Knowledge, Values, and Technological Decisions: A Decision Theoretic Approach

1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald N. Giere
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Statistical Knowledge ◽  
Decision Theoretic Approach ◽  
The Social

Before World War II, most decisions involving the introduction of new technologies were made primarily by individuals or corporations, with only minimal interference from government, usually in the form of regulations. Since the war, however, the increased complexity of modern technologies and their impact on society as a whole have tended to force the focus of decision making toward the federal government, although this power is still usually exercised in the form of regulation rather than outright control. Given the huge social consequences of many such decisions, it seems proper that the decision-making process be moved further into the public arena. Yet one may wonder whether the society has the resources and mechanisms for dealing with these issues. Thus, the nature of such controversies, and the possible means for their resolution, has itself become an object of intense interest. One may approach this subject from at least as many directions as there are academic specialties. Many approaches are primarily empirical in that they attempt to determine the social and political mechanisms that are currently operative in the generation and resolution of controversies over new technologies (Nelkin 1979). Such studies usually do not attempt to determine whether the social mechanisms actually operating are effective mechanisms in the sense that they tend to produce decisions that in fact result in the originally desired out comes. The approach of this chapter is much more theoretical. It begins with a standard model of decision making and then analyzes the nature of technological decisions in terms of the postulated model. The advantage of such an approach is that it provides a clear and simple framework for both analyzing a controversy and judging its outcome. The disadvantage is that it tells us little about the actual social and political processes in the decision. Eventually we would like an account that incorporates both theoretical and empirical viewpoints. Regarding the proposed model, there are several ingredients in any decision. This chapter concentrates on one of these ingredients: scientific knowledge, particularly statistical knowledge of the type associated with studies of low-level environmental hazards. There is no presumption, however, that statistical knowledge, or scientific knowledge generally, is the most important ingredient in any decision.

scholarly journals Regulator Loss Functions and Hierarchical Modeling for Safety Decision Making

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 512-522
Author(s):  
Laura A. Hatfield ◽  
Christine M. Baugh ◽  
Vanessa Azzone ◽  
Sharon-Lise T. Normand
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Medical Device ◽  
Hierarchical Modeling ◽  
Loss Functions ◽  
Safety Signal ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Z Score ◽  
Bayes Risk ◽  
Decision Theoretic Approach ◽  
Safety Signals

Background. Regulators must act to protect the public when evidence indicates safety problems with medical devices. This requires complex tradeoffs among risks and benefits, which conventional safety surveillance methods do not incorporate. Objective. To combine explicit regulator loss functions with statistical evidence on medical device safety signals to improve decision making. Methods. In the Hospital Cost and Utilization Project National Inpatient Sample, we select pediatric inpatient admissions and identify adverse medical device events (AMDEs). We fit hierarchical Bayesian models to the annual hospital-level AMDE rates, accounting for patient and hospital characteristics. These models produce expected AMDE rates (a safety target), against which we compare the observed rates in a test year to compute a safety signal. We specify a set of loss functions that quantify the costs and benefits of each action as a function of the safety signal. We integrate the loss functions over the posterior distribution of the safety signal to obtain the posterior (Bayes) risk; the preferred action has the smallest Bayes risk. Using simulation and an analysis of AMDE data, we compare our minimum-risk decisions to a conventional Z score approach for classifying safety signals. Results. The 2 rules produced different actions for nearly half of hospitals (45%). In the simulation, decisions that minimize Bayes risk outperform Z score–based decisions, even when the loss functions or hierarchical models are misspecified. Limitations. Our method is sensitive to the choice of loss functions; eliciting quantitative inputs to the loss functions from regulators is challenging. Conclusions. A decision-theoretic approach to acting on safety signals is potentially promising but requires careful specification of loss functions in consultation with subject matter experts.

scholarly journals Criminological Problems of the Digital World (Digital Criminology)

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-430
Author(s):  
Anna Serebrennikova
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Mathematical Methods ◽  
Digital World ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Technological Methods ◽  
Industrial Revolutions

The development of information society and the corresponding technologies raises to a new level the tasks of counteracting crimes committed using such technologies, and of minimizing damage from them. The growth in the scale of new types of crime is a cause of worry for the society and the authorities, and especially for criminologists, as the penetration of criminals into the virtual environment and their mastery of new technologies acquire dangerous forms, change criminal motivation and, at the same time, to some extent stimulate the development of information and telecommunication technologies. The growing sophistication of the tasks of preventing and counteracting hi tech crimes makes it necessary to critically assess the current criminological methods and to make an attempt to go beyond the known «common» methods of neo-classical criminology. The development of the digital criminology concept cannot be reduced to an aggregate of pioneer technological methods developed on the basis of mathematical modeling, i.e. computer processing of quantitative and qualitative parameters of crimes, mathematical detection of different dependencies (on time, place and other variables), it could and should be understood in a wider sense: on the one hand, it should influence the new criminological paradigm, and on the other - it should develop within its boundaries. The modern information-analytical sphere in the work of law enforcement bodes includes the use of digital criminological instruments within the programs of crime prevention, mathematical methods of analyzing crimes, profiling, etc. Their aggregate is generally applicable to criminological analysis and prediction, however, it does not have the most cutting edge theoretical basis that corresponds to the tasks of counteracting crimes of the digital world; it is now being formed on the basis of criminological neo-classics, the advances of the social sciences and the humanities, digital criminology. The predictions of new industrial revolutions include a rapid acceleration of the pace of technological development, a systemic transformation of production and management, which will not only stimulate a global rise in the living standards, but will also increase inequality and, consequently, will provide an impetus to crime. These aspects should be taken into consideration when predicting future development of digital criminology, whose theories should be based on the conceptual models of social development of the near future. Social consequences of the predicted new industrial revolutions will inevitably become new common determiners of the crimes of the future, as it always happened in the past.

ETHICS OF EXPERIMENTATION

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 872-872
Author(s):  
B. Barber ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
The Other ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Scientific Achievement ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

. . . Medical institutions and individual investigators operate today with two powerful sets of values and goals. On the one hand there is the pursuit and advancement of scientific knowledge. On the other there is the provision of humane and effective therapy for patients. . . . There is evidence that the enhanced excitement attending scientific achievement and the rewards bestowed on it in recent decades have skewed the decision-making process in many cases of conflict. . . . Our data show that the social structure of competition and reward is one of the sources of permissive behavior in experimentation with human subjects...

scholarly journals Trauma Wielkiej Wojny. Psychospołeczne konsekwencje drugiej wojny światowej

2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-42
Author(s):  
Marcin Zaremba
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Trend ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The One

Almost seventy years now separate us from the outbreak of World War II. To date the most important trend in debates about the war’s consequences for Central Europe has focused on the interconnections between the social, political and economic changes occurring during the war, on the one hand, and the origins of the communist bloc in that part of Europe, on the other. This approach is overly narrow: it fails to take account of the importance of the psycho-social consequences of the war, which were incomparably broader, extending far beyond the political dimension. The author attempts to sketch out a systematic account of the sociological and psychological effects of this war, through an examination of the Polish case. His analysis draws upon two key theoretical concepts: Pitirim Sorokin’s sociology of catastrophes; and Piotr Sztompka’s sociology of trauma. Paraphrasing the title of Sztompka’s book (Trauma wielkiej zmiany. Społeczne koszty transformacji), we might call the Polish war experience “the trauma of the great war”. The article shows the sources, symptoms and cultural consequences of the trauma of war in Poland.

scholarly journals Typhus in Buchenwald: Can the Story Be Told?

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-19
Author(s):  
Ilana Löwy
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Social Study ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Vaccine Production ◽  
Ludwik Fleck ◽  
World War ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
The Social

Ludwik Fleck is known today primarily as pioneer in the social study of scientific knowledge. However, during World War II he was a prisoner in Buchenwald, where he and other prisoners produced a typhus vaccine for the Nazis, and where he witnessed murderous experiments on human beings. After WW2, Fleck was accused by one of the prisoners who had participated in the vaccine production at Buchenwald of collaborating, either deliberately or due to lack of imagination, with the Nazi experiments. This article critically examines this accusation and its well-documented rebuttal by Fleck. It argues that while sometimes, especially when dealing with emotionally fraught issues, it may be difficult to establish what precisely took place at a given time and site, it is important to restore the original complexity and messiness of past events – in order to open spaces for understanding, reflexivity and compassion.

Social Position of an Expert as a New Element of Science

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-131
Author(s):  
Evgeny V. Maslanov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Special Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Innovations ◽  
Scientific Ethos

The article focuses on analyzing the changes that have occurred in the procedures for assessing scientific knowledge during the period of their massive introduction into the economy, politics and everyday life, as well as the formation of a new social position of the expert. Up to this point, the assessment of scientific knowledge often took place within the scientific community. In that case, a special role was played by “authority” able to evaluate projects basing on criteria intrinsic to the scientific ethos. The active introduction of scientific knowledge into the social life encouraged the emergence of a new expert’s social position differing from an intrascientific “authority”. In their work, they have to evaluate projects that involve large financial resources and contribute to changes in social and economic life, and therefore, in addition to scientific criteria, such experts consider any possible economic, political and social consequences of the project implementation. Along with it, the formation of the new expert’s social position and its active use by scientists leads to several problems. First, the expertise and expert practices are beginning to be used by scientists to legitimize their own position in science and fight rival groups. Second, these processes can provoke a decrease in diversity both within science itself and in the number of cognitive practices; also they can limit the emergence of new approaches to the analysis of technological, economic, political and social innovations.

Why Institutions Matter

2018 ◽  
pp. 27-48
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
Life Choices ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Societal Level

Institutions play a crucial role both on an individual and on a societal level. Many of the personal life choices as well as the decision making on an organizational level and the development of the society as a whole are functions of various institutional arrangements. In the second chapter, the author defines institutions and their characteristics, elements, and functions. By analyzing the complex framework of institutional settings and rules, the author further points out what makes institutions a unique human achievement and why understanding of their functions will be crucial for the defining path ahead. Further, an overview of the rules and regulations sum up their functions as main ingredients of the social interactions. The last part proposes an in-depth study and analysis of the mechanisms by which new technologies influence institutional settings.

scholarly journals Identification and Assessment of Country Risks for the Development of Convergent Technologies

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-51
Author(s):  
Marina Buyanova
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Synergistic Effects ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Production Economic

The speed of emergence and development of new technologies is so high that it becomes more and more difficult to predict their impact on economy and society. At the same time, new technologies do not develop in isolation; they interact and actively influence each other, generating synergistic effects, which actualizes the need for scientific knowledge of the consequences, as well as the conditions and factors for the emergence of risks and methods of managing them. The aim of the work is to substantiate a theoretical and methodological approach to identifying and assessing the risks of the development of convergent technologies and their consequences in life. The research is based on the methodology of dialectical, system and evolutionary and institutional approaches to the study of the risks of the development of social and economic systems, the theory of factors of production, economic development, and the economic mechanism. This paper examines the conditions and social and economic prerequisites for the new industrial revolution in Russia, as well as the risks that arise in this process. The author carries out the analysis of constructive and destructive economic and social consequences of NBIC technologies rapidly developing in all countries of the world. In conclusion, the author proposes priority directions of the regulation of social and economic processes in the country, ensuring competitive, sustainable and safe development.

Knowing Sea-Level Rise: Interpretive Practices of Uncertainty in Tuvalu

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Mariko Yoshida
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Daily Experiences ◽  
Migrant Families ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interpretive Practices

Abstract Drawing upon empirical observations, daily experiences of sea-level rise, and the role of religious beliefs that form decision making among migrant families, I examine the ways in which the local individuals and communities in Tuvalu have dealt with a virtual and fluctuating scenario for which they did not use scientific knowledge to control their environment. Instead, they reacted negatively to future anxiety constructed as a predicted scenario while continuing to contend with the immediate demands of community. I demonstrate the social practices that incorporate the intangible sea-level rise, as calculated through scientific measures, into tangible and substantive material for evaluating changes.

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