ABSTRACT
Knowledge assessment is the name of people group at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. Although many will willingly accept that, for example, farmers or fishermen have a specialised type of knowledge, they will still argue that there is something privileged about the knowledge inputs provided by science. The chapter discusses the term 'extended peer community' to refer to the process of knowledge-sharing and of co-production of knowledge. An extension of the participatory rights of citizens might be ethically just or politically correct, but we preferred to stress its epistemological and methodological aspects, focusing attention on the urgent task of assuring the quality of the knowledge inputs to decision-making processes. The chapter proposes a sequence of conceptual models of the interfaces between science and decision-making whose emergence and criticism can be considered as a historical and cultural process of deepening understanding of the emergent complexities in the use of science in policy processes.
