HENK VAN DEN BELT and BART GREMMEN BETWEEN PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE AND “SOUND SCIENCE”: DISTRIBUTING THE BURDENS OF PROOF

ABSTRACT. Opponents of biotechnology often invoke the Precautionary Principle to advance their cause, whereas biotech enthusiasts prefer to appeal to “sound science. ” Public authorities are still groping for a useful definition. A crucial issue in this debate is the distribution of the burden of proof among the parties favoring and opposing certain techno-logical developments. Indeed, the debate on the significance and scope of the Precautionary Principle can be fruitfully re-framed as a debate on the proper division of burdens of proof. In this article, we attempt to arrive at a more refined way of thinking about this problem in order to escape from the existing polarization of views between “guilty until proven innocent ” and “innocent until proven guilty. ” This way of thinking also enables a critical review of current demarcations between risk assessment and risk management, or science and politics, and of the morally laden controversy on the relative importance of type-I and type-II errors in statistical testing. KEY WORDS: biotechnology, burden of proof, Precautionary Principle, type-I and type-II error