Postscript: Notes on the Workshop as an Experiment

Abstract

This workshop had two goals. The first was to understand the patterns of integration between science and policy making in the area of chemical hazard regulation, in the light of the relation between European and national regulatory agencies. The second was to create a dialogue between social scientists who study these regulatory systems and natural scientists, administrators and representatives from interest groups, usually also with a background in the natural sciences, who are involved in regulation. We have presented our conclusions with respect to the first goal in the previous chapter, where we have tried to summarise and integrate the various views and processes signalled by the participants of this workshop in the form of scenarios: different courses that the European regulation of chemical hazards could take and the typical dynamics that could be expected in each of them. In this chapter we focus on the process rather than the product: on the goal of creating communication between social and natural scientists. We find it important to make available our experiences in this respect, since we find them at least as valuable as the substantive results. We hope these experiences can be used by others who seek to organise similar projects. In this respect, the things we did not plan and foresee are probably the most interesting and we will try to scrutinise these here.