Bản tóm tắt này nhấn mạnh ba chủ đề trung tâm của các chương trình bày trong khối lượng này. Các chương trước đi qua một phạm vi rất rộng về các vấn đề, làm cho một tổng hợp thực sự hoàn toàn không thể. Chương này kết thúc với bốn khiêm tốn đề nghị. Bản tóm tắt này được tổ chức xung quanh ba cặp mệnh đề. mỗi cặp chứa một phiên bản "yếu", mà hầu hết mọi người tham dự hội nghị chuyên đề (mặc dù không nhất thiết phải trong cộng đồng có nguy cơ lớn hơn) sẽ chứng thực, và một "mạnh. | SECTION V Summary 1996 by CRC Press LLC ETHICS AND VALUES IN ENVIRONMENTAL RISK 27 ASSESSMENT A SYNTHESIS Bayard L. Catron This summary highlights three central themes of the chapters presented in this volume. The preceeding chapters traverse a very wide range of issues making a true synthesis quite impossible. The chapter concludes with four modest suggestions. This summary is organized around three pairs of propositions. Each pair contains a weak version which most people attending the symposium though not necessarily in the broader risk community would endorse and a strong version which will be much more controversial I think. The three sets are 1. a Risk assessment is value laden. b The whole enterprise of risk assessment is socially constructed meaning that it has no independent validity or objectivity. 2. a Risk assessment is an appropriate and useful aid in envứonmental decision making despite its deficiencies. b Risk assessment should be relied on more heavily in decision making as has been proposed in recent bills before Congress . 3. a Public values should be taken into account in decision making and in setting risk reduction priorities. b Where there is persistent disagreement public political values should trump expert scientific values. PROPOSITION 1 A RISK ASSESSMENT IS VALUE LADEN Everyone who expressed a view on this point at the symposium agreed that values are present in risk assessment. For example Schnare s model of risk analysis shows how values often those of the assessor were fundamental to the method used in the analysis. Nash argued not only that the notion of a 1996 by CRC Press LLC scientifically pure analysis of risk is an illusion but also suggests that the pretense of value neutrality itself poses a major danger to scientific integrity. There is also a practical challenge here and Burt Hakkenen presented several examples of industry efforts to incorporate values into risk decision making. There might not be such unanimity in the home .
