Post-normal science

Post-normal science is a concept coined by Jerome Ravetz and Silvio Funtowicz to describe fields in which high-cost decisions must be made but there is a good deal of uncertainty with relation to the relevant scientific facts. The phrase "post-normal science" is a spin-off of Thomas Kuhn's concept of "normal science." Ravetz and Funtowicz have mostly applied this concept to ecological economics and public health policy. One of the key components of post-normal science is that it is not value-free, but used in the service of an outcome decided by value judgments (which makes it similar to decision theory in some ways).

Eyes wearing
inverted lenses
Philosophy of science
Foundations
Method
Conclusions
v - t - e

Because of this, Ravetz and Funtowicz argue for a "democratization" of scientific knowledge through an "extended peer community" to integrate "local knowledge, values, and interests."[1] The authors feel that these perspectives and "other forms of knowing" have been unfairly excluded from science despite the fact that they're, well, not really scientific, so they'd like to abolish the underlying method and the discrimination between fact and fancy that it entails. This hollowed-out shell would then be stuffed with nonsense, to be legitimized by keeping the description "science" as a mark of "quality." Perhaps they should cut out the middleman and simply call it "post-science"...

Usage by cranks

The concept has gained some currency in popular discourse recently. Due to its similarities to postmodern critiques of science, it has also been latched onto by cranks attempting to give their ideas a veneer of legitimacy much in the same way that postmodern rhetoric has.

Its most common usage is probably in the arena of global warming, where the term is sometimes bandied about by denialists.[2] It's also been picked up by some creationists.[3] This is especially ironic considering that postmodernism is often a bogeyman for right-wingnuts as well as the fact that post-normal science was coined by leftist academics and discussions revolving around it often read like watered-down Paul Feyerabend or Bruno Latour.

gollark: You are so weirdly inconsistent.
gollark: There was apparently a plan for a merch shop selling low-power lasers, but it doesn't exist yet.
gollark: You just said you were in the US, that's mutually exclusive with not being in the US.
gollark: > Tbh laws dont really apply to people anymore after these riots lmaono.
gollark: it took them a while.

See also

References
  1. S. Funtowicz and J. Ravetz. Post-Normal Science. Internet Encyclopaedia of Ecological Economics.
  2. A few examples: This article by James Delingpole, Wotts Up on a Pat Frank column, this post from a denialist blog.
  3. Uncommon Descent jumps on the post-normal bandwagon.
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