High stakes, low certainty: Post-Normal Science in public health governance (from ESCAIDE 2025)

Topic outline

• High stakes, low certainty: Post-Normal Science in public health governance

  High stakes, low certainty: Post-Normal Science in public health governance

  This session was held as a part of ESCAIDE 2025, ECDC's annual conference on applied infectious disease epidemiology. 

  Want to know more?

  You can find more information about ESCAIDE here: https://www.escaide.eu, and about ECDC's work here: https://ecdc.europa.eu.
• Objectives

  Objectives

  After completing this activity, participants should be able to:

  • Understand how science can contribute more effectively to decision-making in the face of real world challenges of uncertainty, disputed values, high stakes and urgency.
  • Apply Post‑Normal Science (PNS) principles to engage constructively with actors who promote alternative or misleading claims.
  • Use effective strategies to communicate scientific uncertainty in ways that support transparent and informed decision‑making.
• Watch the session

  Watch the session
• Summary of the content

  Summary of the content

  Summary of the content

  This presentation is part of a plenary session held at ESCAIDE 2025, titled ‘High stakes, low certainty: Post-Normal Science in public health governance’. In this session, philosopher of science, Silvio Funtowicz, explores Post-Normal Science perspectives on decision-making when conventional scientific approaches reach their limits. The speaker illustrates how in real-life scenarios, the pursuit of absolute truth gives way to the notion as fitness for purpose, fostered through dialogue between experts and extended peer communities. In high-stakes public crises and emergencies, marked by complexity, uncertainty, and value conflicts, science should help create just, responsible, and anticipatory knowledge, rather than strive for perfect predictions and impossible total control over policy actions.

  Chairs (learn more about the chairs on the ESCAIDE website)

  • Agnes Hajdu – Senior Advisor, National Center for Public Health, Hungary
  • Henriette de Valk – Head of Unit Foodborne, Vectorborne and Zoonotic Infections, Santé Publique France

  
  

  Speaker (learn more about the speaker on the ESCAIDE website)

  • Silvio Funtowicz – Guest Researcher, University of Bergen, Norway
• Additional resources

  Additional resources
  • URLCheck other ESCAIDE materials on Learning Portal
• Contacts

  Contacts

  For more information about ESCAIDE, please see www.escaide.eu, or contact the ESCAIDE team at escaide.conference@ecdc.europa.eu. 

  If you have questions regarding other training initiatives please contact: courses@ecdc.europa.eu.

  If you have technical issues please contact the ECDC Service Desk at servicedesk@ecdc.europa.eu.

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