Abstract
It doesn't matter if the sciences, the jurisdiction or the whole society is concerned, the fact is: "to err is human". Guilty parties are acquitted and innocent ones are condemned. Wrong hypotheses are taught and right ones are controverted. The society can agree upon ignoring real threats while attending to delusory dangers. Each decision has positive or negative consequences, and is in itself a risk factor. Rapoport (1988) speaks therefore about the "ambiguity of risks".
Statements concerning environmental, technological or health-risks can be revised in different ways. One way is to assess their validity related to the complexity of the biophysical world, related to our knowledge about technological or ecological contexts. The other way is to judge them by setting them into the context of their social complexity and to ask to whom they are of avail or of disadvantage, how trustworthy their originators are, and whether they do infringe upon common convictions or not?
When these statements have far reaching consequences, social conflicts about uncertainty-limits, consequences, contradictions, and possible verifications ensue. (Lau 1989) These conflicts can sharpen our understanding about issues like for instance the question, if the world-wide soil erosion is more alarming than the global climatic changes. This way we can check, whether the maxima of the public debate are adequately directed towards the most urgent problems. This is not an academic procedure. Since the public (and with them the scientific) discourses are directing the distribution of means for the risk-management; since they create models of intended technological progress and determine societies´ socio-economic strategies, they constitute a power which is influencing and reforming social and ecological realities.