simulation models of the behaviour of social agents or groups of agents, scaling is a common way of representing variables that are non-observable and therefore not easily measurable. Quantifying perceptions through scaled variables is also generally convenient to elaborate surveys for model validation purposes. 6 It has to be noted that here we are comparing perceptions of risks associated with the occurrence of events (expected and actual as calculated by the model) which are culturally-shaped, since, according to CT and social constructionism in general, evidence is always interpreted differently by each CTA. 7 For the sake of simplicity we have assumed that government reliance on S&T information increases as public research spending grows. 8 As previously indicated, the model accounts for movements of individuals between CTAs so these proportions vary accordingly over time. 9 Since the number of nvCDJ events is significantly lower than that of BSE cases, the values of the corresponding variable in the y axis of Figure 8 are represented in a different scale so that both series can be visually compared. For this reason in this scale from 0-1000 cases (which allows the representation of the highest number of cases for the BSE events variable) the values in the axis for nvCDJ events appear as close to 0. 10 Again different scales have been used to represent the values of these three variables in order to allow the reader to compare their dynamics in a more user friendly visual manner. The values on the y axis