Burgess Michael M
University of British Columbia, Canada.
Public Underst Sci. 2014 Jan;23(1):48-52. doi: 10.1177/0963662512472160.
The last 20 years have seen a shift from the view that publics need to be educated so that they trust science and its governance to the recognition that publics possess important local knowledge and the capacity to understand technical information sufficiently to participate in policy decisions. There are now a variety of approaches to increasing the role of publics and advocacy groups in the policy and governance of science and biotechnology. This article considers recent experiences that demonstrate that it is possible to bring together those with policy making responsibility and diverse publics to co-produce policy and standards of practice that are technically informed, incorporate wide social perspectives and explicitly involve publics in key decisions. Further, the process of deliberation involving publics is capable of being incorporated into governance structures to enhance the capacity to respond to emerging issues with levels of public engagement that are proportionate to the issues.
在过去20年里，人们的观念发生了转变，从认为公众需要接受教育以便信任科学及其治理，转变为认识到公众拥有重要的本地知识，并且有能力充分理解技术信息以参与政策决策。现在有多种方法来增强公众和倡导团体在科学与生物技术政策及治理中的作用。本文探讨了近期的一些经验，这些经验表明，有可能将负有决策责任的各方与不同的公众聚集在一起，共同制定在技术上有依据、纳入广泛社会视角并明确让公众参与关键决策的政策和实践标准。此外，涉及公众的审议过程能够被纳入治理结构，以提高应对新出现问题的能力，使公众参与程度与问题相称。
