Workshop “Group decision-making in scientific expert committees”

Scientists are regularly called upon to serve as experts advisors for various institutions, be it on the authorization of a new drug, the effects of climate change, or a monetary policy. Typically, expert advisers are constituted in panels, who are to utter their advice collectively. This raises a variety of questions about the decision-making process: How should the group best take advantage of the individual strengths and expertise? How to wager individual opinions and how to ideally deal with peer disagreement? One may want to devise special deliberation procedures to avoid groupthink, and to install voting rules tailored to the situation at hand.

This workshop aims at gathering researchers who tackle these normative questions, from a variety of perspectives. We aim to bring together approaches from fields such as philosophy of science, social epistemology, political philosophy, political science, judgment aggregation, social choice theory, or agent-based modeling that provide inside on these problems. We are particularly looking for papers who are concerned with the specificity of both group decision-making and scientific expertise (compared to, say, an individual scientist giving advice, or a group of friends choosing a restaurant). Submissions may cover abstract work as well as case studies, and may involve formal tools.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

– Judgment aggregation and voting rules

– Deliberation procedures

– Information dynamics

– Expertise and expert judgment

– Collective risk assessment

– Epistemic vs non-epistemic values

– Precautionary decision-making

Invited speakers:

– Roger Cooke (risk analysis and mathematics, Delft & Washington)

– Raffaela Hillerbrand (philosophy, Karlsruhe)

– Rida Laraki (computer science and economics, Paris)

– Benham Taebi (philosophy, Delft)

Abstract submission:

Please submit an extended abstract of maximum 1000 words suitable for blind review, together with a short abstract of maximum 100 words, before 24 February, 2017 at

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=expertgroups17

Notifications of acceptance are expected on March 3, 2017.

Organizers:

Thomas Boyer-Kassem (Tilburg University, NL)

Dominik Klein (Bayreuth University and Bamberg University, Germany)

Dates and Deadlines

24 February: Submission Deadline

3 March: Notification of Acceptance

12-13 April: Conference