Samizdat Blog: Knowledge in Chains: The Fate of Expertise in a Market Society

What do these things have in common?

1. Scientists discover that a gigantic corporation has consistently violated environmental regulations, and is introducing certain chemicals into the water supply at dangerous levels. The corporation commissions an in-house study saying that we must lower our environmental standards. A regulatory agency staffed by experts but placed under the command of a political appointee accepts this study, ignores the evidence against the corporation, and the chemicals continue to enter the water supply.

2. The girlfriend of a Russian oligarch decides to renovate an old building in Moscow, making it into the kind of fashionable art space one finds in London or New York. She commissions a leading architect, to whom she gives guidelines about how the space should function and what its social role should be.

3. A well-respected, longtime university administrator is appointed president of a major university and guides the restructuring of that institution. Two years later, a billionaire hedge fund manager who sits on the board of the university’s business school decides he wants the president removed. He works with other wealthy members of the university’s board to have the president dismissed, and is successful. The reason given for the removal of the president is the existence of “philosophical differences” with the board, though the nature of these differences is not specified.

What is the common thread?

Read More at http://samizdatblog.blogspot.fr/2012/06/knowledge-in-chains-fate-of-expertise.html

See it on Scoop.it, via Knowledge Economy

http://www.scoop.it/t/knowledge-economy/p/1988478439/samizdat-blog-knowledge-in-chains-the-fate-of-expertise-in-a-market-society/original Samizdat Blog: Knowledge in Chains: The Fate of Expertise in a Market Society