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hitherto uninhabited or very thinly inhabited landscapes. As such, they partook of the process described in
my first pages-pushing human occupancy ever closer to absolute geographic limits.
385 29) From about 1700 the patterns of civilized migration outlined above began to encounter fundamentally
new circumstances. It can be argued, indeed, that the world of our own time is only beginning to come to
grips with the changed conditions of migration that began to manifest themselves in the eighteenth century,
390 and became massive human realities in the course of the nineteenth.
INTEGRATING RISK ANALYSIS INTO PUBLIC POLICYMAKING
By John F. Ahearne
JOHN F. AHEARNE is the executive director of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Reseach Society, and
adjunct scholar at Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. This article is based on a talk given
at the Electric Power Reseach Institute — Stanford Symposium in honour of Dr. Chauncy Starr’s
80th birthday.
1 Public policies involve issues in which governmental or private actions affect a significant segment of
the general public. Because these actions often engender a certain amount of risk for that segment, the
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questions arise: Does, can, and should risk analysis affect public policy? The answer to all of these
questions is «yes». Risk analysis should and does affect public policy. Unfortunately, often the risk
analyses that don’t, should; and those that should, don’t.
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2 Some of the public policy issues for which risk analysis could, should, or may be important include how
to dispose of low-level radioactive waste, where to store high-level radioactive waste, and what controls
should be placed on energy production. Other such topics are the disposal of hazardous wastes;
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constraints on the use of pesticides; the impacts of smokingboth active and passive; the export of tobacco;
the use of animals in medical research; and the allocation of public resources to address these and other
problems. The use of risk analyses in setting public policy concerning these topics is complicated, however,
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by the level of understanding among government officials and the public, the influence of the media, and
the impacts on resource allocation. These issues are critical as society wrestles with rapid scientific and
technological change amidst growing concerns about environmental and health impacts. New approaches,
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developed by involving a wide range of people, are needed to help science and society.
Public Understanding and Opinion
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First, for risk analysis to have a positive impact on public policy, the public and officials must have an
understanding of technical matters. Jon Miller, who does surveys for the National Science Board, has
spent
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more than 10 years assessing what he has described as the scientific literacy of the U.S. public. His
definition of scientific literacy has three elements:
a basic vocabulary of scientific terms and concepts
sufficient to be able to read science news, newspapers, and magazines and to understand «McNeil Lehrer
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Newshour» and «Nightline»;
an understanding of the process of science, or the difference between
knowing something scientifically and other ways of knowing; and an awareness of the impact of science
and technology on individuals and on society. The data Miller has collected support the view, and the
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National Science Board has concluded, that, according to this description of scientific literacy, much of the
U.S. public is lacking the necessary understanding. For example, the 1990 survey asked U.S. adults: Does
the Earth go around the sun, or does the sun go around the Earth? Twenty percent said the sun goes around
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the Earth. Of those who concluded that the Earth goes around the sun, 20 percent said it goes around the
sun once a day. Miller also asked whether the earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs. In the
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United States, 36 percent of those polled said «yes»-a much larger percentage than in Britain or West
Germany. Eighteen percent said they did not know. Miller ascribes the high percentage of affirmative
answers to the «Flintstone effect».
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However, there have been positive signs. For several years, Miller has been asking: Would you say
150 that astrology is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific? The percentage of people saying
that astrology is not at all scientific has gradually risen from 50 percent in 1979 to 60 percent in 1988. This
percentage is at least double that in France and almost double that in West Germany.
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5 Another indication of the level of public understanding is seen in polls on nuclear power issues. A