The manufacturing of consensus: A struggle for epistemic authority in chemical risk evaluation

Abstract

Society critically depends on scientific expertise to inform and justify action on many complex issues. Scientific debates drive science, but the processes of informing policy are commonly designed with the assumption of scientific consensus, for example about the nature of chemical risk. We are concerned that this design may result in the manufacturing of consensus through the exclusion of potentially valuable epistemic perspectives. This paper studies the scientific controversy around a group of chemicals (endocrine disruptors, EDs) as a case of science-for-policy dispute in complex fields with large scientific uncertainties. We conducted two focus groups with scientists from either side of the dispute and analyzed the dominant narratives about ED research and regulation that emerged from the conversation in each group. We found starkly contrasting narratives, which, to the best of our understanding, are both based on valid and epistemically sound concerns: one story was about the insurmountable complexity of environmental endocrine impacts, and concerns about normatively inappropriate industry influence on regulation; the other about barriers to efficient and effective science for policy processes. Archetypes from each group’s narrative were used as tools to discredit the epistemic authority of the disputing side and present their own side as the sole authority to inform regulation, thus striving to manufacture consensus to gain epistemic authority. Our study suggests that the expectation of consensus in areas with large uncertainties incentivizes scientists to use questionable methods to gain epistemic authority, else they themselves risk being closed out of the decision space. We conclude that there is a need to redesign processes where science advises policy so as to improve their capacity to draw on a plurality of scientific expertise, while safeguarding against the influence of normatively inappropriate forces and epistemically flawed approaches.