Locating Experts in the Basic Framework

Chapter 6 examines how various categories of experts fit in the quadrants of the basic framework, and why. It uses three sources of evidence: a coded database of almost 2,000 genomics-related articles by legal scholars and social scientists in thirteen disciplines; two online, open-ended surveys of several hundred social science experts who responded to questions organized around the basic framework; and almost sixty in-person, open-ended interviews with genomics experts, many in positions of public authority. The chapter shows that the most methodologically individualist and most scientific social science disciplines are especially likely to fall into the “Enthusiastic” quadrant, whereas the most humanistic are least likely to do so. Individual experts range across the cells of the basic typology, with views ultimately resting on judgments about humans’ capacity to learn and to act for the good of others.