8. Diffusion takes place within the context of structures of social relationships based upon power, norms, and public acceptability.
9. Technology adoption, as a form of human agency, depends strongly upon social comparison processes that lead to choice shift.
10. Technology adoption always brings about changes in normative expectations.
11. The two-step flow model has been shown to provide good explanation of adoption of complex technologies.
12. Change agent communication with others is aided by homophily and hindered by heterophily.
13. The defining characteristic of opinion leaders is they are well respected in their social system.
14. Techniques for identifying opinion leaders include the positional, self-designating, reputational, sociometric, and observational.
15. Cliques of heterophilous opinion leaders are bridged by interstitial persons.
16. Change agent success depends upon effort, client orientation, empathy, contact with opinion leaders, contact with lower status clients, and effective use of paraprofessional aides.
17. The classical diffusion approach assumes a centralized research and development organization that makes most decisions about the innovation and its diffusion. The decentralized diffusion approach entails technology development and dissemination from small firms, local entrepreneurs, and grass-roots organizations.
18. The innovation-decision process involves knowledge, persuasion, symbolic adoption, implementation, and confirmation.
19. Re-invention can lead to increased flexibility in applications of the innovation, increased relative advantage for local use, and increased sense of ownership over the new technology. It can also bring about improper application leading to less effectiveness of the innovation, inability of the research and development organization to maintain quality control over the technology in use, and legal problems if the change infringes upon the protection of a closely related technology.
20. Innovators are quick to adopt, but have little influence on others to adopt. Opinion leaders are early adopters. The early and late majority follow the lead of opinion leaders and are thus influenced by the diffusion effect. Laggards are slow to adopt or never adopt.
21. Laggards are not necessarily slow to symbolically adopt an innovation.
22. All adoption leads to unintended, unanticipated, and undesirable consequences for some.
23. Because the sociologist is supposed to engineer society in a favorable manner, the unintended, unanticipated, and undesirable consequences of technology adoption need to be foreseen and mitigated as much as possible.
24. Overadoption is adoption when experts suggest rejection, or less adoption. This criticism is a variation on the theme that one can have too much of a good thing.
25. The pro-innovation bias is the implication that the innovation should be adopted by all members of the social system.
26. The individual-blame bias is a tendency to blame individuals for their non-adoption.
27. Whether by intent of the powerful elite or not, new technology adoption can further inequalities between upper and lower classes due to economic leakage, political influence, too rapid social change, and dependency upon the developers of new technologies.
28. The change agent is ethically responsible for attempting to mitigate negative consequences associated with new technology adoption.