Scienza e deliberazione pubblica

L’articolo intende presentare alla comunità degli epidemiologi una riflessione su alcune pratiche di coinvolgimento dei cittadini nelle scelte pubbliche note con l’espressione “democrazia deliberativa”. I processi deliberativi sono oggetto di studio e dibattito fra i politologi per la loro valenza politica e sociale. Le ricerche empiriche condotte fino ad oggi analizzano prevalentemente l’impatto che questi processi producono sulle preferenze individuali e sulle scelte collettive. Non hanno invece ancora affrontato il delicato nodo del rapporto fra sapere scientifico e deliberazione, nonostante esperti e specialisti svolgano spesso un ruolo di primaria importanza nelle arene deliberative. Attraverso l’analisi dei processi decisionali di tre giurie di cittadini, si tenterà di far luce, almeno in via indiziaria, sugli effetti che l’interazione esperti-profani produce sui meccanismi cognitivi individuali e collettivi. The aim of the article is to start a debate on deliberative democracy among scientists. Deliberation is analysed by political scientists because deliberative experiences usually involve citizens in the policy making process. Although experts are instrumental in many deliberative processes, scholars usually ignore the interaction between scientific information, citizens’ knowledge and deliberation. Through the analysis of three citizens’ juries, the article examines the effects that experts-citizens interaction generates on cognitive mechanisms. People who participate in deliberative processes often seem not to accept information experts give them. Cognitive psychologists assert that this is a typical human mechanism: people select information choosing messages more linked with their values and believes. Observing deliberative processes, where people not only have to learn but to make policies in a public arena, the reaction of citizens seems less “instinctive”. In a deliberative context citizens are not satisfied of information, they want to know what there is behind facts and causal relations: how instruments measure data, which methods are used. In other words, in a deliberative context citizens want to understand reality before knowing it.