BMJ  2004;329:1339-1341 (4 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7478.1339

Education and debate

Democratisation of scientific advice

¹ Department of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Medical Centre, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, Netherlands, ² Faculty of Arts and Culture, University of Maastricht, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, Netherlands

Dutch experience shows how scientific advisory bodies can cope with the growing political demands for transparency and lay participation without compromising their function

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

Scientific advisory councils in Western countries have become increasingly confronted with demands that are usually reserved for the political arena.^{1 2} Two such demands stand out: transparency and public participation. Although these seem legitimate demands, and have been taken up by governments in most democratic countries, it is unclear how they can be enacted or what their effects will be on the advisory process. Open and closed procedures are conventionally viewed as opposites.^{3 4} We argue that they have a dialectic relation and are not mutually exclusive, using the example of the Health Council of the Netherlands.

Need for transparency

Good arguments exist for democratising the advisory process. The first was raised as long ago as 1937, when Gulick noted that "history shows us that the common man is a better judge of his own needs in the long run than any cult of experts."⁵ Normative and instrumental arguments have also been put forward.⁶ The . . . [Full text of this article]

Role of the council

Providing transparency

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Attributing types of expertise

Conclusion

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Evans, R., Plows, A. (2007). Listening Without Prejudice?: Re-discovering the Value of the Disinterested Citizen. Social Studies of Science 37: 827-853 [Abstract]  
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