Something that has been mentioned in many presentations and conversations is the covid-19 pandemic, which is a clear example of post-normal times. The pandemic has made clear that facts are uncertain, that decision stakes are high, there has been a lot of disputes over which values to favour, and the urgency of making decisions without really knowing how the virus spreads, how to treat it, how people would bear a lockdown, how the economy will recover, etc. Something that Jerry said in the introduction on Monday, really stuck with me: PNS was ahead of its time in the 1990s, but now it risks becoming obsolete. The points about the pandemic that I just made, are obvious and possibly even trivial. So what is the contribution of PNS in these most post-normal of times? I will dare to suggest two points, and argue that now is time to capitalise on all the PNS research and all the lessons learned in the last 30 years.
The first is that facts are always uncertain, we are not living exceptional times. We had a wonderful session about cloning, biomarkers and glyphosate in which we discussed how difficult it is to separate facts and values. David Kriebel said that we need a new concept of science, he spoke of the myth of certainty. I think one important message from the PNS community, which needs to be stated proud and clear in these times is that uncertainty is the norm, it is not a temporary condition, it is here to stay. This is uncomfortable knowledge, and we learned that we may find ourselves in uncomfortable roles (Kerry Waylen) when speaking of irreducible uncertainty. This has been my personal experience more than once, when presenting PNS: some get uncomfortable and even upset when the infallibility of science is questioned or when no solutions to the puzzle are given. Borrowing, and slightly misusing Haraway’s phrase, doing PNS may mean staying with the trouble.
A second important point that I take away from this week’s discussions is that taking decisions in this context is difficult. Extended peer communities and participatory processes take effort, take time. Publics are heterogenous. Agreement may come at the cost of compromise and sacrifice of one’s values. As Muki Haklay suggested, citizen science has led to a democratisation of who does the science, not of how the science is done. Power matters when engaging with extended peer communities, when working at the interface between science and policy, and when working with corporations. We as a community have a lot of experience with all these interfaces, and know some of the gaps. PNS can contribute to a better understanding of the institutional gaps that make facilitation, participation and dialogue between science, society, policy and corporations so difficult and at times conflictive.
There have been many more lessons, but to keep time, I’ll leave it here and just thank you all for teaching me so much this week. I think this virtual journey has helped me name some recurrent feelings of my personal and professional journey with PNS: being uncomfortable, accepting vulnerability, but also a sense of relief from being able to step away from what is supposedly “normal”. So I would like to thank all the participants and presenters for making this digital journey such a lively event, and Dorothy, Angela and Paulo for all their work in organising and coordinating the digital activities.
Because of the covid-19 pandemic, the Post-Normal Science (PNS) symposium 2020 was transformed in a digital event: Here I share my closing words!
The digital journey took place on September 21st-25th. The presentations can be seen on the PNS youtube channel.
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