It's a huge area of environmental politics, in which science and other forms of knowledge are contested every step of the way. I explained how scientists do risk assessment -- the basic equation of "Risk = Hazard x Exposure," and the four step process of hazard identification, dose-response assessment, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. The key point here is the notion of "risk" as something that can be quantified and understood objectively -- a formulation which by now my students readily recognize as highly political.
Then we dived into the implications of the common occurrence of scientists and citizens disagreeing over what we should worry about. So does that mean that when they disagree, scientists are right, and people are wrong? No, not necessarily... but to explain why, I explored in some detail how people evaluate hazards. This part of the class brings in psychology, sociology, and history, to show the complexity of peoples' conceptions of the world. Ultimately, by looking at peoples' understanding of hazards we can produce a richer, more realistic view of how we make collective decisions.
But the moral centre of these risk classes are two case studies of the politics of science. One is the Flint lead-in-drinking-water case of 2016, in which science was used both to deceive and conceal incompetence, and to affirm peoples' rights to make decisions about their own environment. The other is the ongoing struggle by workers (and their families) at General Electric here in Peterborough, to get compensation for decades of exposure to a toxic working environment. In the last two years they've taken the science of workplace contaminants into their own hands. It's a story I've been following closely.
So it's an ambitious class, but one that gets to the core of the issues of science and politics that are what this course is all about.
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