Discussion Questions

1. Be prepared to describe the key characteristics and strengths and limitations of each approach to risk assessment.
   
2. It will be important to recognize the philosophical and applied implications of differences between the approaches to risk assessment. In comparing the economic approach with the probabilistic approach, for example, note that we shift our focus from expected value to expected utility, thereby placing emphasis upon perceptions of the usefulness of the technology. In a sense, we are shifting our focus from asking, "How safe is the technology?" to asking "Is the technology safe enough?"
   
3. Be prepared to describe the limitations to technical risk assessments and Adams' suggestions for evaluating technical risk assessments.
4. Be prepared to describe what is meant by "outrage factors" in public discourse about new technologies. Know which outrage factors are most important in influencing public opinion.
5. Be prepared to describe Beck's argument that we live in a "risk society."
6. Be prepared to describe Bell and Mayerfeld's argument that risk assessment is a battle over the language of risk.
7. Be prepared to describe the elements of Paul Slovic's argument that the system destroys trust.
8. Be prepared to describe the policy debate between Daniel Kahan and Cass Sunstein. Why does Sunstein believe that public policy should be guided by values, but not by blunders? Why does Kahan argue for approaches that seek to reconcile diverse value orientations? As part of your response, be prepared to describe bounded rationality.
9. Be prepared to describe the recreancy theorem (see: Sociology of Trust) as an approach to risk communication. Be prepared to describe the sociological importance of the recreancy theorem in relation to social-psychological approaches to understanding public responses to complex and controversial innovations. As part of your response, be prepared to describe formal rationality and substantive rationality and the importance of these expressions for designing public policy related to complex and controversial innovations.

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