Selected by Choice as one of the outstanding publications for 1991.

Are risk debates disputes between those who accept the findings of science and those who do not? Between good and bad science? Or is it possible that opposing assessments of risk, by scientific experts as well as ordinary citizens, reflect and are guided by dominant values held by the assessors? The following analysis of one of these debates supports the latter view. In it we suggest what those dominant values are, how they work within a risk assessment, and some implications of reconceiving risk debates as primarily debates about values.

Table of Contents for Value Assumptions in Risk Assessment: A Case Study of the Alachlor Controversy, by Conrad G. Brunk, Lawrence Haworth, and Brenda Lee

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Risk Assessment as Regulatory Science

I. The Alachlor Controversy

II. An Alternative Model of Risk Assessment

III. The Arguments of the Government and Monsanto

IV. The Alachlor Review Board's Estimation of Alachlor's Risks

V. The Role of Values in Choice of a Risk-Benefit Standard

VI. Value Frameworks in Risk Analysis

Glossary

Notes

Lawrence Haworth is a professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; he also holds the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Articles of his have appeared in Dialogue, Philosophy of Science, American Philosophical Quarterly, Ethics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Harvard Business Review, American Institute of Planners Journal, Educational Theory, Leisure Studies, Environments, and Plan Canada, among others. He has contributed chapters to a number of books, including The Inner Citadel, The Possibility of Aesthetic Experience, Power, Poverty, and Urban Policy, Social Ethics, Urban Problems, and Concepts in Social and Political Philosophy. He is the author of Autonomy (1986), The Good City (1963), and Decadence and Objectivity (1977).