ABSTRACT
"Scientific Mediation" is a relatively simple and inexpensive procedure which can be extremely useful to policy-makers. It is designed for the very common situation where a decision regarding a technology must be made while significant scientific uncertainties concerning the consequences of utilizing the technology still exist. The decision-maker, whether it be a judge, a government agency, or for that matter a corporation, determines what the question is. It must be a primarily technical, not political or economic, question. Technology Policy Convergence (TPC) requires the government to accept the premise that the public matters, and should be listened to. The problem from the point of view of many decision-makers and experts, however, is that the public is narrow-minded and ignorant. It is true that much of the public is ignorant, but what goes unrecognized is that, on forefront technological issues, everyone, including the experts, is ignorant of the big picture.
