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Constructing Expertise : In a Third Wave of Science Studies?

Arie Rip Social Studies of Science 2003 33: 419 DOI: 10.1177/03063127030333006 The online version of this article can be found at: http://sss.sagepub.com/content/33/3/419

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SYMPOSIUM Constructing Expertise: In a Third Wave of Science Studies?

Arie Rip
There is much with which to agree in the discussion paper of Collins & Evans (2002) on a normative theory of expertise as the next step in science studies, but also much with which to disagree. While I have a problem with their various rhetorical strategies,1 I strongly agree with Collins and Evans that a normative theory of expertise is an important challenge for science studies at the present time (2002: 237, 239).2 However, I found their paper curiously disappointing in how they address that challenge. There are three items in their paper that qualify for a normative theory, or the beginnings of such a theory. First, Collins and Evans emphasize that there is expertise, often experience-based, which is not recognized by certication (2002: 238).3 They do not follow-up on how one can recognize such expertise, and recognize it at an early stage, perhaps as a competence. Although this may well be impossible, one might be able to improve the processes of recognition. Second, they emphasize that more extension, i.e. more participation by non-specialists, is not always better. This point deserves to be reiterated, and further articulation is important. Collins and Evans appear to suggest that the actual, optimal, extension is to be decided on a case-by-case basis. At least, that is the way they discuss their cases (2002: 26165). Third, they emphasize that one can usefully start with esoteric sciences as a model, and with the experience of the sociologist studying such sciences as a heuristic. That this is indeed part of a normative theory is visible in phrases such as:
It seems, then, important to retain a notion, even if it is an idealized one, of a core-set community in which expertise is used to adjudicate between competing knowledge-claims and to determine the content of knowledge. (2002: 281)
Social Studies of Science 33/3(June 2003) 419434 SSS and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi) [0306-3127(200306)33:3;419434;033253] www.sagepublications.com

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I can wholeheartedly agree with the rst two items, but the third item has denite limitations. Collins and Evans overall analytical strategy (or heuristic) to start with esoteric sciences, which they assume should not be interfered with, suggests that the burden of proof should be on the new experts (experience-based or otherwise) who have to argue (with the help of intermediaries including science studies scholars) that they have something to contribute. Rights that accrue from expertise (2002: 249, 251) is a key phrase in Collins and Evans exposition, but they give no indication of how such rights accrue and are to be recognized in practice. Collins and Evans give a formal argument: if people can make a reasonable claim to be members of the core-set relevant to [the] particular technical decision they have contributory expertise (2002: 252). But who is to decide what is relevant? Collins and Evans continue to say:
Their expertise would be continuous with the core-sets expertise, rather than discontinuous with it; astrology and theology are discontinuous with those of radiation ecology, whereas the expertise of sheep farmers is not.

This is not such a simple distinction, however. For example, astrology and theology overlap with anthroposophy, while anthroposophical expertise has a recognized empirical component (for example, on water ows, plant growth, healthy lifestyles), and links up with research questions in established disciplines (up to radiation ecology). Should one rely on the established core-set to adjudicate about the relevance of anthroposophy? Their treatment of expertise is curiously decontextualized, as if the nature of expertise and the rights that might accrue can be discussed independent of the context in which they are shaped. Even for the esoteric sciences, and for the core-sets that are seen as protected, somehow, against epistemic interference, context is important if only in order to guarantee such protection. By choosing core-sets as their entrance point (2002: 24244) and arguing that others than members have no say, their approach is sociological, and because of their neglect of context, an internalist sociology of science. I am not arguing against internalist sociology of science, but would rather see it as an integral part of a broader sociology that includes questions about how esoteric sciences emerge in the rst place, and how protected spaces for such sciences are maintained (and not just through micro-boundary work). Expertise is always about something that is relevant for an audience: the courts, policy makers, decision makers more generally. Collins and Evans discuss such issues in their Appendix, under the heading The Nature of Expertise, but restrict their discussion to the issue of extension, and to the recurrent point that participation is not necessarily good, and that boundaries between inside and outside need not be dissolved. When they say (` a propos Sheila Jasanoff) that they need not go into the role of expertise in particular institutional processes, but can concentrate on the epistemological status of the outcome of [such] process[es] (2002: 276), they sidestep the very issues that are relevant to the epistemological status

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of such outcomes. The Studies of Expertise and Experience that Collins and Evans advocate would prot from consideration of the larger body of work of political scientists, on rights that accrue (from expertise, or in other ways) and on the role of scientic expertise in public decision making.4 In this paper, I want to problematize the role of core-sets and suggest a broader approach in terms of productive arrangements and path-dependent learning, where core-sets are just one possibility. Re-reading the cases discussed by Collins and Evans, and introducing further experiences with expertise in context will allow me to add some further aspects of expertise to their analysis.

Core-sets, Tribal Norms and New Natural History

Let me start by undermining the self-evident and productive role Collins & Evans (2002) assign to core-sets in esoteric sciences. Collins and Evans (2002: 244) claim there is common agreement about that role. Is highenergy physics doing a good job so that it actually deserves to be let alone? Alvin Weinberg characterized high-energy physics as baroque, and Imre Lakatos wondered in passing about degeneration of particle physics.5 Karin Knorr Cetina (1999: 1213, 47, 24849) wonders how truth effects can be derived from a universe of signs and ctions, shams produced by objects mimicking other objects. That there is, in fact, a protected space for this esoteric science should not be an argument in a normative theory of expertise. Actually, there are structurally equivalent protected spaces that Collins and Evans would not accept as relevant.6 In New Zealands Science Vote there is a special budget for Maori Knowledge and Development, which is translated into dedicated portfolios of the science funding agencies. Maori Development research must be by Maori, for Maori and work from a Maori worldview and approach to knowledge (kaupapa Maori). In addition, the conduct of research must adhere to tikanga Maori, that is, customary practices and principles, including the judgment of what looks right.7 High-level (non-Maori) science policy ofcials insist that Maori worldviews have equal status alongside Western science. In the funding agencies and research institutions, there is a tendency to go for projects where Maori knowledge of a natural history kind provides input for western-style research projects. From their side, the Maori insist on a layered view of knowledge with differential access. This justies limiting participation to researchers who identify and belong, and general restrictions of access to community and personal knowledge (and the additional issue of communal intellectual property rights). Clearly, epistemic as well as cultural and political considerations are involved, and this is also the case in the argument that any assessment of research proposals and research results must be done by Maori, and that quality will be dened as following a Maori approach. Political correctness dominates here, and this increases the danger of a closed shop.

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John Ziman (1981/1973) once portrayed high-energy physicists as the HEP tribe (joined precariously with the high-energy theorist, HET tribe). Their kaupapa is more esoteric than that of the Maori, and they have their tribal norms, and tikanga more generally (Traweek, 1988). In other words, if one condemns Maori-development research as a closed shop, one must also condemn high-energy physics. These closed-shops are protected spaces, which can be maintained as long as there are nancial and professional resources for ever more ambitious particle accelerators in high-energy physics, and political and cultural resources (and over time, human resources) for Maori Knowledge and Development research. I would want the protection to be partial only, and have outsiders, sympathetic or otherwise, involved in assessing the robustness of the knowledge being produced. Support for indigenous knowledge is often argued in terms of overcoming colonialism, while support for high-energy physics is claimed because it extends the frontiers of knowledge. In both cases, one must have a closer, and no-nonsense, look at the actual knowledge production. While my comparison of high-energy physics with Maori research can be read as a rhetorical ploy, the point about tribal norms remains. Donald Campbell (1979) has shown that scientic communities need what he calls tribal norms to bind them together and make the epistemologically important norms forceful. Competition for reputation would be one such tribal norm. The next step, for a Third-Waver, is to translate these insights about the nature and functioning of knowledge-productive arrangements, into an understanding of what such arrangements of tribal norms and epistemic work could be. Knowledge production is an intractable problem,8 and to make it tractable, practical arrangements are necessary. This must be a key input into any normative theory of expertise, and it should be taken up as a design challenge.9 The other key input must be about the actual processes and their outcomes. I suggest that such processes can be viewed as path-dependent learning,10 and the eventual contribution to path-dependent learning would be the criterion for the right to be involved. This includes contributory expertise in the sense Collins and Evans use the term (contributory to core-set expertise), but is not limited to it. It is important to have such a broader approach, because the difcult issues are about learning in the wider world, not about laboratory phenomena as such, which is learning about the laboratory world (Hacking, 1992). This is clear already within the experimental paradigm. Experiments that work do so under specic circumstances. Experiments in a microcosm on the effects of release of genetically modied organisms on the soil may say much about what happens in the microcosm, but not necessarily about what happens in the wider world (Cambrosio et al., 1992). When society (and the world) is taken as the laboratory, it is impossible to do fully controlled experiments (Krohn & Weyer, 1994). Learning through trial and error occurs, but has its risks (when the trials are dangerous) and is, epistemologically, limited because such learning follows a particular learning trajectory.

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In such situations, there may not even be core-sets available to fall back upon, and claims made by established core-sets may rightfully be contested. Core-set members must argue for their epistemic rights to relevant expertise, just as other contestants must do. They may be privileged because of their ability to work within a protected space, but, depending on the issue at hand, this can also disqualify them. Brian Wynnes well-known study of the Cumbrian shepherds in the aftermath of Chernobyl can be read this way (Wynne, 1991, 1996). The denition and pursuit of learning trajectories are often predicated on partial closure of broader questions. Core-sets become productive when (and because) a paradigm or dominant problem denition (or dominant design) closes off foundational debates.11 One challenge, then, is how to evaluate such closure, including the possibility of breaking it open. If the black-boxing becomes absolute, the overall processes lose exibility, particularly in their capacity to respond to the unexpected. The recently changing division of labour between certied scientists and experience-based experts (and the professionalization of the latter, especially in the medical and public health areas) may lead to attempts to open up foundational issues, often linked to existing so-called deviant views within science. One example is the debate between holistic and mechanistic views, in which established science is accused of limiting itself to mechanistic views.12 Thus, the problem of extension is part of the dynamics of closure, of inclusion and exclusion, of interactions and opening-up, of arrangements that emerge and may be more or less productive. There may well be good reasons for having core-sets: social closure can have epistemic advantages. What such good reasons could be is a broader question than the problem of extension, and requires what I call socio-epistemic history of science. Here, I will limit myself to a key aspect: the increasing importance of (new) natural history. That is where many rights to expertise are being claimed, and can be found legitimate. Natural history refers to our attempts to chart the world and its development. From a major intellectual thrust (with Aristotle, and the scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries) and practitioners all along, it became a backwater, pushed aside by experiment-oriented high science. Since the 19th century, the disciplinary hierarchy in the sciences has been based on the claim that laboratory sciences (and work under controlled conditions more generally) are better at producing valid knowledge than work under non-controlled conditions.13 Over time, the importance of the controlled-circumstances mode of knowledge production has grown, and at the expense of relevance to concrete and complex situations. Epistemologically, it is a matter of (always partial) reduction of variability and heterogeneity; a reduction that is conducive to knowledge production, but creates a distance to unrestricted practices and their complexity.14 Natural history has been revitalized through the increasing importance of the environmental sciences. Monitoring, mapping and modelling the world has become a scientic challenge in its own right, and is pursued with the help of new information and communication technologies.

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Thanks partly to the competencies acquired from its colonization by high and restricted science, natural history is striking out in new ways, up to the use of pattern recognition, in genomics. The de-colonization movement is joined by a renewed interest in the value of local knowledge, as of Cumbrian shepherds after Chernobyl (Wynne, 1991, 1996), and of indigenous knowledge (Van der Ploeg, 1993). Farmers knowledge can be seen as local, as well as indigenous, and is increasingly recognized for its value.15 There is a ne line to be drawn between the recognition of the value and potential robustness of local and indigenous knowledge, and embracing any such knowledge because it is an antidote to the colonialism of western science (compare Turnbull [2000] and Verran [2002]). It is indeed important to be able to relativize ones reliance on the western/modern tradition and appreciate what happens elsewhere, but one should not go native either. Wynne (1996), as well as Van der Ploeg (1993), wrestles with this issue. To put it briey, and in my terms: one must require knowledge claims to have validity elsewhere and else when, even if only in the next valley of the Andes. Some form of theory, or at least pattern recognition is necessary to move ndings from one location to another, or to apply them to a future situation. It might well be that this always requires a measure of restrictedness. The necessary quality assessment, to counteract the political correctness of local and indigenous knowledge claims, is also applicable to coresets with long standing. Their achievements in the past are no guarantee for their being productive in the future. Closure is a historical achievement, but not a sufcient basis for a normative theory of expertise.

Productive Arrangements: Hybrid Forums and Contributions to Collective Learning

If core-sets are not, or not the only, entrance point, what could be an alternative? There is a strong interest in participation exercises, in consensus conferences and the like. As Collins & Evans (2002) note, these may solve the problem of legitimacy, but not the problem of extension. To address the question of extension, and when it is productive in terms of the epistemic quality of the outcomes, one can re-position such exercises as hybrid forums (Callon & Rip, 1992), and inquire into the nature and productivity of such hybrid forums. Their hybridity should not just reect the variety of stakeholders, but also recognize the variety of expertise (already within credentialled science). Using the notion of forum keeps the epistemic and interactive aspects visible. On the other hand, to create packaged and portable products for relevant audiences, some convergence is necessary. As recent background studies have shown, there is a trade-off between increasing variety and productive convergence.16 Without requisite variety, the product would not be sufciently articulated, and thus not robust (compare with Rip [1986]). But with too much variety, or just general messiness, the temporary closure necessary to create a product

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would not be possible. The optimal balance will be specic to the situation, and may well change over time. Concrete incarnations of hybrid forums suffer from the problem that they have to work with a micro-cosmos, collecting spokespersons of various kinds in a setting, and for a limited time. The basic design principle of intra-mural exercises capture the variety out there, and especially, get the main contenders together and interacting carries in itself the seeds of failure. What has become tractable within the connes of the conference centre or the computer-supported experiment need not solve intractability in the wider and messier world. This so-called intra-murality trap (Rip, 1999/2001) will be exacerbated by strategic action of participants, including their eventual refusal to participate.17 Still, the idea of a hybrid forum is important to get a handle on the varieties of expertise. Empirically, one also sees learning occurring across occasions, which implies some credentialling of participants, up to the proto-professionalization of various stakeholders, in particular environmental groups and patient associations. Who will be allowed to participate and get a hearing in hybrid forums, in the organized versions, but more importantly, in the diffuse forums occurring in controversies and other agonistic interactions? In the former case, institutional considerations will play an important role, so it is preferable to take the latter, open version as a starting-point. I can then dene contributory expertise as a contribution to learning, or better, to learning processes over time, rather than in terms of continuity with a specic core-set (Collins & Evans, 2002: 252): the core-set may not offer the best context for learning about the issues at hand. Collins and Evans add interactional and referred expertise to their typology. These involve mediating skills rather than epistemic contributions: they are about how contributory expertises, not limited to core-sets, can be made to work. In fact, their theses 14 (Collin & Evans, 2002: 256, 258) are about such mediating and interactive skills. Still, it is important to consider them, because they play a part in the overall process. Clearly, we need a better understanding of the dynamics of such processes. These are processes of agonistic, collective learning, which hopefully lead to robust outcomes. A productive arrangement then is one that is conducive to agonistic learning and robust outcomes. Creating conditions for such learning is not a simple matter. Since learning takes effort and actors will often try to avoid agonistic interactions, learning will not occur automatically. Something like a forceful focus is necessary to set actors in motion (and in interaction) (Rip, 1986). Apart from the general point that conicts may then be welcomed as an incentive to learn, rather than that they should be mediated and massaged away, a further implication is that involvement need not be limited to those who can show relevant substantial expertise (certied or not). Actors creating a forceful focus must also be welcomed, because their presence will (in principle) improve the process and its outcomes.

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In the concrete cases discussed by Collins & Evans (2002), two further kinds of expertise, having discrimination and being knowledgeable, are visible, in addition to the ones they identied explicitly. Before I show this, let me briey indicate a problem with their evaluation of the rst two cases. They make a clear contrast between the Chernobyl fall-out case, where the Cumbrian sheep-farmers had contributory knowledge (a body of knowledge as esoteric as that of any group of qualied scientists [2002: 261]) and thus deserved a hearing, but lacked interactional expertise and so failed to have impact, and the AIDS treatment case in San Francisco, in which interactional expertise was present in addition to experience-based contributory expertise. The gay community presumably possessed a degree of both. The Cumbrian sheep-farmers are positioned as specialists, and probably rightly so, because they were making a living on their land. The gay community, however, was not specializing in AIDS treatment, and their spokespersons were translators rather than experience-based experts (2002: 262). That some of them were receiving such treatment is an argument for their involvement, but not a sufcient one. In the early 1950s, thousands of hard-headed businessmen using a battery additive, tests of which by a National Bureau of Standards scientist showed it to be ineffective, still clamoured for his dismissal, because as satised users they believed they could not be wrong. Collins & Evans (2002: 271), when referring to this case, say: the public can be wrong. So can AIDS activists. The lesson that should be drawn is then not about the importance of interactional expertise, but about the range of specialist and non-specialist forms of expertise, and the need to look into the content of the experiences that might qualify non-credentialled persons as contributors of expertise.18 The next two cases are about demonstrations and how they can sway the public, rightly or wrongly. Collins & Evans (2002: 263) take them as experimental demonstrations (the heart of the scientic process) in order to use them as relevant cases. But they themselves recognize that the inexpert witnesses could not be tasked with an expert role. On the other hand, such witnesses do have discrimination (2002: 264). While these cases cannot therefore show that less extension (decreasing interaction) is justied, the main message is that these demonstrations were political ploys, so their outcomes should be looked at critically. This is where discrimination, as a separate type of expertise, will be important.19 In the AIDS activist case, a further kind of expertise is visible: knowledgeability about the issue, without specic expertise. Knowledgeability provides an entrance ticket, and/or allows participants, accepted for other reasons, to gain standing as members. The case study by Mercer (2002), appearing in the same issue of Social Studies of Science as Collins & Evans (2002), offers a clear example because both parties refer to, and rely upon, knowledgeable expertise, for example when the Oberon Powerline Investigation Committee builds its case on materials assembled by a power-line activist. Knowledgeability is also important for the challenge offered by a Third Wave in Science Studies. Collins and Evans locate the

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contribution of Third-Wave Science Studies as interactional expertise: how to translate and how to mediate. From my own experience, I would say it is not just a matter of mediating. Diagnosis also is involved: diagnosis of the issues, of what is at stake, and thus, of how the science studies scholar can make a difference. Making a difference requires more than a normative theory of expertise. One has to involve oneself, become part of the messy process, and make the compromises that are necessary. To get a hearing, the science studies scholar must show that s/he is knowledgeable about the topic. This is what Harry Collins did in his intervention into the Uri Geller controversy. This is how I have been able to contribute to risk research, adding a reexive sociological perspective and getting a hearing because of my standing as somebody able to discuss the content of risk research issues. Brian Wynne, of course, has achieved such standing more widely.

Conclusion
While sharing Collins & Evans (2002) interest in a normative theory of expertise, I have been critical of their focus on core-sets as being too sociological (reducing the socio-epistemic to a question of membership) and in a sense naive, because they take the existence of core-sets as given. I have shown that the core-sets themselves should be evaluated as to their contribution. The other main issue I have raised is how to recognize experience-based (or other) expertise at an early stage. Within the limits of this paper, I was able to suggest how to broaden their approach, but did not resolve the issue any more than Collins and Evans could. A key point in broadening Collins and Evans approach was the identication of a new natural history as the new game in town. In new natural history, the dominance of core-sets, traditionally linked to laboratory or otherwise restricted approaches, is being undermined in a variety of ways. This adds a further dimension to the attempt of Collins and Evans (2002: 26769) to distinguish types of sciences. The next step towards a normative theory of expertise is to look into the (emerging and/or designed) arrangements that are conducive to agonistic learning and robust outcomes. Embracing participation, of whatever kind, is denitely not a solution. It may be that the public can be wrong (2002: 271), but when (and how) do you know that the public is wrong? This could be a prima facie argument for more extension (because the core-set can overlook relevant experience), but also for less (because it is not easy to identify the pockets of expertise within a public which might well be wrong). My discussion of learning in agonistic situations suggests to go with such processes and grasp opportunities for improvement, rather than design a good process beforehand. In other words, quality assurance of the process becomes more important than a better blueprint at the beginning. But there will be meta-learning about the relative merits of various arrangements. (Even if this will not be stable, because actors will strategize on the basis of insight into the working of such arrangements.)

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I criticized (constructively) the typology of expertise that Collins and Evans offered. In particular, interactional expertise must be more than mediation between experts and (so-called) lay persons (compare with Gorman [2002] for a similar point, using the notion of trading zones). Discrimination and knowledgeability are important further types of expertise: these relate to a general understandings of the issues and the ability to make critical contributions. Such expertise is what critical participants in a controversy acquire during the controversy: they become knowledgeable. Thus, one cannot dene and decide access in terms of present competencies. Competencies evolve, if the right contexts are provided. The denition of a right to be involved as expert must take this into account. The Third Wave of Science Studies has been present all along, even if it was not always visible in the pages of Social Studies of Science. Thus, Collins and Evans threw a small stone in a big pond. It could still make big waves. But two cautionary comments are in order. One is that our kind of Third-Wavers are not alone anymore. Political scientists study expertise, and more often than not they have important things to say (compare with Hisschemoller et al. [2001] and Guston [2001b]). Economists of various persuasion, but in particular the new economics of science (Dasgupta & David, 1994; Mirowski & Sent, 2002), are rediscovering the phenomena analysed by sociology of scientic knowledge, and might carry the day because of their status and assertiveness, and their willingness to model and create normative theories. The other is about the importance of interaction with more or less reective actors out there, in the wider world. A normative theory of expertise, even when perfect, is to no avail if it has no impact on actors and their interactions. To achieve such an impact requires compromises, like following the norms of another tribe. Such processes could be studied as well, and become part of an integral theory of expertise.

Notes
1. There is the tactic of positioning themselves as offering just one approach to the Third Wave: we will indicate one way to start to build a normative theory of expertise . . . There are, no doubt, many other ways to go about such an exercise, but . . . providing an example . . . is at least a start (2002: 238). And later: No doubt other approaches are possible . . . but we have chosen a different analytical strategy (2002: 242). In presenting themselves in such an uncharacteristically modest manner, they immunize themselves against substantial criticism, arguing that there are other and better alternatives. If commentators come up with such alternatives (and I will do so later), Collins and Evans can say: thank you, youre enriching the discussion we wanted to start up. But they also make claims about the deciencies of other approaches, as part of their argument about the need for a Third Wave of Science Studies (2002: 236, 238, 27681). This is in some ways a polemical paper, they say (2002: 237), and so allow themselves to position others as they see t. They apologize to all . . . whose work we caricature (2002: 237), as if this makes the caricature more palatable. This second rhetorical strategy creates problems for commentators like me who thought of themselves as doing Third Wave Science Studies before Collins and Evans coined the term. What to do when you read about yourself (as author of the Constructive Technology Assessment [CTA] approach): The CTA approach is explicitly

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

sociological, and is closely related to the Second Wave of Science Studies (2002: 279)? Protest that CTA emphatically includes analysis of the contents of technological developments, opens up complexities that actors may not always see and offers reexive tools to handle such complexity? Whatever you do has now been positioned as a struggle for admission into the charmed circle of Third Wave Science Studies drawn by Collins and Evans. There is more rhetoric in the paper, for example the use of we as referring to the authors, but shifting to we, science studies scholars, or even we, members of the public (and back again). For example, on page 236, at the bottom: We [the authors] think we [science studies scholars] need to start pursuing Studies of Expertise and Experience . . . [contribution of Sociology of Scientic Knowledge]. Our question is: . . . by then it is unclear whose question it is. With the little experiment of replacing the second we by you, the patronizing element becomes explicit. In other places, the usage of we is made explicit, for example on page 253: We (that is, sociologists of scientic knowledge) claim the right to disagree about this last judgement [of radiation scientists saying that Cumbrian sheep farmers are not experts]. Normative theory is used here (by Collins and Evans, and by me) in the same way as economists distinguish normative economics, which allows identication of an optimum, and descriptive economics. The link with discussions about (lack of) normativity and politics of science studies, featured also in the pages of this journal, will not be discussed explicitly. Interestingly, there are all sorts of attempts at informal and formal certication of experience-based expertise. Spokespersons of patient groups become recognized, and have to legitimize their representation. Practitioners of various kinds are invited to participate in extended peer review, but are informally selected on the basis of whether they will actually contribute, or at least not disrupt the proceedings. Traditional healers in South Africa (and elsewhere, I presume) create associations and have entrance requirements; as well as try to distantiate themselves from disreputable practices of witchcraft. Of many examples, I mention David Gustons analysis of serviceable truths here, because his approach is very close to Collins and Evans idea of a Third Wave: A realistic study of science in politics must be constructivist. But can a constructivist approach provide more precise guidance for best practice in constructing serviceable truths? (Guston, 2001a: 104). Weinberg (1967: 74). He borrowed the term baroque and the idea that there must be links to other elds to counteract baroqueness from John von Neumann discussing mathematics. Lakatoss suggestion is a footnote to his claim that sometimes philosophers statute law (a normative theory) is necessary to correct scientic practices (Lakatos, 1978: 137). For the issue of expertise and a Third Wave of Science Studies, which joins Collins and Evans and me, his further remarks in Volume 2 (Lakatos, 1980: 109110), are interesting, as he emphasizes a critical respect for the articulated as well as a democratic respect for the layman. In a footnote he adds: Educated laymen, not uneducated sociologists of science. Lakatos is not an easy ally! Collins and Evans confess that their paper stands or falls on an agreement to play the Western science language game (note 27, p. 286). I think stepping outside that language game is important to understand experience, knowledge, and expertise (compare also Watson-Verran & Turnbull [1995]). Here (and elsewhere in these comments), I draw on Rip (2002), an essay written on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of a Dutch scientic society, Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen. References for the New Zealand situation (and for later points I make) can be found there. As I phrased it (for an audience of bureaucrats and policy advisers) in Rip (1999/2001): The intellectual achievements of science are built on . . . a compromise. Consider the intractable problem of formulating knowledge claims with universal validity, and proving them, when one cannot do more than experiments of limited

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Social Studies of Science 33/3 scope, in certain places and at certain times. Still, an edice of scientic knowledge has been built on these precarious foundations. I use design here both as an intentional activity with a product to be implemented, and as a process of de facto design in which new practices, procedures, norms and institutions emerge. Such dual use of the concept is analogous to the way Henry Mintzberg et al. (1998) discuss strategy: intentional strategy, developed as such and to be implemented with some effort (if at all), but also what they call pattern strategy, the goals and approaches implicit in the actions and interactions as they occur, and which can be, but need not be, made explicit and reected upon. The methodologies of science can be seen as socio-epistemic strategies, and they have evolved as pattern strategies: part of productive practices and interactions, and then reected upon, by practitioners and by philosophers. A question for the Third Wave of Science Studies is then about the quality of the reections of practitioners. Will these be just folk theories to be critically assessed? But, as noted, we want to accept experience-based expertise. The problem of extension occurs also within the Third Wave of Science Studies! The idea of a learning trajectory is clear in how Peter Lipton (1991) discusses inference to the best explanation. Closure of the quest is a practical matter. Iterations between preliminary understanding and rst attempts at control often converge to a stable alignment between working experiments and scientic understanding based upon them (Collins, 1985; Rip, 1982). Following Yehuda Elkana (1978), in a discussion of realism and relativism, such twotier thinking (by analysts and reective practitioners), and the two-tier phenomena and processes that occur, indicate a vertical closure: an overarching or foundational tier is black-boxed so as to make ongoing work, action and interaction possible in the other tier. This reasoning applies to routines and rule-sets, and to cultural frames in general. For example, David Mercer (2002: 218) shows that opponents of exposure to electric and magnetic elds call upon ecological rather than mechanistic approaches and link this with an argument about electric and magnetic elds being unnatural. The electricity companies, in contrast, emphasized that such exposures were a natural part of everyday life (2002: 210). Change agents have a choice between emphasizing basic epistemic differences or accommodating to established approaches. The latter choice is visible, even in the case of movements for complementary and alternative medicine, which arguably suppose a different foundation of medical and health care than that of regular medicine (Hess, 2003). Collins and Evans discuss Steven Epsteins (1996) analysis of AIDS activists in San Francisco as showing how these non-certied experts gained an entr ee to the scientic core (1996: 262). They wonder if the necessity of mimicry is not too severe a constraint (1996: 264), but this question relates to the campaigning, rather than to epistemic issues. There is a status aspect as well. The epistemic advantage of reducing variability was combined with the social and political advantage of excluding deviants; that is, excluding actors and approaches not acceptable to establishments. The second half of the 17th century was a turning point, when earlier variety (including reformist and revolutionary approaches) was reduced in order to have privileged institutions: a Royal Society in the UK and an Acad emie des Sciences in France. Social distancing strategies and exclusions created high sciences, linked to establishments (royal or otherwise), and availed themselves of what Thomas Kuhn was to call paradigms, useful in policing others. Low sciences, on the other hand, were open to whatever appeared to be interesting and useful to practitioners in relation to a variety of audiences, from the fairs and markets to the newly emerging industries. Pickstones (2000: 209) overall diagnosis is similar to mine: natural history is often left out of science and relegated as mere information. I have argued for a wide view of natural history, and for placing this descriptive, classicatory way of knowing at the heart of the scientic enterprise, as a cultural achievement on which analytical and experimental modes are built, and one which remains a major way of dealing with our world.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

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15. Workable combinations evolve, for example in the acceptance of farmers contributions in new agricultural practices we study in an ongoing project: the experiential knowledge of the farmers [in Friesland] works, even though it had not yet been scientically understood how it works. This [was] an effective storyline. As a consequence, scientic knowledge was depicted as lagging behind and incapable of understanding farming in practice. This also allowed a compromise solution in the debate about levels of fertilization: prevailing scientic models were valid when higher quantities of articial fertilizer were applied, but not when lower quantities were used. A new storyline emerged: different sources of knowledge are valid in different circumstances. This storyline made it possible for actors belonging to the different groups to work together because it implied that each group had valid and useful knowledge, albeit for different situations (Eshuis & Stuiver, 2002). 16. Callon et al. (2001), Rip et al. (2000), Bal et al. (2002) and ongoing yet unpublished work on evaluations of new medical technologies by Kirejczyk et al. (University of Twente). 17. In Rip (1986), I describe two meetings in the 1970s on risks of a herbicide in these terms. The experience of the participatory technology assessment exercise on the introduction of genetically modied plants in the environment, organized by the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin, reinforces the point about strategic action. While the structured discussions were productive, the environmental groups abruptly decided to step out so as to avoid having the eventual conclusions being attributed also to them, which would hamper their freedom of action in the wider world. In pursuing their own interests in this way, they also (inadvertently or intentionally) undermined the legitimity of the exercise, which was based on getting the contending parties together (Van den Daele et al., 1997). As Gorman (2002: 934) mentions in passing, exit strategies also occur in agonistic interactions among credentialed experts. 18. This point is also important for their discussion of Benvenistes claim about the power of zero-solutions, under the heading understanding interaction. The main message appears to be that core-sets are not always reluctant to include outsiders (2002: 264). For cold fusion: suddenly there were experts everywhere (2002: 264). For Benvenistes case, the argument is not about his knowledge claim, but about possible deception. There, professional magicians can indeed be accepted as experts. Collins and Evans thus fall into a (self-created) trap. They want to distance themselves from the position that scientists should not ask stage-magicians to help out, as this would abandon their responsibility to guard quality (truth?). But their argument that stagemagicians have [relevant] experience-based expertise is awed, because the magicians expertise is about how to deceive an audience, not about testing for effects of very diluted solutions, which was the question at issue. So they do not belong to the core set, even if they have long experience (2002: 265). This is a contrast with Collins and Evans earlier emphasis on continuity with the core-sets expertise (2002: 252). 19. The notion of discrimination is rst brought up for the sheep farmers who had (local) discrimination. Then, a distinction is made between local and ubiquitous discrimination (2002: 259), which reads as saving the scientic enterprise by allowing it to have ubiquitous discrimination (compare also with page 278).

References
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Cambrosio, Alberto, Camille Limoges & Eric Hoffman (1992) Expertise as a Network: A Case Study of the Controversies over the Environmental Release of Genetically Engineered Organisms, in Nico Stehr and Richard V. Ericson (eds) The Culture and Power of Knowledge (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter): 34161. Campbell, Donald T. (1979) A Tribal Model of the Social System Vehicle Carrying Scientic Knowledge, Knowledge 1(2) (December): 181201. Collins, H.M. (1985) Changing Order. Replication and Induction in Scientic Practice (London: SAGE). Collins, H.M. & Robert Evans (2002) The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience, Social Studies of Science 32: 23596. Dasgupta, Partha & Paul A. David (1994) Toward a New Economics of Science, Research Policy 23: 487521. Elkana, Yehuda (1978) Two-Tier Thinking: Philosophical Realism and Historical Relativism, Social Studies of Science 8: 30926. Epstein, Steven (1996) Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Eshuis, Jasper & Marian Stuiver (2002) Joint Situated Learning Among Scientists and Farmers in a Mineral Management Project in the Netherlands (Wageningen: Department of Rural Sociology, Wageningen University). Gorman, Michael E. (2002) Levels of Expertise and Trading Zones: A Framework for Multidisciplinary Collaboration, Social Studies of Science 32(56): 93338. Guston, David H. (2001a) Toward a Best Practice of Constructing Serviceable Truths, in M. Hisschemoller, R. Hoppe, W.N. Dunn & J.R. Ravetz (eds), Knowledge, Power, and Participation in Environmental Policy Analysis. Policy Studies Review Annual (New Brunswick, NJ & London: Transaction Publishers): vol. 12, 97118. Guston, David H. (2001b) Boundary Organizations in Environmental Policy and Science: An Introduction, Science, Technology and Human Values 26(4):399408. Hacking, Ian (1992) The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences, in Andrew Pickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press): 2964. Hess, David (2003) Technology, Medicine, and Modernity: The Problem of Alternatives, in Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey & Andrew Feenberg (eds), Modernity and Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 279302. Hisschemoller, M., R. Hoppe, W.N. Dunn & J.R. Ravetz (eds) (2001) Knowledge, Power, and Participation in Environmental Policy Analysis. Policy Studies Review Annual (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers): vol. 12. Knorr Cetina, Karin (1999) Epistemic Cultures. How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Krohn, Wolfgang & Johannes Weyer (1994) Society as a Laboratory: The Social Risks of Experimental Research, Science and Public Policy 21(3) (June): 17383. Lakatos, Imre (1978) The Methodology of Scientic Research Programmes (Philosophical Papers Volume 1) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lakatos, Imre (1980) Mathematics, Science and Epistemology (Philosophical Papers Volume 2) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lipton, Peter (1991) Inference to the Best Explanation (London: Routledge). Mercer, David (2002) Scientic Method Discourses in the Construction of EMF Science: Interests, Resources and Rhetoric in Submissions to a Public Inquiry, Social Studies of Science 32(2) (April): 20533. Mintzberg, Henry, James Brian Quinn & Sumantra Goshal (1998) The Strategy Process, revised European edition (Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall Europe). Mirowski, Philip & Esther-Mirjam Sent (eds) (2002) Science Bought and Sold: Essays in the Economics of Science (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Pickstone, John V. (2000) Ways of Knowing. A New History of Science, Technology and Medicine (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

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Arie Rip was educated as a chemist and a philosopher, and was a key gure in setting up science, technology and society (STS) courses and research in the Netherlands in the 1970s. His research (at the University of Leiden and

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the University of Amsterdam) was focused on science dynamics, bridging sociology of science and science policy studies. His STS interests led to studies of controversies and to developing the approach of constructive technology assessment. Since 1987, he has been full professor of Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Twente. He contributes to science and technology policy studies internationally and is interested in issues of expertise and indigenous knowledge. Address: Universiteit Twente BBT, Postbus 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands; email: a.rip@utwente.nl

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