Risk and rationality: philosophical foundations for populist reforms

Abstract

Only ten to twelve percent of Americans would voluntarily live within a mile of a nuclear plant or hazardous waste facility. But industry spokespersons claim that such risk aversion represents ignorance and paranoia, and they lament that citizen protests have delayed valuable projects and increased their costs. Who is right? In Risk and Rationality, Kristin Shrader-Frechette argues that neither charges of irresponsible endangerment nor countercharges of illiteracy frame the issues properly. She examines the debate over methodological norms for risk evaluation and finds analysts arrayed in a spectrum.Points of view extend from cultural relativists who believe that any risk can be justified (since no rational standards are ultimately possible) to naive positivists who believe that risk evaluation can be objective, neutral, and value free. Both camps, she argues, are wrong, because risk evaluation as a social process is rational and objective, even though all risk-evaluation rules are value-laden. Shrader-Frechette defends a middle position called scientific proceduralism. She shows why extremist views are unreliable, reveals misconceptions underlying current risk-evaluation methods and strategies, and sketches the reforms needed to set hazard assessment and risk evaluation on a publicly defensible foundation. These reforms involve mathematical, economic, ethical, and legal procedures.They constitute a new paradigm for assessment when acceptance of public hazards is rational, recognizing that laypersons are often more rational in their evaluation of societal risks than either experts or governments have acknowledged. Such reforms would provide citizens with more influence in risk decisions and focus on mediating ethical conflicts, rather than seeking to impose the will of experts. Science, she argues, need not preclude democracy.

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