Stream of reports make the case for dialogue

A suite of government reports on science published between March and April 2010 have highlighted the importance of continued public dialogue in informing policy-making around science and technology.

Published in early April, the Science and Trust Expert Group Report & Action Plan states that the UK is:

“among the world’s leading nations in public dialogue and we are pleased to be able to report a commitment from Government, research councils, and the wider research community to using deliberative dialogue to enable development of more robust policies. Dialogue itself can deliver real insights into the ethical concerns around new and emerging technologies”

The Government’s Response to the Lords Science & Technology Select Committee Report into Nanotechnologies and Food states:

“deliberative public engagement is a distinctive approach to involving people in decision-making. It provides policy and decision makers with rich data on public attitudes and values, offers opportunities to fully explore why people feel the way they do, and allows the time to develop public understanding, ideas, options and priorities with the public. For the public participants, the experience provides opportunities to share and develop their views with each other and directly with experts and decision-makers.”

The Seventh Report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on Bioengineering states:

“We are pleased to discover that public engagement has been considered an early priority by those working in synthetic biology research and policy. This commitment indicates that lessons are being learned from past experiences.”

This confirms that dialogue is still high on the science policy agenda in uncertain times. Sciencewise-ERC currently supports the public dialogue on synthetic biology referred to above.