RISKY THINKING - IRRATIONAL FEARS ABOUT RISK AND SOCIETY

Scientists have made remarkable progress in dealing with technical cha llenges but not in dealing with society. Given that public concerns ha ve grown, in the face of declining ''real'' risks, the common if simpl istic tendency has been to blame public ignorance or irrationality and to argue that policy decisions should be based on quantitative risk e stimates, effectively ignoring public concerns. Such assertions are su perficially plausible, but they reflect fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of technological societies, as well as of the reasons be hind declining scientific credibility and of actual strengths and weak nesses of risk assessment. Scientific credibility has been undermined not so much by shadowy enemies as by actions of self-proclaimed friend s, and there are inherent limitations to the practical usefulness of r isk assessment in policy disputes. If proposals for risk-based decisio n making were actually implemented, they could well lead not to increa sed credibility for specific technologies but to self-reinforcing loss es of credibility for science and technology as a whole.