ABSTRACT
In the current climate of public policy-making, the public, business, government, and scientists are being encouraged to meet in common management arenas to address and reach consensus on the optimum approach to issues of concern to society at large. This process is opposed to top-down decision making (by, say, government agencies) and is a difficult (some say even Utopian) way to proceed. It is frequently marked by two stumbling blocks that seem bound to increase in time. First, even though such groups use scientific findings to formulate positions, scientists and their findings often disagree. That is, there is no single scientific world, even within a field of study, let alone across disciplines. Second, individuals in groups inevitably coalesce into subgroups, rendering them neither as single-minded nor as homogeneous as suggested by such phrases as "the public," "scientists," or even "the government."
