Value Assumptions in Risk Assessment: A Case Study of the Alachlor Controversy
About this ebook
Are risk debates disputes between those who accept the findings of science and those who do not? Between good and bad science? Or is it possible that opposing assessments of risk, by scientific experts as well as ordinary citizens, reflect and are guided by dominant values held by the assessors? The following analysis of one of these debates supports the latter view. In it we suggest what those dominant values are, how they work within a risk assessment, and some implications of reconceiving risk debates as primarily debates about values.
About the author
Lawrence Haworth is a professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; he also holds the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Articles of his have appeared in Dialogue, Philosophy of Science, American Philosophical Quarterly, Ethics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Harvard Business Review, American Institute of Planners Journal, Educational Theory, Leisure Studies, Environments, and Plan Canada, among others. He has contributed chapters to a number of books, including The Inner Citadel, The Possibility of Aesthetic Experience, Power, Poverty, and Urban Policy, Social Ethics, Urban Problems, and Concepts in Social and Political Philosophy. He is the author of Autonomy (1986), The Good City (1963), and Decadence and Objectivity (1977).
