Taiwa no ba o dezainsuru: Kagaku gijutsu to shakai no aida o tsunagu to iu koto 対話の場をデザインする: 科学技術と社会のあいだをつなぐということ by Ekō Yagi 八木絵香 (review)

“Even if his forecast had failed, we would not have blamed him” (43). These are the words of a person who had been living near Japan’s Mount Usu. In 2000, Professor Hiromu Okada, the “regular doctor” of the mountain, forecasted its eruption and advised those living in the area to flee. Partly because of his advice, there was no loss of life. The key question posed in Ekō Yagi’s Taiwa no ba o dezainsuru is related to this case: how can experts establish trust with citizens? The example Yagi used to address this question is the deep-rooted distrust between experts and citizens over the issue of nuclear energy.

The author organized a series of “dialogue forums,” which are gatherings “concerning nuclear issues where experts and citizens, or groups with different opinions, build up mutual trust, communicate with each other, and learn together” (iii). According to her assessment, the government, electric power companies, and experts in nuclear engineering have struggled to explain the safety of nuclear power plants to the public and have not paid enough attention to how they communicate. To facilitate two-way communication between experts and citizens, she attempted to establish dialogue forums in the town of Onagawa and Rokkasho village, both of which are located near nuclear facilities.

In chapter 1, the author establishes the background of the dialogue forum, including shifts in public opinion about nuclear energy and recent trends in science and technology studies (STS). The forums’ beginnings are presented in chapter 2, in which she states: “By recording trials and errors in detail, I hope this chapter will be helpful to those who want to set up public meetings like dialogue forums” (iv). Chapter 3 is devoted to tracing how the forums changed the attitudes of those who participated. Yagi emphasizes shifts in experts’ views, which have rarely been discussed in other studies of science communication. In her opinion, such changes—and citizens’ recognition that experts have altered their views—are crucial in building mutual trust. The findings of the book are summarized in chapter 4, with an emphasis on how to design dialogue forums and how these meetings can have a positive impact on both experts and citizens. As the author writes, this chapter can be read as a checklist for how to set up and manage dialogue forums. The concluding chapter sheds light on the difficult issues related to nuclear energy, including the sharp divergence of opinion and the deep distrust between those who approve of nuclear energy and those who oppose it. In what are called “open forums,” experts on both sides of an issue debate it, leaving the facilitator the task of speaking and managing the discussion neutrally and fairly. Yagi explains just how this can be done.

The book’s findings can be summarized as three main points. First, repeated communication among participants is important. There have been many public meetings about nuclear power, but the participants, especially the experts, usually change from meeting to meeting (99). Even at a single given meeting, a number of experts usually participate, and each one plays only a small role. In such cases, the author emphasizes, citizen participants cannot decide whether to trust each expert. This makes more communication necessary. The experts need to reply to all of the questions from citizens, taking them beyond the range of their expertise (120). When this is done, a change in citizens’ attitudes takes place. According to a questionnaire survey distributed to the participants in a series of such meetings, they were satisfied with the forums, and their trust in the experts’ statements significantly increased within a period of a year and a half after they took part (91). The citizens also became more active: they developed the ability to make decisions on their own, without simply...