Alternatively Tackling Alternative Facts Within Two Dutch Knowledge Institutes

Citizens, experts, politicians and industry defend, develop or challenge complex societal problems in passionate ways. They frame facts and uncertainties in accordance with their subject positions, values and beliefs. This tendency to reject facts has been popularised under the heading of the ‘post-truth’ society. Evidence and critical thinking in our contemporary society are easily pushed aside in favour of intuition and emotion as bases for action and judgment. What role remains for public knowledge organisations in a post-truth society? Established under techno-bureaucratic systems of knowledge and action, these organisations are legally mandated to produce ‘facts that matter’ to inform evidence-based policy making. A typical response among Dutch knowledge organisations is to engage in fact-checking: the integrity of facts is subjected to technical review and uncertainty assessment and communication. However, this strategy often seems to lead to the opposite response: citizens challenge both the experts and the facts they produce. A more fruitful way forward, as various critical policy scholars imply, is for experts to become aware of the social and moral implications imposed by their scientific framings of (alternative) facts. Within two prominent Dutch knowledge organisations – PBL and RIVM – Communities of Practice and trainings were designed and implemented to actively pursue this ‘critical’ advice. Educated and trained as critical policy analysts, our task is to coordinate and evaluate these activities within our organisations. We studied whether and how these activities increased awareness among the employees of the larger political, moral and societal controversies informing (the rise of) alternative facts. And, even more crucial, whether and how these activities triggered employees to reflect upon their institutional systems of reference, upon what they normally consider the boundaries of their scientific framings, activities and roles. Yet, these active attempts of ‘reflective practice’ cannot dissolve the troubles of alternative facts. It is likely, after all, that a certain chance of public contestation about authoritative knowledge claims remains. While apparently, even in a post-truth society, there remains a need for specialised knowledge to inform action as well, especially about wicked problems. And this will always lead to the establishment of counter-expertise, either to preserve established interests or to address values less represented within expert claims. Nonetheless, there remains a crucial task for critical policy analysts in these settings to actively support processes of ‘learning by doing’ on the job. By stimulating experts to ‘problematise’ what is taken for granted, such critical activities may open up techno-bureaucratic knowledge systems to alternative routes for tackling alternative facts. Contradictory enough, alternative facts may, in this way, work to strengthen (instead of weaken) the position of public knowledge organisations in a post-truth society.