Governance through scientism: Taiwan Biobank and public controversy

Abstract

Based on the concept of “governance through scientism”, this article aims to reveal the tacit practices of the institutional culture of scientism among Taiwan Biobank’s elite scientists, whose imaginaries have shaped the dominance of a deficit model of the public in dealing with public controversy and establishing regulatory mechanisms. Examining three periods of ELSI controversies from 2000 to 2021, we identify three types of scientific imaginaries of publics, namely the silent public (2000–2004), the anti-science public (2005–2010), and the EGC as the lawful public supervisory body (2010–2021). In 2010, the Human Biobank Management Act (HBMA) was passed in Taiwan as a solution to public controversy and as a strategy to bypass public engagement. However, the overemphasis on formative legislation caused actors to overlook the processual approach in which ongoing critical reflections are required for the changing operations of TBB