SOCIAL CONTROL OF

SCIENCE &
TECHNOLOGY

BSN 3B, GROUP 4

•It was devoted to analyzing the societal – influence
0 on – science – and – technology relationship.

•It focuses on greater depth on one kind of

determinative societal influence on science and
technology.
Six of its most influential forms:
•Regulation
•Funding and Management
•Liability Litigation
•Prior assessment mechanisms
•Public participation
•Legislative limitation
First issue:
•Justification of this increasingly common practice.
- refer to as SCOST or Social Control of Science and
Technology.
1. First Justification:
Unprecedented magnitude
- The potential effects or consequences of some modern
scientific or technological innovations
- One rebuttal to this argument is that firms responsible
for such fatal flaws will pay the price in the
marketplace in the form of lost customer patronage
- - the usual response is that such intervention is aimed
at preventing large – scale losses of such seriousness
and scope from occurring in the first place.
2. Second Justification:
 Allowing the market free rein will exacerbate existing social
inequalities
- it is argued that permitting the free market to be the sole
determinant of the allocation among affected individuals and
groups.
- manufacturing plants is apt to affect workers in the plants
that generate it.

3. Third Justification:
 fostering freedom in the form of voluntary consumer choices

 Counterarguments:
1. Political philosophical
2. Economic
3. That such regulation is unnecessary perhaps even
undesirable
4. Fourth Justifiacation:
 so much contemporary scientific and
technological activity is funded in whole or in part
with government money

- This is a variation on the theme of participatory

democracy
-Purports only to justify the public’s exercising
contributory but noncontrolling influence in the
funding process.
-Counterargument: pragmatic one
6 INFLUENTIAL MODES
OF SCOST
1. GOVERNMENT REGULATION
 WATERSHED
› Congress had long regulated interstate commerce, it
limited itself to activities that either facilitated it or
disburdened it.
› Establishment of the Interstate Commerce
Commission in 1887 and its efforts to prevent unfair
pricing practices by the railroads.
› It was the advent and flourishing of the high-pressure
steam boat in the 19th century that gave rise to the
first restrictive government regulation of a sector of
private industry.
› PROBLEM: exploding steamship boilers ( from
inadequate design, faulty manufacture, neglected
maintenance, or unqualified engineer-operators)
› 1816-1851 (over 235 steamboat explosions occurred
in the USA – Mississippi River – over 3,000 lives
were lost)
› During 1838, the Congress passed a weak law, full of
loopholes and imprecision.
› Only years later did the Congress pass stringent and
restrictive legislation.
› The law:
 Set a maximum allowable working pressure for any
broiler.
 Required that it undergo yearly tests at specified
pressures
 Specified features of design and manufacture.
 Outlawed other designs.
 Required certification of engineers.
 Prescribed penalties for violating boiler operation
limits.
 Created a board of inspectors to investigate accidents.
› Arguments in the U.S. Senate over the proposed bill
(supposedly inviolable private property rights versus
the duty of representative government to act in the
public interest.
› Question: Should the lives and property of the
steamboat-going public be allowed to be placed in
jeopardy to preserve the traditional immunity of
private enterprise from positive government
regulation.
› 1852- Congress finally answered in the negative.
 CURRENT SITUATION
› 1852 law
› Important independent government agencies:
 Consumer Product Safety Commission (1972)
 Environmental Protection Agency (1970)
 Federal Communications Commission (1934)
 Federal Maritime Commission (1961)
 Federal Trade Commission (1914)
 Interstate Commerce Commission (1887)
 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1974)
 National Transportation Safety Board (1966)
 Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Health and
Human Services, Interior, Labor, and Transportation
› Decade of the 1970s – witnessed “the most dramatic
increase in federal regulatory activity ever”
› Federal Register – measures the growth of federal
regulatory activity which publishes all proposed and
final regulations. (from 9,562 pages in 1960 to 74,120
pages in 1980)
› The Center for the Study of American Business
estimates that in 1986, about 112,300 people were
employed full time in 54 govt. Regulatory agencies at
a cost of almost $9 billion.
 AN IMPORTANT RECENT CASE
› Ronald Reagan made “regulatory relief” a cornerstone
of his new economic program.
› In 1981, Reagan took steps to ensure that cost-benefit-
risk analysis bulked larger in the formulation and
adoption of government regulations.
› He froze 172 pending regulations and appealed some
legal cases that has grown out of them to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
› American Textile Manufacturers v. Marshall
 This revolved around the fact that, depending on the
density of fiber particles in the air, workers in cotton
textile factories were at risk for “brown lung disease”
(byssinosis).
 The Reagan administration asked the Supreme Court to
vacate the appeals court decision and send the case
back to the Department of Labor for internal
reconsideration in light of the president’s new cost-
benefit policy for government regulations.
 OUTSTANDING ISSUES
› One problematic aspect of the entire governmental
regulatory enterprise is the fact that executive
agencies are subject to periodic politicization.
› The possibility always exist that conflict may emerge
between executive appointees with sharp ideological
axes to grind & career civil service scientists and
engineers & those who make regulatory decisions on
the basis of legislative intent and solid empirical
evidence.
 2. GOVERNMENT FUNDING AND
PERFORMANCE OF SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY
 WATERSHED

 Second important mode of SCOST is

government extramural funding and
intramural funding
 Qualified mode of SCOST – influence on the
directions and speed of national research
and development
 Undisputed watershed in 20th century is the
research and development of ATOMIC
BOMB – MANHATTAN PROJECT
 National Defense
 Scientific research in the postwar era

• J. Robert Oppenheimer
• Enrico Fermi
• Edward Teller
• Hans Bethe
• John Von Neuman
• Ernest O. Lawrence
 CURRENT SITUATION

 1989 Research and Development - $130.8B

Federal Government ($61.05B) – 46.7%

Basic Research - $18.92B – 14.5%

• This work was carried out in numerous mission – oriented

government facilities:
 Lawrence Livermore Laboratory – weapons research
 National Institute of Health
 NASA Research
 Space-flight centers
 RECENT IMPORTANT CASES OF
GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF S & T
 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or Star
Wars – initiated by Pres. Reagan in March
1983

 Space Transportation System or Space

Shuttle – Pres. Nixon in 1972 – between
earth and space
 OUTSTANDING ISSUES AND
PROBLEMS
1. Effect of the Big S & T trend on American
research and development
1987-1988
 Space Station ($13-$30B)
 Superconducting Supercollider ($4-$6)
 Hypersonic jet aircraft ($3-$12)
1988
 Human Genome ($3B)
 Practical nuclear fusion for provision of electrical
energy ($1B)
2. US GNP devoted to research and
development is comparable to or exceeds
the figures for its Western industrialized
competitors
3. Contemporary research and development
work
4. Implicit in some of the foregoing: the fact
that the government seems to lack a
coherent, long-term carefully prioritized S &
T policy.
3. PRODUCT LIABILITY
LITIGATION
3rd important mode of societal control of S&T
Producers can be found liable for distributing or
installing products & can be made to pay
compensatory and possibly, punitive damages.
 Watershed
At present, there are 4 generally recognid grounds on which a manufacturer can be found
liable for one of its products:
 Negligence- when reasonable care is not taken in the design, production, assembly, or
testing of a product that inflicts foreseeable harm to someone.
 Breach of Warranty- when a product fails to fit the purpose for which it was intended
(Implied Warranty) or fails to measure up to any explicit promise or claim made by
the manufacturer (Express Warranty).
 Misrepresentation- manufacturer’s advertising or promotion gives the buyer a false
sense of security about the product, either by intentionally concealing potential
hazards or by negligently failing to represent its hazards explicitly.
 Strict Liability- when a manufacturer, even though not guilty of negligence, is held
responsible for producing a product that injures someone who comes in contact with
it, where the injury is caused by the defect in the product that rendered it
unreasonably dangerous.
 Privity- rule that an injured can sue the negligent
person only if she or he was a party to the transaction
with the injured person.
 In the first half of 20th century, most involving food
poisoning and inherently dangerous product like
dynamite- a watershed case concerning strict
liability was decided in 1963 in the California
Supreme Court in the case of Greenman v. Yuba
Power Products, Inc.
 Most states now recognize strict liability as a ground
for holding a manufacturer liable.
 Current Situation
 Product liability suits filed in U.S federal courts have proliferated
in recent years from 1.579 in 1975 to 13.554 in 1985.
 A Conference Board poll of 232 major U.S corporations revealed
that of a total of 659 most recent products liability cases defect in
product design was the most frequent allegation (35%), failure to
warn (23%), defect in construction (22 %), incorrect or insufficient
labeling (18%), and foreseeable misuse (7%)
 Taking advantage of the relatively few highly publicized cases in
which big product liability awards were made to plaintiff, the
industry has attempted to induce federal legislators unsuccessfully
as of 1989 to change liability law so as to make successful suits
even less likely as they are at present
 Recent Noteworthy Cases
Dalkon Shield Intrauterine Birth control Device
 Some 2.7M American women bought the A.H Robins Company’s Dalkon
Shield Intrauterine device (IUD).
 Many claimed they suffered infertility, birth defects, spon. Abortion,
traumatic infections and other pelvis infection induced by the device.
 Aug. 1985, company filed for protection under Chapter11 of the U.S
Bankrupsy Code.
 Robin was directed to conduct an internat’l publicity campaign informing
all potential claimants of their right to file claims.
 Judge ordered company to set aside a trust fund of $2,475B to pay
plaintiffs whose claims were deemed valid.
Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co.
 In 1978, California jury awarded a plaintiff
$127.8M in damages against Ford as a result of an
accident caused when a 1972 Ford Pinto stalled on
a freeway and was hit from behind by another car.
 Gas tank exploded and Pinto burned, killing the
driver and injuring her passenger.
 The car was produced for sale with a fuel- tank
design known to pose a serious risk of harm.
 Outstanding Issues and Problems

Lies in the difficulty of establishing the cause of

harms suffered by humans
Difficulty maybe one of determining:
 Whether a given plaintiff were injured by a
product to which they were exposed
 Which of several companies producing a generic
product shown to have been harmful was
responsible for the injury suffered.
 The 1st kind of difficulty involving determination of cause,
Agent Orange- herbicidal defoliant containing dioxin to
which many servicemen, U.S and Vietnamese, were exposed
and caused death.
 The judge decided that awards would be made on the degree
of disability incurred regardless of cause.
 2nd difficulty in the case of diethylstilbestrol (DES) an FDA
approved drug to prevent miscarriage.
 Today, DES is held responsible for cases of cancer in
daughters of mothers who had taken the drug while pregnant.
 4. Mechanism for
Environmental and
Technological Assessment
 Watershed

National Environmental Policy Act of 1969

“declare a national policy which will encourage
productive and enjoyable harmony between man
and his environment.”
“ every recommendation or report on proposals for
legislation and other major Federal actions
significantly affecting the quality of the human
environment.”

-->>ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENTS

(EIS)
 EXAMPLE:
Tennessee valley Authority’s huge
Tellico Dam

 Destroyed the only known habitat of the “three-

inch snail darter fish.”
 Technology assessment of 1972
 Rationale:
 Lay in the recognition of a growing
disjunction between the new
technological reality and the old
political order.
 Office of Technology Assessment
( as an analytical, investigative arm of
Congress)

 Task:
› Identify existing and probable impacts, including
unintended consequences, of technological innovations
and development, and policy alternatives to proposed
or existing courses of technological action.
› Disentangling knotty technical issues.
› A step toward matching changes in governance to the
changes – both in pace of life and scale requirements –
wrought by technology.
 Current Situation
 EISs continue to be required for all government
projects that might substantially alter the natural
or human-made environment.
 Recent Noteworthy Cases
 10 – Year struggle over Westway
(a proposed 4.2 mile, multibillion-dollar
highway and real estate development project
along the west side of Manhatann Island from
42nd street to the Battery.
 “fish survival”
 The project has been cancelled.
 Outstanding Issues and Problems
 Problem:
› Reliance on an EIS as a way of promoting responsible
forecasts of the effects of science – and technology-
intensive projects is the same as the problem in the
case of regulation.
 5.PUBLIC
PARTICIPATION
1. By formal governmental efforts to inform the general
public about specific, often contentious scientific and
technological matters
2. By measures to better inform government about the
views of the public on specific matters scientific and
technological (e.g., through public participation in
legislative hearings, government advisory boards, and
commissions of inquiry)
3. By ensuring that the views of the public are taken into
account in process of administrative and regulatory
decision making involving science and technology
4. By efforts to involve the public more directly in science
and technology policy making (e.g., via referenda,
citizen initiatives, and citizen review boards).
 WATERSHEDS
 Last 2 decades concern technological development: nuclear
power plants, and high-rise buildings
 Citizens have been asked to approve or disapprove of the
start-up, continuation, expansion, or restriction either of
nuclear power in general or of particular facilities.
 1978 national referendum in Austria
 Austrian voters rejected government plans to put into
operation the nation’s first nuclear power plant
 1976 citizen initiative in the state of California
 Californians voted against “Proposition 15”, a measure which
would have required the California electrical utilities clearly
demonstrate the complete safety of nuclear power facilities in the
state being before allowed to operate.
 Unsuccessful but an important development in SCOST in the U.S.
 June 1989, Sacramento, California residents approved a landmark
citizen initiative to shut down Rancho Seco, the city’s problem-
plagued, financially troubled nuclear power plant.
 “Manhattaanization”
 1st citizen initiative in U.S. history proposing to impose height
limits in proliferating downtown high-rise office buildings
 However resoundingly defeated, it marked the onset of a
process of slowly growing citizen discontent.
 “Proposition M” in November 1986, San Francisco
 A citizen initiative which imposed the most stringent limitations
on urban high-rise growth ever enacted in the U.S.
 “Cambridge Experimentation Review Board”
 a citizen review board to assess the adequacy of the safety
procedures for public health and safety of recombinant-DNA
research
 The board concluded that the DNA research should be allowed to
continue however, it recommended “broader public representation
on the university biohazards committees required by guidelines”
and that “a separate Cambridge biohazards committee be set up to
oversee all research in the city.
CURRENT SITUATION and NOTEWORTHY RECENT CASES
 “institutional biosafety committees”
 Required by the National Institutes of Health for all institutions
that receive funds from it from DNA research, draw 20% of their
members from the general public with no connection in the
institution where the research is being performed.
 Referenda on nuclear power facilities continue to be held, and
more are slated for the future.
 In U.S., the trend seems to be to oppose nuclear power in
general by attempting to close particular facilities on grounds of
safety and high cost of power produced.
 November 1987, Italian voters overwhelmingly approved 3
nationwide referenda designed to limit the development of
nuclear energy.
 “Proposition 65”
- The Safe Drinking Water and Toxics Enforcement Act, requires
business either to prove that their products and emissions are
safe or to provide “clear and reasonable warnings” that they
contain or emit chemical substances that may cause cancer,
birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
OUTSTANDING UNRESOLVED ISSUES and PROBLEMS
 Well-endowed private parties with vested interests in the
outcomes (e.g., industry associations) can commit substantial
amounts of money to support their side, typically many times
more money than is available to the citizen groups who launched
or support the initiative. Such tactics can sometimes effectively
“buy” the desired outcome. Further, voters are called upon to
vote simply “yes” or “no” on complex, multifaceted technical
issues.
 Unlike legislative deliberations, opportunity for refining an
initiative often comes only after its defeat. Supporters must once
again undertake to get the revised version before the voters in a
future election.
 The citizen initiative is a valuable, if sometimes crude tool of
last resort.
6. Legislative Limits on Science
and Technology
 Landmarks
› SST (Supersonic Transport) : most striking American
example
› The Delaney Clause : forbids inclusion in any foods
or drugs any additives known to be carcinogenic.
 Current situation
› Prohibit or terminate technological innovations
› Heightened environmental awareness
› Increased sensitivity to unequal distributions og the
benefits and costs of technology
› Explosion of biomedical research on new beginnings
to life
› Delicate experimentations involving human subjects
 Noteworthy Recent Cases and Development
› Legislative bans on research modifying human
genetics
 Certain embryo and fetal tissue experiment
 Production of transgenic animal species via genetic
manipulation
 Surrogate motherhood
› Restricting polygraph device
 For screening job applicants
 Outstanding Issues and Problems
› Post World War II period
› Interplay of manual legislative budget cyles
› Increasingly sophisticated scientific instrumentation
can render categorical legislative problems
› Legislatures confronted with demands for
unconditional bans of controversial technologies
› No census exists about the proper role of democratic
legislatures in advancing or moderating the pace of
development
 CONCLUSION

There are number of ways in which societal forces attempt to exercise control over
science and technology and these SCOST mechanism evolved by modern
industrial societies

These modes of SCOST may be seen as potential parts of a kind of comprehensive

trial process (endeavor is subject to intervention by potent social forces attempting
to shape its nature, channel its course, or modify its conditions and likely
consequences)
Important possible SCOST intervention points which one or more modes of
SCOST used to intervene at the point in question (chronological order):
1. Conception/Initiation: government funding
2. Prioritization: public participation, legislative limitation
3. Process of securing funding : public participation & government funding
4. Early research and development work: government funding & legislative
limitation
5. Preliminary design specifications for an experiment, technic, or system:
regulation
6. Preliminary design approval: government funding
7. Testing of product, apparatus, system, or process prior to final design
approval: regulation
8. Final design approval: regulation & government funding
9. Ensuing experiment or development process: government funding
10. Product-manufacturing or system-construction phase: regulation, a priori
assessment mechanisms & legislative limitation
11. Post-facto testing of product or system: regulation
12. Diffusion of results: legislative limitation
13. Deployment and testing of distributed product or system: regulation
14. Use of operation of product or system: regulation, public participation &
legislative limitation
15. Emergence of alleged consequences of product or system use: legislative
limitation, product litigation & regulation