Value Assumptions in Risk Assessment

Selected by Choice as one of the outstanding publications for 1991.

Are risk debates disputes between those who accept the findings of science and those who do not? Between good and bad science? Or is it possible that opposing assessments of risk, by scientific experts as well as ordinary citizens, reflect and are guided by dominant values held by the assessors? The following analysis of one of these debates supports the latter view. In it we suggest what those dominant values are, how they work within a risk assessment, and some implications of reconceiving risk debates as primarily debates about values.

Conrad Brunk is professor of philosophy and former director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria (UVic). Dr. Brunk is a regular consultant to the Canadian government and international organizations on environmental and health risk management and biotechnology and is the author of numerous articles in journals and books on ethical issues in technology, the environment, law, and professional practice.

Lawrence Haworth is a professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; he also holds the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Articles of his have appeared in Dialogue, Philosophy of Science, American Philosophical Quarterly, Ethics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Harvard Business Review, American Institute of Planners Journal, Educational Theory, Leisure Studies, Environments, and Plan Canada, among others. He has contributed chapters to a number of books, including The Inner Citadel, The Possibility of Aesthetic Experience, Power, Poverty, and Urban Policy, Social Ethics, Urban Problems, and Concepts in Social and Political Philosophy. He is the author of Autonomy (1986), The Good City (1963), Decadence and Objectivity (1977), and a co-author of [http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Catalog/pedla