Aside from questions over appropriateness of expertise being a rather slippery issue, there is very little information given about the expertise of a speaker. We found lot of reliance on phrases such as ‘scientists have found’ and ‘experts say’. Personally I think we need to address this issue before we can even get on to matters of whether experts are the right ones or not. Although expertise may be implied through editing, and TV in particular can flag up institutional association and title, we rarely saw a contributor’s disciplinary background specified. Especially significant I thought, in broadcast reports about new research we found little explicit reference to whether or not a particular contributor was involved in the research being reported (online reports often refer to someone as ‘lead author’ or ‘co-author’). This lack of definition makes it hard for audiences to judge a contributor’s independence, whether they are speaking on a topic they have studied in depth or if they are simply working from anecdote.
Todd Suomela on 02 Jun 11"This paper examines the broad social purpose of US climate science, which has benefited from a public investment of more than $30 billion over the last 20 years. A public values analysis identifies five core public values that underpin the interagency program. Drawing from interviews, meeting observations, and document analysis, I examine the decision processes and institutional structures that lead to the implementation of climate science policy, and identify a variety of public values failures accommodated by this system. In contrast to other cases which find market values frameworks (the "profit as progress" assumption) at the root of public values failures, this case shows how "science values" ("knowledge as progress") may serve as an inadequate or inappropriate basis for achieving broader public values. For both institutions and individual decision makers, the logic linking science to societal benefit is generally incomplete, incoherent, and tends to conflate intrinsic and instrumental values. I argue that to be successful with respect to its motivating public values, the US climate science enterprise must avoid the assumption that any advance in knowledge is inherently good, and offer a clearer account of the kinds of research and knowledge advance likely to generate desirable social outcomes. "