Shripad (Jayant) Deo
Summer 2006 WAS*IS

I am a social scientist (Economics and Sociology) at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. I am working on several projects with the National Weather Service in Kansas City since 2000. My primary interest is in sociology of science and technology. I have been working on interface between science and policy and society. It is widely recognized that science is transforming modern society, it is less often appreciated that society, in speaking back, is transforming science. Contextualized knowledge is the outcome of this reverse communication. The increased socio-economic demands on sciences have contributed to the multiplication of user-producer interfaces.

Under the prevailing contract between science and society, science has been expected to produce reliable knowledge, provided merely that it communicates its discoveries to society. Reliable knowledge is defined as such because it ‘works’. A new contract must now ensure that scientific knowledge is socially robust, and that its production is seen by society to be both transparent and participative.

What works has now acquired a further dimension that can be described as a shift from reliable knowledge to socially robust knowledge. The latter characterization is intended to embrace the process of contextualization. The socially robust knowledge has three aspects. First, it is valid not only inside but also outside the laboratory or a scientific organization. Second, this validity is achieved through involving an extended group of experts, including lay ‘experts’. And third, because ‘society’ has participated in its genesis, such knowledge is less likely to be contested than that which is merely ‘reliable’.

Communication of scientific information to non-professionals or lay experts in society, to me, is part of this shift to socially robust knowledge. The differences in the understanding of the role of science in society, by scientists and lay public, have implications for (a) organization of scientific enterprise, and (b) attitudes of scientific workers, especially, in democratic societies. My earlier research work related to agricultural biotechnologies, economic development, and underdevelopment in South Asia .

My primary interest in coming to WAS*IS is meet with different scientists interested in looking beyond disciplinary boundaries of physical and social sciences. Traditional boundaries between university and industrial science, and between basic and applied research, are disappearing. As a result, science and society are invading each other’s domain, requiring a rethinking of previous responsibilities. I have been working on projects that have tried to dismantle disciplinarity in physical and social sciences to push the envelope.

I first came to the US as an exchange student for a year and later as a graduate student. I worked as development economist for a bank before coming to the academic world. After university teaching at the University of Kentucky and Colorado State University, I have moved to full-time research. I like to travel, read, draw, and paint. Currently, I am reading The Unknown Matisse: A life of Henri Matisse, the early years, 1869-1908 by Hilary Spurling and Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices edited by John Law and Annemarie Mol.
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