Representing Uncertainty in Global Climate Change Science and Policy
Boundary-Ordering Devices and Authority
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5219977 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Simon Shackley (0000-0002-0760-3504, Lancaster University), Brian Wynne (0000-0002-4043-2508, Lancaster University) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 275-302 |
| Publication date | 1996-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/016224399602100302 |
| OpenAlex | W2096860496 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 238 |
| References cited | 45 |
This article argues that, in public and policy contexts, the ways in which many scientists talk about uncertainty in simulations of future climate change not only facilitates communications and cooperation between scientific and policy communities but also affects the perceived authority of science. Uncertainty tends to challenge the authority of chmate science, especially if it is used for policy making, but the relationship between authority and uncertainty is not simply an inverse one. In policy contexts, many scientists are compelled to talk about uncertainty but do not wish to imply that uncertainty is a serious challenge to the authority of scientific knowledge or to its substantial use in policy making. "Boundary-ordering devices, " the contextual discursive attempts to reconcile uncertainty and authority in science, depend critically for their success on their "dual" interpretation: at a general level across a boundary and differently on either side of it. The authors empirically identify a range of such boundary-ordering devices in the climate field
Boundary-work · Climate change · Climate science · Political science · Public relations · Science policy · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Uncertainty · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Climate variability and models · Computer Science · Mathematics · Public Administration · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance · Ecology
Variation in the Epistemic Authority of Science in Climate Change
Climate Imagineering
Everyday Uncertainty Work
(Low) Expectations, Legitimization, and the Contingent Uses of Scientific Knowledge
More than just information
Rethinking the value of biological specimens
Museums and attacks from cyberspace
Risk governance in an age of wicked problems
From consensus to credibility
Climate change and sustainable development
How well do the UK government’s ‘areas of research interest’ work as boundary objects to facilitate the use of research in policymaking
Approaches to anticipatory governance in West Africa
Synchronizing climate intervention
An Engine, Not a Camera
Science in Movements
GREEN MARBLE 2022. Estudos sobre o Antropoceno e Ecocrítica / Studies on the Anthropocene and Ecocriticism
Contextualizing Disaster
The Politics of Uncertainty
A framework to diagnose barriers to climate change adaptation
Rethinking the science-policy nexus
Physical and economic bias in climate change research
Global comprehensive models in politics and policymaking
Les qualités politiques des technologies. Irréversibilité et réversibilité dans la gestion des déchets nucléaires
Landscaping climate change
Predicting, deciding, learning
Scenarios in society, society in scenarios
Productive Comparison
Utilizing the Dynamic Role of Objects to Enhance Cross-Cultural Climate Change Collaborations
Mapping Discourses of Climate Change Adaptation in the United Kingdom
Emergency flood bulletins for Cyclones Idai and Kenneth
The data treadmill
Evaluation of climate change coverage across news sources in selected Malaysian electronic newspapers
Credulous Modellers and Suspicious Experimentalists? Comparison of Model Output and Data in Meteorological Simulation Modelling
Scientific authority in policy contexts
‘Good’ and ‘bad’ stem cell research
The Effect of Trust in Science and Media Use on Public Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change
Mobilizing the Public in Saving the Bonneville Salt Flats
Spheres of Argument Concerning Oil Exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency
Changing the Conversation about Climate Change
Problematic practice in integrated impact assessment
The missed disease? Endometriosis as an example of ‘undone science’
Uncertainty and trustworthiness in discussions of fracking
Is bio-energy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) feasible? The contested authority of integrated assessment modeling
Transforming power
Whose climate and whose ethics? Conceptions of justice in solar geoengineering modelling
Guiding Orientation Processes as Possibility to Give Direction for System Innovations—the Use of Resilience and Sustainability in the Energy Transition
Metrics as tools for bridging climate science and applications
Climate projections and their impact on policy and practice
The epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of uncertainty in integrated assessment modeling
Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal
The Paris Agreement and the inherent inconsistency of climate policymaking
Lessons from post‐normal science for climate science‐sceptic debates
Simulation as a Social Process in Organizations
Medicalization in the Media
Bushfire simulators and analysis in Australia
Thinking like a climate
Biotic Carbon Sequestration and the Kyoto Protocol
Thinking About Tomorrows”
Bourdieu and the IPCC’s Symbolic Power
Weighting the World
Towards science in support of decision making
Organizing productive science–policy interactions for sustainable coastal management. Lessons from the Wadden Sea
What does it mean when climate models agree? A case for assessing independence among general circulation models
Uncertainties in the assessment of “significant effect” on the Dutch Natura 2000 Wadden Sea site – The mussel seed fishery and powerboat race controversies
The potential role of boundary organizations in the climate regime
Boundary work in climate policy making in Brazil
Climate risk maps as boundary objects for future forests
The position of place in governing global problems
Communicating climate (change) uncertainties
Negotiating future climates for public policy
Technical knowledge, discursive spaces and politics at the science–policy interface
Transition towards a new global change science
Building authority and relevance in the early history of Ipbes
Participatory geographic information systems for the co-production of science and policy in an emerging boundary organization
Public ecology
Identifying enabling factors of science-policy interaction in a developing country context
Risk governance in an age of wicked problems
A Mixed-Methods Study of Public Understanding of Scientific Uncertainty
Narrating the Monarch Butterfly
Adaptive and risk-based approaches to climate change and the management of uncertainty and institutional risk
Mediating science and action across multiple boundaries in the Coral Triangle
Adapting science to a warming world
Approaches to evaluating model quality across different regime types in environmental and public health governance
Rhetorical Strategies for Scientific Authority
Mistrust of the black box
Autistic Heterogeneity
Global climate science, uncertainty and politics
A New Border Zone in Science. Collaboration and Tensions between Modelling Ecologists and Field Naturalists
Contesting a Pandemic
The (Mis)understanding of Scientific Uncertainty? How Experts View Policy-Makers, the Media and Publics
Water Managers' Perceptions of the Science–Policy Interface in Phoenix, Arizona
If they come, we will build it
Antibiotic responsibility and agricultural publics
Communicating soil carbon science to farmers
Environmental issues
Geopower
Is mathematical modelling an instrument of knowledge co-production
Parameterizations as Boundary Objects on the Climate Arena
Responding to Pfiesteria piscicida (the Fish Killer)
American science policy since World War II
Rationality and ritual
Changing order
Purity and Danger
Ignorance and Uncertainty
Prometheus Bound
The structure of scientific revolutions
Fundamentalism versus the patchwork of laws
XII—Fundamentalism vs. the Patchwork of Laws
Boundaries of Science
Global Warming
Uncertainty and environmental learning 1, 2Reconceiving science and policy in the preventive paradigm
Model Discourse
Contested Boundaries in Policy-Relevant Science
Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects
The Sun-Set
Constructing `Do-able' Problems in Cancer Research
Scientific Work and Uncertainty
Constructing and Reconstructing Scientific Ignorance
Global climate change
The institutional context of science, models, and policy
A technical appraisal of the Iiasa energy scenarios
Uncertainty as Symbolic Action in Disputes Among Experts
Opening Pandora's box
Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science
Climate Change
Techno-economic Networks and Irreversibility
| Unique citing works | 238 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7,93 |
| Citation span | 1996 - 2026 (31) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 225 |