For a long time, I have been concerned with these, and other questions, for which there was no apparent answer. No solution. The application of the scientific method to test hypothesis(es), as is commonly employed in the natural sciences, just wasn’t going to cut it.
My search for scientists exploring these same questions triggered my participation with the @Risk project. Context for my involvement is also important here, and so I must digress. Before I joined Calian, I previously worked on a large and comprehensive environmental risk assessment for the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. It used to, and still does, drive me crazy that nuclear environmental risk is held to a much different standard than literally every other form of environmental contamination. For non-nuclear contamination to exceed their respective environmental standards, there is strong scientific evidence to support the potential risk to humans. For nuclear contamination to exceed standards, only the perception of cumulative risk to humans needs to be exceeded. This made informed risk communication to the public stakeholders inherently far more complex.
As a contributor to the @Risk project, I quickly realized I had to learn the nuances and differences amongst the terminology and language used within the disciplines represented on the research team. This language was largely based on concepts and notions grounded in the social sciences, for which I had had no formal training. But once learned, I was well-positioned to provide potential insights, connections and applications owing to my differences in perspective.
Of the concepts the @Risk team discussed, a few points of interest are shared here due to their prevalence and impact on our collective ability to make informed decisions - particularly related to the nuclear industry.
First, there is the notion of individual versus community benefits. If an individual recognizes a personal benefit, acceptance is much greater than if that benefit were to be dispersed more broadly throughout a community. A case in point is the production of medical isotopes (individual benefit) compared with nuclear energy production (community benefit). There is negligible controversy with respect to medical isotope production but significant controversy on energy production, both of which can be produced in the same nuclear power reactors.
As well, community thinking can have a positive or negative influence on our capacity to make informed decisions. The @Risk research focuses on whether/how multiple perspectives (community) might be integrated in decision-making such that the views of wider audiences are included (positive), and in doing so, hopefully mitigate risk perceptions. This is a concept referred to as two-eyed seeing in the Indigenous literature.
On the other hand, there can also be directional (negative) individual or community behaviour if motivated reasoning (i.e., influence of values and/or beliefs on decision-making process) has had a strong influence on the creation or interpretation of evidence in a decision-making process. Indeed, motivated reasoning may be present in the scientific community. This can be seen in the variability amongst scientific results that follow the same general scientific process due to variables or factors not considered (e.g., too narrow a scope, co-variances). Scientists will tend to select and test factors based on their prior knowledge and experience.
This is also related to our collective capacity and ability to adapt to shifting paradigms. In the natural sciences, there is a strong protectiveness in the robustness and strength of the underlying scientific theories that inevitably shape and moldthe testing of experimental designs. Scientists will rarely challenge what is broadly accepted, since the results may be openly criticized, but this inhibits the exploration and testing of truly novel ideas. In the nuclear industry, this can be seen in the continued acceptance of the outdated Linear No Threshold theory despite mounting evidence to the contraryThis blog is intended to provide readers with a snapshot of some of the thoughts that have arisen, in part, from my shared experience and learning with the @Risk team. The project has served as an open platform for our interdisciplinary team to engage in a series of discussions and topics that are designed to explore potential motivation(s) behind some of the controversial nuances systemic in each of our six case studies - the site selection process for nuclear waste disposal, hydraulic fracturing, newborn screening policy, genetically modified salmon approvals, mammography screening policy and deliberation in vaccine policy.
I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity and capacity to participate on the @Risk project. Together, we have and continue to be able to see what we thought were well-known issues in a new light(s)… a new perspective(s).