IT IS a strange paradox that in industrialised countries we live longer and
healthier lives than ever before, yet we feel less safe. We shudder at the
slightest risk to our well-being. Newspapers regularly run scare stories about
new technologies or unsafe food, confident that they will whip up public
concern. It seems that nothing short of a life completely free of risk will
satisfy us.
Our attitudes to risk vary widely. We happily continue in activities we know
to be risky, such as smoking, driving and sunbathing. At the same time, we worry
about others that carry a low health risk, such as taking oral
contraceptives.
It is easy to put such reactions down to apathy, or a lack of scientific and
technical knowledge, fuelled by media more concerned with their audience share
than with a reasoned debate on the protection of public health. Yet public
interest in science has never been higher. On many issues, such as the effects
of outdoor air pollution, the public and media appear to be better informed and
more concerned than official bodies.
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Far more significant for the public understanding of science is the fact that
people tend not to think of risk in purely statistical terms. Surveys show that
most people have a good grasp of the relative chance of death they face from
various hazards. For example, they know that in any normal year heart disease
kills more people than botulism. However, when asked about the overall risks
that these hazards pose to their well-being, people鈥檚 judgements extend far
beyond the statistical chances of dying.
We find risks more acceptable if we can choose whether or not to take them,
if we can control our level of exposure and if the benefits are clear and
immediate. Mobile phones are an obvious example. Despite the sensational media
stories, most people have carried on using them.
On the other hand, we object to hazards that are imposed on us without our
consent, that affect the young or could cause a major catastrophe, or when risks
and benefits are inequitably distributed across society. Nuclear energy is one
example.
Often, controversies about risk seem to be more about politics and ethics
than about the science. This, I suspect, is the case with the mapping of the
human genome. Thus, scientists and policy makers must go beyond simply 鈥済etting
the numbers right鈥� when thinking about risk. The mathematical approach may
indeed be counterproductive, particularly with long-term hazards such as
radioactive waste disposal, where it is very difficult to predict accurately
what the future risks might be.
But the most crucial factor that dictates how people judge risk is trust.
Many experts claim that a mistrust of expertise and risk management is now a
defining feature of industrialised societies.
People have become increasingly distanced from the technologies and
organisations that generate the hazards they face. We accept this in some areas:
for example, many of us travel by air, though few of us have the technical
knowledge to understand how a modern aircraft鈥檚 electronic systems work, let
alone the skill to operate them. We put our faith in a whole host of experts
when we fly. Trust becomes particularly significant when things go seriously
wrong, as illustrated by the Air France Concorde crash.
Food production, for example, has advanced beyond our capacity to understand
it. We have to rely on experts. As the BSE crisis unfolded in Britain, events
contradicted earlier assurances by the government that eating beef was safe.
This has seriously undermined people鈥檚 confidence in what the government tells
them about food safety. When governments and experts get it wrong, trust
disappears. The lesson here is that while trust is hard to gain, it is very easy
to lose.
The distrust generated by the BSE crisis has spilled over into the public
debate about genetically modified organisms, products of another technology that
is hard for nonspecialists to grasp. Governments should learn from this and
realise that people do not approach new risk issues as a tabula rasa. Historical
precedents and other images will almost always affect their judgement.
Lack of trust makes it particularly hard to communicate scientific
information. Crucially, if people do not trust the person giving them the
message, they will not trust the message itself.
So what is to be done in the face of public scepticism? A first step would be
to understand the origins of that scepticism. As the recent report on Science
and Society by the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology
points out, if the government and scientists want the public to understand
scientific issues and to trust them, they must go beyond one-way provision of
technical information and engage in a wider dialogue with people. It would be
naive to claim that scientists have nothing to learn from society, particularly
where long-term uncertainties and ethically charged issues are concerned.
Listening, as with anything in life, is risky. But so is not listening.