[Science and deliberation]

The aim of the article is to start a debate on deliberative democracy among scientists. Deliberation is analysed by political scientists because deliberative experiences usually involve citizens in the policy making process. Although experts are instrumental in many deliberative processes, scholars usually ignore the interaction between scientific information, citizens' knowledge and deliberation. Through the analysis of three citizens' juries, the article examines the effects that experts-citizens interaction generates on cognitive mechanisms. People who participate in deliberative processes often seem not to accept information experts give them. Cognitive psychologists assert that this is a typical human mechanism: people select information choosing messages more linked with their values and believes. Observing deliberative processes, where people not only have to learn but to make policies in a public arena the reaction of citizens seems less instinctive. In a deliberative context citizens are not satisfied of information, they want to know what there is behind facts and causal relations: how instruments measure data, which methods are used. In other words, in a deliberative context citizens want to understand reality before knowing it.