Asymmetry, disagreement and biases: epistemic worries about expertise
Journal article, Peer reviewed
Accepted version
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/10642/6575Utgivelsesdato
2018-12-03Metadata
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Originalversjon
Holst C, Molander A. Asymmetry, disagreement and biases: epistemic worries about expertise. Social Epistemology. 2018;32(6):358-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2018.1546348Sammendrag
This paper contributes to an on-going exchange in political theory on the normative
legitimacy of expert bodies. It focuses on epistemic worries about the expertization of
politics, and uses the Nordic system of advisory commissions as an empirical case.
Epistemic concerns are often underplayed by those who defend an increasing role of
experts in policy-making, while those who have epistemic worries often tend to
overstate them and debunk expertise. We present ten epistemic worries, of which
some are of an epistemological nature, while others are related to failures and biases.
These worries must not be overstated, but no doubt point to real problems which
have to be handled through the design of expert bodies and institutions of science
advice. We introduce three groups of mechanisms that are likely to contribute to remedying the problems of expertise and discuss what they imply for the design of a
system of public advisory commissions.