Is it really asking too much from our collective intellectual life to devise, at least once a century, some new critical tools? … The critic assembles … offers the participants arenas in which to gather.

--Bruno Latour, Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? 2004

www.monsanto.ca/products/Pages/default.aspx

Concerned publics INVISIBLE in governance.

Biotech Advisory Committee (Prudham & Morris 2006)

Well Ordered Science Science serving a wider public good by choosing

democratically-informed programs of research and techno-scientific development reflecting the values of scientists and citizens.

DEMOCRACY ANDSCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Science and The Public

What is meant by “the public” and by “science” in moments of techno-scientific controversy and engagement?

i) Explain unproductive patterns of pubic-science engagement

ii) Point to democratic possibilities for scientific knowledge development and dissemination within science-based institutions

This approach has helped me:

2002I was practicing genetics and

noticed dissent against biotech and a pitched public debate.

www.greenacres.com/media/frankenfood_large.jpg

Health Canada has said for years that [GE] can be safely used, and this is determined by the most modern scientific information … [GE technologies] are some of the most stringently regulated products in Canada and only those products that meet Health Canada’s strict health and safety standards are registered for sale and use … The reality is that it simply isn’t logical to ban these products.

--Lorne Hepworth, CEO CropLife 2012

Dissent stems from the inability of the public to understand and agree with experts

DEFICIT MODEL

Heavily criticized in intellectual and policy circles (Brossard & Lewenstein 2010)

DEFICIT MODEL

Informs interactions between policy-makers and concerned publics in the creation of an expert-only policy culture

(see Shields & Sanders 2006; Montpetit & Rouillard 2008).

Taking [the public] seriously would mean pandering to a kind of rabid democracy … the public is incapable of weighing in on the complex science [of biotechnology].

Canadian Food Inspection Agency worker (quoted, Shields & Sanders 2006)

ETHNOGRAPHY (2002-4)

Farmers involved in and around lawsuits

Elmer Laird, 72 years, SK’s first organic farmer

Schmeiser v. MonsantoHoffman et al. v Monsanto

This public was not against crop biotechnologies per se but the politics of knowledge surrounding them.

A critique of democratic institutions that appear:i) closed to alternative risk assessmentsii) blind to the productive frameworks for regulatory science (ex.

corporate data)

Biotechnology is a different value system. The whole value around clean fields, monocultures, maximizing production, not a weed in sight … it’s part of a general cultural bias which permeates the whole agricultural system fromresearch to implementation towards privatizing, standardizing and industrializing everything.

Doug Bone, organic farmer, June 2003

But why, the farmers ask,

• not study crop biotechnologies in their broader environmental contexts?

• take a short-term timescale for risk assessment rather than a longitudinal view?

• is there no process of public deliberation about these decisions, thus invisibilizing the fact that these are decisions taken by peoplein particular social and political contexts?

USING THE LAW TO MAKE THEIR KNOWLEDGE and CONCERNS APPEAR as POLITICALLY VALID.

This [declaration] would compel the Defendants to submit their engineered gene to a public environmental scrutiny rather than the behind closed doors approach they have been allowed to use with the federal government’s regulatory bodies.

(2004) Memorandum to Federal Court of Appeal, para. 17

HOW DO THE COURTS FAIR AS A PROVING GROUND FOR DIFFERENT THEORIES OF RISK?

ACTIVIST DISCOURSESSCIENCE

LEGAL DISCOURSESSCIENCE

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

CDA is a discourse analytical approach that primarily studies the way social power abuse and inequality are enacted and reproduced by text and talk in the social and political context.

(Teun van Dijk 1998, 1)

INTERETIVE APPROACH

Science is open to negotiation with other social institutions and forms of knowledge (like legal, farmer/activist)

Similar to STS scholar Sheila Jasanoff (see 1995) and unlike the majority of academic attention (c.f. de Beer 2007; Garforth & Ainslie 2006; Muller 2006)

Allowed me to chart the processes by which a certain conception of science was secured through the language of the law in ways that link to power and social interests

1998Seed out-of-place = Contamination orIP Infringement?

Schmeiser v. Monsanto

2004Schmeiser Loses 5/9 Supreme Court ruling

Schmeiser v. Monsanto

After growing canola over many years, Mr. Schmeiser has developed his own farming practices particular to the land that he farms, which practices have withstood experimentation and the test of time

(2001) Factum to the Trial Court, para. 14

Numerous samples were taken … A series of independent tests by different experts confirmed that the canola Mr. Schmesier planted and grew in 1998 was 95-98 percent Roundup resistant. Only a grow-out test by Mr. Schmeiser in his yard in 1999 and by Mr. Freisen did not support this result

more significant [than Schmeiser’s or Mr. Friesen’s tests] are the results of genetic testing by staff of Monsanto U.S. at St. Louis

(2004) Supreme Court of Canada, para. 64(2002) Federal Trial Court, para. 48

It may be that some RoudupReady seed was carried to Mr. Schmeiser’s field without his knowledge. Some such seed might have survived the winter to germinate in the spring of 1998. However, I am persuaded by evidence of Dr. Keith Downey…that none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of RoundupReady canola of a commercial quality evident form the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop

(2001) Factum to the Trial Court, para. 65

LEGAL DISCOURSE FURTHERS A VISION OF EXPERTISE AS LIMITED TO THE LAB AND OF THE PUBLIC AS NON-KNOWLEDGEABLE.

LEGAL DISCOURSE FURTHERS A LACK OF PRODUCTIVE DIALOGUE ON BIOTECHNOLOGIES.

EXPERTISE IS IMPORTANT and was part of the creation of landmark 20th century regulations and regulatory institutions.

BUT EXPERTISE LOSES LEGITIMACY when its decision-making frameworks are not made transparent.

CITIZEN-SCIENCE How do you make decisions about investment?How do you decide which research questions to pursue? What timeline for risk considerations is appropriate?

www.scorpiomasonry.com

CITIZENSCIENCE

POTENTIAL

SUSTAINABLE OUTCOMES Florida (1995)Varlander (2009)Lorentzen (2008)Stark & Vedres (2006)

Web-based toolsCurricula and teaching materials empowering civic involvement

St. Thomas Citizen Science Lab

Smart Skin Story

BRAND NEW INITIATIVES. LINKED WITH CURRENT SOCIO-POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC REALITITES. DIRECTPARTICIPATION IN DEMOCRACY.