This article takes issue with the widespread assumption that students’ socioscientific decisions ought to be evidence based. On the basis of a careful conceptual analysis, it is argued that it is misleading to think in terms of evidence in socioscientific decision making because such decision making is a process of deliberation in which persons distribute relative weights to multifarious and incommensurate factors—a process, that is, in which scientific evidence has no privileged role. Accordingly, science educators ought to focus on the quality with which students discuss the relative weights of different considerations about a socioscientific issue.

Delusions about Evidence: On Why Scientific Evidence Should Not Be the Main Concern in Socioscientific Decision Making

In public policy analysis the actors and their behaviours represent the core of any possible theoretical model. The analysis therefore starts with the definition of the actor and by a presentation of the different goals he can pursue. Then the types of resources used in the interaction are specified and this makes it possible to classify the actors into five groups. After a presentation of the different roles the actors can play in the process the attention is shifted to the decisional networks and to their different properties.

Who Decides? Actors and Their Resources

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Researching the researchers: policy research in non-government organisations in the human services sector

In contemporary advanced societies, the study of science and technology has acquired huge importance; this has been possible also thanks to the sociology of science. It is a hybrid specialty, because it derives from the sociology of knowledge and the social history of science, and yet is more and more conditioned by economics and politics. This critical review article examines the opposing sociological models of science which were developed in the 20th century, and relates them to the global processes of collectivization and steady state of science and technology. The diffusion of scientific communication is suggested as an important social goal.

Sociological Models of Scientific Knowledge

This article explores the phenomenon of foreign policy think tanks in Europe in a comparative perspective and offers a framework of analysis for this topic. Assuming that think tanks were largely imported from the US after World Wars I and II, the article argues that European think tanks have been influenced by the different national political contexts in which they have undergone a process of institutionalization. First, the article hypothesizes that such contexts have contributed to determining different incentives for cooperation between think tanks and national policymakers. Such cooperation is based on the willingness of policymakers to turn to think tanks for expertise, advice or validation of policy decisions. Secondly, different political contexts are expected to influence the strategies of action that think tanks have developed towards policymakers and their audience. In this respect, the article identifies three strategies: the generalist, the advocate and the lobbyist. Empirically, the article is based on a survey of eleven organizations conducted in two countries, Italy and the United Kingdom, in 2013–14. Given that very few data are available on this type of organization, their activities, funding, policy audience and goals are investigated. These indicators are used to investigate the main commonalities and differences between the two cases and to compare them with the hypotheses. The results first show that there is comparatively more funding available for think tanks in the UK system than in the Italian one. Secondly, there is apparently more willingness from policymakers to turn to think tanks for expertise in the former case, considering that the UK think tanks hold a higher number of closed-door events and parliamentary hearings. On the contrary, where policymakers tend, instead, to more scarcely rely on external expertise – as it seems more evident in the Italian case – the core audience of think tanks tends to shift to other, more accessible targets (the public opinion, the academia or even businesses). The case study makes it more evident how advocacy becomes a far less important activity for an Italian think tank than a UK one.

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Helga Nowotny

Papers

In Search Of Usable Knowledge: Utilization Contexts And The Application Of Knowledge