Scientific dissent

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Scientific dissent is dissent from scientific consensus. Disagreements can be useful for finding problems in underlying assumptions, methodologies, and reasoning, as well as for generating and testing new ways of tackling the unknown. [1] In modern times, with the increased role of science on the society and the politicization of science, a new aspect gained prominence: effects of scientific dissent on public policies. [1]

Contents

Scientific dissent is distinct from denialism, which is a deliberate rejection of scientific consensus usually for commercial or ideological reasons. [2]

Dissent as part of scientific inquiry

Miriam Solomon in her book Social Empiricism argues that scientific dissent is the normal state of scientific inquiry, rather than a conflict situation that needs resolution. She argues that disagreements of individual scientists about the proper direction of research are not cause for concern, because scientific rationality must be assessed at the level of the scientific community. [3] As long as all theories being pursued yield some unique empirical successes, Solomon argues that their pursuit is worthwhile and even consistent with the common view that science aims at truth. [4] In Solomon's view, competing scientific theories can even be inconsistent with one another while each containing some degree of truth. [4] Empirical evidence may not be sufficient to distinguish between competing theories, and successful theories often have core assumptions that are incorrect. [4]

Historical scientific dissent

A number of famous scientists have been sceptical of what were, or came to be, mainstream scientific positions. For example, Ernst Mach famously declared in 1897: "I don't believe that atoms exist!" [5] Wilhelm Ostwald expressed a similar scepticism about atoms, but changed his mind in 1908. [6]

In the early 20th century, peptic ulcers were believed to be caused by stress and dietary factors. The physicians Robin Warren and Barry Marshall showed in 1982 that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori was responsible, but the medical community was slow to make appropriate changes in ulcer treatment. [7]

Suppressed dissent

Scientific debate is a healthy and necessary part of science, but scientific debate may collide with power dynamics within the academic world. [8] Suppression of legitimate scientific debate can be considered as a breach of academic integrity. [8] Examples of suppression include journal editors rejecting a paper for political reasons prior to peer-review, refusing access to data for research which might draw negative conclusions about the safety of some commercial product, and putting pressure on a university to fire a dissenting researcher. [8]

False scientific dissent

In modern times proponents of science denialism, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories often try to disguise their viewpoints as "scientific dissent" to take an advantage of the benefit of doubt. Such cases are typically recognized by lack of crucial elements of scientific approach: insufficient evidence base, lack of rigor and control, etc. [9] [ citation needed ]

Lack of discussion of claims coming from fringe science may be presented as suppression by mainstream science. This was described as "manufacturing dissent" and discussed in the context of neo-creationism. [10]

In the introduction to Creating Scientific Controversies, David Harker summarizes the history of how the tobacco industry worked towards manufacturing a controversy regarding the health effects of tobacco. [11]

In what is sometimes known as the "Galileo gambit", pseudoscientists will sometimes compare themselves to Galileo, arguing that opposition from established scientists is actually a point in favour of their ideas. [12] [13] Jean Paul Van Bendegem writes that "No doubt the most famous example of mistaken analogy is the abuse of Galileo Galilei's case resulting in his conviction by the Holy Inquisition. The basic strategy consists of equating Galileo with the poor astrologer or parapsychologist and equating the Inquisition with the scientific establishment." [14]

Effect on modern public policies

Views which disagree with scientific consensus may have an adverse effect on the perception of science by general public and affect decision making in various policies. When prominently promoted without due proportion, dissenting views can create an impression of uncertainty to laypeople. [1] [9] Common examples of such situation include global warming controversy and issues of public health and genetically modified organisms. Therefore, scientists treat scientific dissent as problematic when it may have a significant impact on public and policy-making, and try to mitigate it. [1] [15]

Inmaculada de Melo-Martín and Kristen Intemann criticize three major strategies in battling allegedly dangerous scientific dissent: masking the dissent, silencing the dissent, and discrediting the dissenters. [1] Melo-Martin and Intermann argue that these strategies come from a misdiagnosis: the real problem is not dissent, but public scientific illiteracy. Rather than focusing on dissent, scientists must concentrate on educating the general public, so that people could make educated opinions and recognize false claims and invalid arguments. They further argue that silencing dissent rather than promoting literacy incurs the risk of undermining the public trust in science. [1]

Sheila Jasanoff, in the context of climate change, mentions a common argument that public opinion is poorly informed because petroleum industry manufactures uncertainties and the media exaggerate the dissent, but argues that it is insufficient for the understanding of the problem. She writes that studies of scientific controversies show that credibility of science depend not only on strong scientific consensus, but also on the persuasive power of those who speak for science, especially in the situations of controversy. [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

The global warming controversy concerns the previous public debate over whether climate change is occurring, how much has occurred in modern times, what has caused it, what its effects will be, whether any action can or should be taken to curb it, and if so what that action should be. In the scientific literature, there is a very strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view. A few organizations with members in extractive industries hold non-committal positions, and some have tried to persuade the public that climate change is not happening, or if the climate is changing it is not because of human influence, attempting to sow doubt in the scientific consensus.

Junk science is spurious or fraudulent scientific data, research, or analysis. The concept is often invoked in political and legal contexts where facts and scientific results have a great amount of weight in making a determination. It usually conveys a pejorative connotation that the research has been untowardly driven by political, ideological, financial, or otherwise unscientific motives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pseudoscience</span> Unscientific claims wrongly presented as scientific

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited. It is not the same as junk science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dissent</span> Non-agreement or opposition to authority

Dissent is an opinion, philosophy or sentiment of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or policy enforced under the authority of a government, political party or other entity or individual. A dissenting person may be referred to as a dissenter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HIV/AIDS denialism</span> False belief that HIV does not cause AIDS

HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while others accept that HIV exists but argue that it is a harmless passenger virus and not the cause of AIDS. Insofar as they acknowledge AIDS as a real disease, they attribute it to some combination of sexual behavior, recreational drugs, malnutrition, poor sanitation, haemophilia, or the effects of the medications used to treat HIV infection (antiretrovirals).

The scientific community is a diverse network of interacting scientists. It includes many "sub-communities" working on particular scientific fields, and within particular institutions; interdisciplinary and cross-institutional activities are also significant. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method. Peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, assists in this objectivity by maintaining the quality of research methodology and interpretation of results.

The politicization of science for political gain occurs when government, business, or advocacy groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted. The politicization of science may also negatively affect academic and scientific freedom, and as a result it is considered taboo to mix politics with science. Historically, groups have conducted various campaigns to promote their interests in defiance of scientific consensus, and in an effort to manipulate public policy.

Scientific consensus is the generally held judgment, position, and opinion of the majority or the supermajority of scientists in a particular field of study at any particular time.

Fringe science refers to ideas whose attributes include being highly speculative or relying on premises already refuted. Fringe science theories are often advanced by persons who have no traditional academic science background, or by researchers outside the mainstream discipline. The general public has difficulty distinguishing between science and its imitators, and in some cases a "yearning to believe or a generalized suspicion of experts is a very potent incentive to accepting pseudoscientific claims".

In philosophy of science and epistemology, the demarcation problem is the question of how to distinguish between science and non-science. It also examines the boundaries between science, pseudoscience and other products of human activity, like art and literature and beliefs. The debate continues after more than two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields. The debate has consequences for what can be termed "scientific" in topics such as education and public policy.

Brian Martin is a social scientist in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, at the University of Wollongong (UOW) in NSW, Australia. He was appointed a professor at the university in 2007, and in 2017 was appointed emeritus professor. His work is in the fields of peace research, scientific controversies, science and technology studies, sociology, political science, media studies, law, journalism, freedom of speech, education and corrupted institutions, as well as research on whistleblowing and dissent in the context of science. Martin was president of Whistleblowers Australia from 1996 to 1999 and remains their International Director. He has been criticized by medical professionals and public health advocates for promoting the disproven oral polio vaccine AIDS hypothesis and supporting vaccine hesitancy in the context of his work.

Antiscience is a set of attitudes that involve a rejection of science and the scientific method. People holding antiscientific views do not accept science as an objective method that can generate universal knowledge. Antiscience commonly manifests through rejection of scientific ideas such as climate change and evolution. It also includes pseudoscience, methods that claim to be scientific but reject the scientific method. Antiscience leads to belief in conspiracy theories and alternative medicine. Lack of trust in science has been linked to the promotion of political extremism and distrust in medical treatments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denialism</span> Persons choice to deny psychologically uncomfortable truth

In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.

Climate change conspiracy theories assert that the scientific consensus on global warming is based on conspiracies to produce manipulated data or suppress dissent. It is one of a number of tactics used in climate change denial to attempt to manufacture political and public controversy disputing this consensus. Conspiracy theorists typically allege that, through worldwide acts of professional and criminal misconduct, the science behind global warming and climate change has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change denial</span> Denial of the scientific consensus on climate change

Climate change denial is the pseudoscientific dismissal or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Curry</span> American climatologist (born c. 1953)

Judith A. Curry is an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, climate models, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for atmospheric research. She was a member of the National Research Council's Climate Research Committee, published over a hundred scientific papers, and co-edited several major works. Curry retired from academia in 2017 at age 63, coinciding with her public climate change skepticism.

<i>Merchants of Doubt</i> 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming is a 2010 non-fiction book by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It identifies parallels between the global warming controversy and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer. Oreskes and Conway write that in each case "keeping the controversy alive" by spreading doubt and confusion after a scientific consensus had been reached was the basic strategy of those opposing action. In particular, they show that Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.

A manufactured controversy is a contrived disagreement, typically motivated by profit or ideology, designed to create public confusion concerning an issue about which there is no substantial academic dispute. This concept has also been referred to as manufactured uncertainty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Solomon</span> American philosopher

Miriam Solomon is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department as well as Affiliated Professor of Women's Studies at Temple University. Solomon's work focuses on the philosophy of science, social epistemology, medical epistemology, medical ethics, and gender and science. Besides her academic appointments, she has published two books and a large number of peer reviewed journal articles, and she has served on the editorial boards of a number of major journals.

<i>Climate Change Denial</i> 2011 book by Haydn Washington and John Cook

Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand is a 2011 non-fiction book about climate-change denial, coauthored by Haydn Washington and John Cook, with a foreword by Naomi Oreskes. Washington had a background in environmental science prior to authoring the work; Cook, educated in physics, founded (2007) the website Skeptical Science, which compiles peer-reviewed evidence of global warming. The book was first published in hardcover and paperback formats in 2011 by Earthscan, a division of Routledge.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 de Melo‐Martín, I. and Intemann, K. (2013) "Scientific dissent and public policy". EMBO Reports, 14 (3): 231–235. doi : 10.1038/embor.2013.8
  2. ↑ Diethelm, Pascal (2009). "Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?". The European Journal of Public Health. 19 (1): 2–4. doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckn139. PMID   19158101.
  3. ↑ Wylie, Alison (2008). "A More Social Epistemology: Decision Vectors, Epistemic Fairness, and Consensus in Solomon's Social Empiricism". Perspectives on Science. 16 (3): 237–240. doi:10.1162/posc.2008.16.3.237. S2CID   57565947.
  4. 1 2 3 Schmaus, W. (2005). "Book Review: What's So Social about Social Knowledge?". Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 35 (1): 98–125. doi:10.1177/0048393104271927. ISSN   0048-3931. S2CID   143968901.
  5. ↑ John T. Blackmore, Ernst Mach; His Work, Life, and Influence, University of California Press, 1972, p. 206.
  6. ↑ Mary Jo Nye, Molecular Reality: A perspective on the Scientific Work of Jean Perrin, Macdonald, 1972, p. 151.
  7. ↑ "History of Ulcer Diagnosis and Treatment". CDC. Retrieved August 22, 2016.
  8. 1 2 3 Delborne, J.A. (2016) "Suppression and Dissent in Science". In: Tracey Ann Bretag (Ed) Handbook of Academic Integrity, 64: 943–956. Springer. ISBN   9789812870971.
  9. 1 2 "Keeping Modern Myths And Conspiracy Theories At Bay", April 7, 2014, Asian Scientist Magazine
  10. ↑ Matthew J. Brauer, Daniel R. Brumbaugh, "Biology Remystified: The Scientific Claims of the New Creationists," in: Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives, MIT Press, 2001, ISBN   0262661241, pp. 322, 323
  11. ↑ David Harker, Creating Scientific Controversies: Uncertainty and Bias in Science and Society, ISBN   1107069610, Cambridge University Press, 2015
  12. ↑ Daniel T. Willingham, When Can You Trust the Experts?: How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education, Wiley, 2012, ISBN   1118233271, Chapter 6.
  13. ↑ Michael D. Gordin, The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe, University of Chicago Press, 2012, ISBN   0226304434, Chapter 6.
  14. ↑ Jean Paul Van Bendegem, "Argumentation and Pseudoscience The Case for an Ethics of Argumentation," In Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry (eds.), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, University of Chicago Press, 2013, ISBN   022605182X, p. 298.
  15. ↑ Aklin, M. and Urpelainen, J. (2014) "Perceptions of scientific dissent undermine public support for environmental policy". Environmental Science & Policy, 38: 173–177. doi : 10.1016/j.envsci.2013.10.006
  16. ↑ Sheila Jasanoff, "Cosmopolitan Knowledge: Climate Science and Global Civic Epistemology", in: The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, 2011, ISBN   0199566607

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