During the past two years of the coronavirus pandemic, whenever people refused to wear masks or get vaccinated, the most common response—especially among left-leaning political leaders and commentators—has been to insist that everyone should “follow the science.” Similar exhortations have long been a staple feature of the politics of climate change, biotechnology, and many other issues. Zeynep Pamuk’s illuminating book persuasively argues for a different approach. Emphasizing the uncertainty and incompleteness of much policy-relevant science, she shows how to improve the role of science in democracy through public engagement with both the production and use of expertise.

Following the introduction, chapter 2 examines how social values inevitably shape scientific research and advice, thus undermining the Weberian case for a strict division of labor between science and politics. Chapters 3 and 4 explore dilemmas that arise in the political use of expertise, including inescapable tensions between expert neutrality and usefulness, and how to address them through public engagement. Chapters 5 and 6 examine the political implications of public funding for science, arguments for restricting dangerous research, and who should be involved in establishing research priorities. An engaging epilogue shows how the use of expertise during the pandemic illustrates some of the book’s key arguments.

One distinctive contribution of the book is its meticulous account of the political stakes of science funding decisions. It is not enough for citizens to scrutinize the political use of science, Pamuk argues, because political values and decisions shape what science gets produced in the first place. In this respect, science amounts to “a structural form of power” (p. 49). Science funding decisions help to determine what we know and do not know, what issues appear on the public agenda, and what epistemic resources we have for shaping public policy. “Funding decisions for science thus play a crucial role in determining the direction, speed, and limits of social and political change” (p. 134). Pamuk persuasively criticizes the view that public funding for science should be determined either by scientists alone or by assessments of expected private benefits. The first approach tends to stifle innovative research, while the second ignores the distinctly public benefits of science. Pamuk thus argues for both direct democratic influence on the research agenda by citizens and their representatives, and indirect democratic influence through funding mechanisms that encourage diversity and innovation in research. Examples of the latter include distributing a certain portion of research funds through lotteries and earmarking funds for unusual projects and early career researchers (pp. 157–59).

Another valuable contribution of the book is Pamuk’s proposal for a “science court.” Modifying a proposal from decades ago, Pamuk takes the familiar design of a citizen jury or minipublic (a deliberative body of randomly selected citizens) and adds adversarial procedures that enable participants to evaluate disagreements among experts. The aim is to complement public scrutiny of expertise by government officials, the media, advocacy groups, and informal public debate (pp. 100, 104). Science courts would be used for questions with clearly defined positions that depend in part on disagreements over science, such as whether the government should impose a national lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, or whether wolves should be reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park (p. 113). They would be initiated by citizen petition, and staff members would recruit experts to make a case for each position and cross-examine each other. The citizens would then evaluate the experts’ arguments, “focusing on both the scientific aspects and value judgments required to reach a decision” (p. 121). Although the citizens would not be able to assess the relevant evidence directly, they would make an indirect assessment based on which experts demonstrate “dialectical superiority—that is, the ability to justify one’s position, answer challenges, come up with further evidence, and provide effective rebuttals” (p. 115). The aim is not for citizens to determine what is true, but rather “what can be relied on for the purposes of a particular policy given that there is disagreement about what the truth is, and the science is uncertain and incomplete” (p. 118). Science courts would then make recommendations to government policy makers.

Pamuk says the science court should be advisory only, but it remains somewhat unclear how decision makers should weigh the court’s recommendations in relation to other factors. On the one hand, she suggests that public officials should defer to a science court, because its authority is derived from “descriptively representing the public” and it indicates what other citizens would think if they also had a chance to examine expert views (p. 124). She argues that such deference can be “legitimated on the basis of a claim to democratic representation” and that measures should be taken to “make it difficult for decision makers to ignore its outcome” (p. 125). And due to the court’s combination of epistemic and democratic aspects, she says decision makers should give it “special weight and attention” (p. 128). These statements make Pamuk’s argument vulnerable to the common concern that minipublics may allow a tiny group of citizens to dominate policy making. On the other hand, Pamuk notes that the science court could also acquire policy influence indirectly (and arguably more democratically) by shaping public opinion (p. 125). And if public opinion remains unchanged, “then decision makers would simply have to consider the court’s verdict alongside other views” (p. 127).

Given these considerations, it is unfortunate that the book ignores relational and systemic theories of political representation, developed over the past few decades by Iris Marion Young, Jane Mansbridge, Nadia Urbinati, and Michael Saward, among others. According to these accounts, political representation is best understood as a mutually constitutive relationship between representatives and constituents, and representative democracy should include diverse institutions that each represent citizens in different ways. Pamuk does not examine the specific modes of representation potentially offered by both established expert advisory bodies and her proposed science court (pp. 82–83, 96, 125). They arguably represent citizens in part by facilitating the public scrutiny for which she calls. This amounts to a missed opportunity for strengthening Pamuk’s argument, but it also suggests promising avenues for future research.

One might also question Pamuk’s decision not to engage in detail with relevant empirical research in science and technology studies (STS), especially because her main arguments echo a long tradition of STS research (pp. 15–16, 69). Pamuk calls her book “a largely theoretic project,” and she presents her institutional suggestions “as practical illustrations of the theory” (p. 16). Pamuk also restricts her project with a declared focus on the natural sciences, explicitly bracketing social scientific expertise (p. 19), even though effectively responding to issues like climate change and COVID-19 clearly depends in part on the social sciences. Of course, no book can do everything, and this book already draws on an enormous literature in political theory, the philosophy of science, and other fields. Pamuk provides an exceptionally clear and nuanced analysis of many complex issues, and she offers promising institutional proposals for improving the role of scientific research and expert advice in democratic politics.