Meeting of minds - European citizens' deliberation on brain sciences : final report of the external evaluation

Abstract

The major objective of the external evaluation is to review the methodological concept, the procedural design and the actual performance of the ECD-Project. The focus of the evaluation lies on the European process level, i.e. the two Citizens’ Conventions were the focal events for the external evaluation. After these events, the team of Dialogik accumulated the interim results in form of two reports, which are attached to this volume. The following conclusions are based on the insights described in these interim reports. They convey a more holistic picture of the overall process without getting lost in each detail. The main research question of the evaluation is how the dialogue processes were initiated and how they were sustained during the whole project. The development of communication and deliberation leading to a common statement of European citizens about brain science was one major concern of this analysis, which focused on process-related and organizational issues. The task to evaluate the ECD-Project was an inspiring but also demanding endeavour. A lot of data was collected during the process and an enormous n umber of sources for additional information was available for further analysis. One problem to be solved was to find an adequate theoretically appropriate and practically feasible perspective for the examination of all important activities. The other problem was to find the right balance between measuring subjective impressions and evaluations based on a set of objective criteria or benchmarks. Subjective aspects such as the assessments of the participants are relevant, but a comprehensive assessment also needs additional information sources, which can be used as benchmarks for assessing successes or failures of the process. The methods used in this evaluation include both aspects.

The acronym ECD stands for “European Citizens’ Deliberation”, which is the description of the basic method of the Meeting of Minds-Project. Both terms were used synonymously in this report. Meeting of Minds is an initiative of the partner consortium comprising the King Baudouin Foundation, the University of Westminster, the Flemish Institute for Science and Technology Assessment, the Danish Board of Technology, the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, the Stiftung Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, the Fondazione IDIS Città della Scienza, the Rathenau Institute, the Science Museum, the University of Debrecen, the Eugenides Foundation, the University of Liège, SPIRAL. The initiative has the support of the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development in the European Union.