Maya Goldenberg (University of Guelph)
Public controversies over scientific claims such as the safety and efficacy of vaccines are commonly understood as wars over scientific evidence (Largent et al. 2016). Against the huge body of literature supporting the scientific consensus view, opponents pick out selective, and often disreputable, counter-evidence. The response to public resistance is then to separate “fact” from “fiction” and to either bemoan scientific illiteracy among the general publics (Mooney and Kirshenbaum 2009) or fret over a destructive cultural embracing of anti-intellectualism (Jacoby 2008) and the resulting “death of expertise” (Nichols 2017). Policy elites worry over this troubling public acceptance of irrationalism and non-expert points of view insofar as the “death of expertise” can harm the misled publics and threaten democracy (Nichols 2017). The problem as currently formulated lies squarely with the publics, while science and its institutions require little or no scrutiny. At most, one hears the tepid criticism that scientists could be better communicators. Philosophical scholarship on trust and expertise in relation to science lend novel consideration regarding this state of affairs. Revisiting the concept of trust, specifically the “goodwill” component of Baier’s (1991) account of epistemic trustworthiness, and Hardwig’s (1985) “moral legitimacy” of experts as a pre-requisite for rational epistemic dependence, invites thinking about how scientific institutions have contributed to this breakdown in the public trust. STS scholarship strongly advances the position that trust is endemic to science—it supports knowledge creation, including the management of dissent, as well as consensus building. Moreover, without trust, science cannot achieve its aim of developing universal knowledge, that is, knowledge that should be acceptable for all people regardless of social location (Scheman 2011). To actually operationalize truth across social locations requires the trust of numerous stakeholders, including members of the publics. STS has thereby invited a more nuanced discussion of expertise vis-a-vis the publics. With these considerations in place, I will make the argument that public resistance to scientific claims are symptoms of poor public trust in the scientific consensus and the institutions that underwrite the epistemic and moral legitimacy of the consensus statement. Paying attention to the epistemic and social aims of science—especially applied sciences that impact human, animal, or environmental health and wellbeing—reveals lines of responsibility on the part of scientific institutions to earn and maintain public trust. Public mistrust is thereby reframed as a problem of scientific governance rather than a problem with the publics.
