ABSTRACT
In 1983, the US National Academy of Sciences issued a report urging public officials to distinguish between the assessment and the management of risk or, as the academy put it, between the scientific and the political aspects of regulatory policy. The academy report distinguished, in other words, between judgements of fact and judgements of value. Judgements of fact attempt to describe the way the world is. Judgements of value distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and make recommendations about what we ought to do.
