The concept of Extended peer community belongs to the field of Sociology of science, and in particular the use of science in the solution of social, political or ecological problems. It was first introduced by in the 1990s by

Silvio Funtowicz Silvio O. Funtowicz (born 1946) is a philosopher of science active in the field of science and technology studies. He created the NUSAP, a notational system for characterising uncertainty and quality in quantitative expressions, and together with ...

and

Jerome R. Ravetz Jerome (Jerry) Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author (with Silvio Funtowicz) of the NUSAP no ...

.Funtowicz, S. O. and Ravetz, J. R., 1991. "A New Scientific Methodology for Global Environmental Issues", in Costanza, R. (ed.), Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability: 137–152. New York: Columbia University Press. in the context of what would become Post-normal science. An Extended peer community is intended by these authors as a space where both credentialed experts from different disciplines and lay stakeholders can discuss and deliberate.

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An Extended peer community is intended by its creatorsFuntowicz, S. O. and Ravetz, J. R., 1992. "Three types of risk assessment and the emergence of postnormal science", in Krimsky, S. and Golding, D. (eds.), Social theories of risk: 251–273. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood.Funtowicz, S. and Ravetz, J., 1993. "Science for the post-normal age", Futures, 31(7): 735-755. as an arrangement at the science policy interface that helps to expand and assess both the knowledge-base and the value-base of policy-making'. Carrozza, C. 2015. “Democratizing Expertise and Environmental Governance: Different Approaches to the Politics of Science and Their Relevance for Policy Analysis.” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 17 (1): 108-126. Post-normal science's extended peer community argues for two kind of extensions: first, more than one discipline is assumed to have a potential bearing on the issue being debated, thereby providing different lenses to consider the problem. Second the community is extended to lay actors, taken to be all those with stakes, or an interest, in the given issue. The lay members of the community thus constituted may also take upon themselves active 'research' tasks; this has happened e.g. in the so-called 'popular epidemiology',Brown, Phil. 1997. Popular Epidemiology Revisited. Current Sociology 45 (3). SAGE Publications:137–156. when the official authorities have shown reluctance to perform investigations deemed necessary by the communities affected - for example - by a case of air or water pollution, and more recently ‘

citizen science Citizen science (CS) (similar to community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted with participation from the public (who are sometimes re ...

’. The extended community can usefully investigate the quality of the scientific assessments provided by the experts, the definition of the problem, as well as research priorities and research questions. An example of extended peer community in action is offered by

Brian Wynne Brian Wynne is Professor Emeritus of Science Studies and a former Research Director of the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) at the Lancaster University. His education includes an MA (Natural Sciences, Cambridge 1968), PhD (Ma ...

, who discusses the Cumbrian sheep farmers' interaction with scientists and authorities, mobilizing farmers' knowledge of the relevant situation (acid upland moors retaining radioactive deposition from fallout longer than the lowland Oxfordshire meadows on which the official parameters were based).Wynne, Brian. 1992. Uncertainty and Environmental Learning, Reconceiving Science and Policy in the Preventive Paradigm. Global Environmental Change 2 (2):111–127. doi:10.1016/0959-3780(92)90017-2.Wynne, B. 1992. “Misunderstood Misunderstanding: Social Identities and Public Uptake of Science.” Public Understanding of Science 1: 281–304. Extended peer communities and Post-normal Science have been suggested to tackle the debate on the policy and regulation of

Large Language Models A large language model (LLM) is a language model consisting of a neural network with many parameters (typically billions of weights or more), trained on large quantities of unlabelled text using self-supervised learning. LLMs emerged around 2018 an ...

House of Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee inquiry: Large language model (LLM0015). (2023). https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/124038/pdf/ in order to encourage "inclusion of previously marginalised perspectives". The concept of extended peer community was developed in the context of politicised quality controversies in science (such as 'housewife' or 'popular' epidemiology ), early

evidence-based medicine Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients". The aim of EBM is to integrate the experience of the clinician, the values of t ...

(the Cochrane collaboration), and the total quality management ideas of

W. Edwards Deming William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical ...

, in particular quality circles.

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{{reflist Scientific method Philosophy of science Science and technology studies

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