Sven Ove Hansson

Sven Ove Hansson (born 1951) is a Swedish academic, philosopher, author and skeptic. He has a special interest in environmental risk assessment, as well as in decision theory and belief dynamics.

Career

Hansson obtained a degree in medicine in 1972, and then worked for a Swedish trades union, followed by a job with the Swedish Social Democrats.

He received a PhD-degree in theoretical philosophy at Uppsala University in 1991, and a second PhD-degree in practical philosophy at the University of Lund in 1999.

Hansson has been a member of three Boards of Directors appointed by the Swedish Government:
*the Products Control Board (1976–1982; the predecessor of the National Chemicals Inspectorate),
*the National Board for Spent Nuclear Fuel (1981–1992) and
*the Natural Science Foundation (1989–1992).

He was a member of two temporary Commissions on environmental policies appointed by the Swedish Government.

*In 1999–2000 he was expert advisor to a temporary Swedish government committee the "kemikaliekommittén".

*Professor Hansson is a co-opted member of the board of the MISTRA project New Strategy for the risk management of chemical substances.

Since September 1999 he has been the editor of Theoria, the only international, refereed, philosophy journal published in Sweden.

Since 2001 he has been vice chairperson of Riskkollegiet, a Swedish association for risk research.

He was the founding chairperson of the Swedish Skeptics (Vetenskap och Folkbildning), and is still a board member and editor of the organisation’s journal "Folkvett".

He is currently professor in philosophy and Head of the Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Since December 2000 Professor Hansson has been a member of "forskningsberedningen", the Swedish government’s advisory board of researchers .

Publications

He has published numerous articles and books in Swedish and in English.Titles of English books are:
*Setting the Limit. Occupational Health Standards and the Limits of Science, Oxford University Press 1998
*"A Textbook of Belief Dynamics, Theory Change and Database Updating", Kluwer 1999
*"The Structure of Values and Norms", Cambridge University Press 2001

Some of his articles in English:
* [http://www.waldorfcritics.org/active/articles/Hansson.html Is Anthroposophy Science?] On line copy of article in "Conceptus XXV" (1991), No. 64, pp. 37-49.
* [http://www.skepticreport.com/newage/steiner.htm The Racial Teachings of Rudolf Steiner] "Skeptic Report", June/ July 2005. [According to the original publication of the article in Swedish (Folkvett nr 3/2004.), it was written in response to [http://fof.se/?id=_diskutera/trad.lasso%7C03815b criticism] of the Swedish branch of the CSICOP for its publication the previous year of a critical anthology on anthroposophy as being repeatedly unreliable.]

Notes

External links

* [http://www.infra.kth.se/~soh/ Homepage]
* [http://nanobio-raise.org/groups/writers/resumes/document.2006-02-09.8094174889 Brief biography] at NanoBio-RAISE
* [http://www.ethiek.tudelft.nl/conference2002/folder.pdf Brief biography] at Research in Ethics and Engineering Conference, University of Delft, NL, April 2002 (pdf)