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Scientific Expertise and Risk Aggregation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Thomas Boyer-Kassem
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Abstract

When scientists are asked to give expert advice on risk-related questions, such as the authorization of medical drugs, deliberation often does not eliminate all disagreements. I propose to model these remaining discrepancies as differences in risk assessments and/or in risk acceptability thresholds. The normative question I consider, then, is how the individual expert views should best be aggregated. I discuss what “best” could mean, with an eye to some robustness considerations. I argue that the majority rule, which is currently often used in expert panels, has significant drawbacks.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 86 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 124 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Many thanks to Jan Sprenger, Cyrille Imbert, Camille Aron, Franz Dietrich, Naftali Weinberger, two anonymous referees for Philosophy of Science, participants at the DRI seminar (ENS, Paris), the EPS seminar (TiLPS, Tilburg University), the EEN2016 conference (Paris), and the PSA2016 conference (Atlanta) for valuable comments and insights. This work has benefited from an AXA postdoctoral fellowship.

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