Alternative Modernities

Thoughts

  • Thoughts
  • The Divide
  • Technically Together
  • Current Research
  • Teaching
  • About Me
  • Vitae

6/1/2013

If Science Is on Your Side, Then Who's on Mine?

Read Now
 
During debates about some contemporary scientific controversy, such as GMO foods or the effects of climate change, someone almost invariably declares at some point to be on the “right side” of science. Opponents, accordingly, are implied to be either hopeless biased or under the spell of some form of pseudoscientific legerdemain. Confronted by just such an argument this week during a discussion over Elizabeth Warren’s vote against mandating the labeling of GMO ingredients, I was mostly struck by how profoundly unscientific and ignorant of the actual functioning of science and politics this rhetorical move is.

In order to avoid overstating my case, I should make clear that some knowledge claims are fairly straightforward and obvious cases of pseudoscience. Although philosophy of science has yet to develop unproblematic criteria for demarcating science from pseudoscience, the line between scientific approaches to inquiry and pseudoscientific ideology can be fuzzily drawn around such practices and dispositions as the willingness of practitioners to subject their claims to scrutiny or admit limitations to the theories they develop. Pyramid power and astrology are typical, though somewhat trivial, examples.

The labels “scientific” and “pseudoscientific,” however, are best thought of as ideal types; the behaviors of most inquirers usually lie somewhere in between, and this is normally not a problem. Decades ago Ian Mitroff demonstrated the diversity of inquiry styles used practicing scientists. Science requires many types of researchers for its dynamism, from hardliner empiricists to armchair bound synthesizers and theoreticians – who may play more fast and loose with existing data. It is a social process that seems better characterized by the continual raising of new questions, evermore highlighting new uncertainties, complexities and limits to understanding, than the establishment of enduring and incontrovertible facts. Theories can almost always be refined or subjected to new challenges; data is invariably reinterpreted as new ideas and instruments are developed. At the same time, respected and successful scientists are generally not the exemplars of objectivity typically depicted in popular media, having pet theories and engaging in political wrangling with opponents.  

It is in light of this characterization of science that makes claims to being on the "right side of science" so troubling. The way the word “fact” is used attempts to transform the particular conclusion of scientific study from tentative conjecture based on incomplete data analyzed via inevitably imperfect techniques and technologies into something incontrovertible and unchallengeable. Even worse, it shuts down further inquiry, and there can be nothing more profoundly unscientific and epistemologically stale than eliminating the possibility for further questions or denying the inherent uncertainty and fallibilism of human claims to truth. Recognition of this, however, is frequently thrown out the window during the moments of controversy.

Some opponents of GMO labeling contend that doing so automatically implies that genetically modified ingredients are harmful and lends credence to what they see as pseudoscientific fear mongering concerning their potential effects of human health. The person I was arguing with believed that the absence of what he considered to be a “strong” linkage between human or animal well-being and GMO food in the decades since their introduction rendered their safety a scientific “fact.” To begin, it is specious reasoning to assume that the absence of evidence is automatically evidence of absence. The presumption that the current state of research already adequately explored all the risks associated with a particular technology is dangerous and should not be made lightly. The historical record is full technologies, such as pesticides (DDT), medicines (Vioxx) or industrial chemicals (BPA), at one time thought to be safe and discovered to be dangerous only after put into widespread use.  It is incredibly risky to project the universality of a particular present finding into the foreseeable future – when available methods, data and knowledge will likely be more sophisticated than in the present.

Furthermore, it is incredibly narrow-minded to assume that it is only the potential health risks posed by the ingestion of GMO’s by individual consumers that we should be worried about. Any technology, like the manipulation of recombinant DNA, is part and parcel of a larger sociotechnical system. GMO foods are, for the foreseeable future, intertwined with particular ways of farming (industrial scale monoculture), certain economic arrangements (farmers utterly dependent on biotech firms like Monsanto) and specific ways of conceiving how human beings should relate to nature and food (as a pure commodity). Citizens may be legitimately concerned about any or all of the above facets of GMO food as a technology; many of these concerns, clearly, cannot be answered or done away with by conducting a scientific experiment.

Regardless, the claim that science is on one’s side also fails to recognize how scientific studies are scrutinized in imbalanced ways and  doubt manufactured when politically useful. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the controversy surrounding Seralini’s study purporting to find a link between cancer and the ingestion of GMO and RoundUp treated corn. As numerous ensuing commentaries point out, the connections drawn in the paper remain uncertain and the experimental design seemed to lack statistical power. Yet, many critics claimed the study was rubbish for its “nonstandard” methodological choices, even though they used many of the exact same methods as industry research claiming to demonstrate the safety of GMO food.

My point is not to claim whether or not the effects observed by Seralini’s team is real or not but to note that scientists and various pundit are often incredibly inconsistent in their judgments of the flaws of a particular study or result. Imperfections tolerated in other studies seem to conveniently render controversial studies pseudoscientific when the results are incompatible with the critic’s other sociopolitical commitments, like the association of “progress” with the increasing application of biotechnology to food production, or powerful political interests.

More broadly, the desire to be on the “right side of the facts” in controversial areas often takes on the form of a fetish. Such thinking seems founded on the hope that science can free humanity of the anxieties inherent in doing politics, which I think is best framed as the process of deciding how to organize civilization in the face of uncertainty, diversity and complexity. If a particular way of designing our collective lives can become enshrined in “fact,” than we no longer have to subject the choice to the messiness of democratic decision making or pursue the reconciliation of different interests and ideas about how human beings ought to live. Yet, if a particular scientific result is, at its best, something we can be only tentatively certain about and, at its worst, a falsehood only temporarily propped up by a constellation of inadequate theorizing, techniques and methodologies – or even cultural bias or outright fabrication, it would seem that science is generally not up to the task of freeing humanity from the need for politics.

This point leads to one of the main problems with the way people tend to talk about “scientific controversies:” It is premised on a false dichotomy. Politics and good science are often taken to be polar opposites. It seems to presume that politics is the stuff of mere opinion and emotion and outside the realm of genuine inquiry. Such a dichotomy, to me, seems to do damage to our understandings of both of politics and science. The qualities celebrated in idealized versions of scientists – openness to new ways of thinking, self-reflective criticality and so on – seem to be qualities also befitting of political citizenship. At the same time, the assumption that science is the realm of absolute certainties and falsehoods – rather than the messy muddling through of various complexities, uncertainties and ignorances – leads to an interpretation of scientific findings that many practicing scientists themselves would not condone.

The greatest challenges facing technological civilization are best met through inquiry, debate and the recognition of human ignorance, not blind faith in some naïve, fairy-tale understanding of science and fact. To presume that it is more "objective" or rational to have the opinions and arguments of a particular set of men and women wearing lab coats carry the most weight in deciding our collective futures is to simply smuggle in one set of interests and ideas about the good under the guise of “just siding with the facts.” Even worse, it fails to comprehend the partially social character of fact production and the inherent fallibility of human knowledge. An understanding of politics more befitting of those claiming a “scientific outlook” on reality would recognize that citizens and decision makers are inexorably locked in conflict-ridden processes of juggling facts, interests and ideas about the good life, all fraught with uncertainty. When more participants in a scientific controversy understand this, perhaps then we can have a more fruitful public dialogue about GMO foods or natural gas hydrofracking.  


Note: I have to give credit to Canadian musician Danny Michel for the inspiration for the title of this post: "If God's on Your Side Than Who's on Mine?"

Share


Comments are closed.
Details

    Author

    Taylor C. Dotson is an associate professor at New Mexico Tech, a Science and Technology Studies scholar, and a research consultant with WHOA. He is the author of The Divide: How Fanatical Certitude is Destroying Democracy and Technically Together: Reconstructing Community in a Networked World. Here he posts his thoughts on issues mostly tangential to his current research. 

    Follow @dots_t

    Archives

    July 2022
    June 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    August 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    June 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013

    Blog Posts
    On Vaccine Mandates
    Escaping the Ecomodernist Binary
    No, Electing Joe Biden Didn't Save American Democracy
    When Does Someone Deserve to Be Called "Doctor"?
    If You Don't Want Outbreaks, Don't Have In-Person Classes
    How to Stop Worrying and Live with Conspiracy Theorists
    Democracy and the Nuclear Stalemate
    Reopening Colleges & Universities an Unwise, Needless Gamble
    Radiation Politics in a Pandemic
    What Critics of Planet of the Humans Get Wrong
    Why Scientific Literacy Won't End the Pandemic
    Community Life in the Playborhood
    Who Needs What Technology Analysis?
    The Pedagogy of Control
    Don't Shovel Shit
    The Decline of American Community Makes Parenting Miserable
    The Limits of Machine-Centered Medicine
    Why Arming Teachers is a Terrible Idea
    Why School Shootings are More Likely in the Networked Age
    Against Epistocracy
    Gun Control and Our Political Talk
    Semi-Autonomous Tech and Driver Impairment
    Community in the Age of Limited Liability
    Conservative Case for Progressive Politics
    Hyperloop Likely to Be Boondoggle
    Policing the Boundaries of Medicine
    Automating Medicine
    On the Myth of Net Neutrality
    On Americans' Acquiescence to Injustice
    Science, Politics, and Partisanship
    Moving Beyond Science and Pseudoscience in the Facilitated Communication Debate
    Privacy Threats and the Counterproductive Refuge of VPNs
    Andrew Potter's Macleans Shitstorm
    The (Inevitable?) Exportation of the American Way of Life
    The Irony of American Political Discourse: The Denial of Politics
    Why It Is Too Early for Sanders Supporters to Get Behind Hillary Clinton
    ​Science's Legitimacy Problem
    Forbes' Faith-Based Understanding of Science
    There is No Anti-Scientism Movement, and It’s a Shame Too
    American Pro Rugby Should Be Community-Owned
    Why Not Break the Internet?
    Working for Scraps
    Solar Freakin' Car Culture
    Mass Shooting Victims ARE on the Rise
    Are These Shoes Made for Running?
    Underpants Gnomes and the Technocratic Theory of Progress
    Don't Drink the GMO Kool-Aid!
    On Being Driven by Driverless Cars
    Why America Needs the Educational Equivalent of the FDA

    On Introversion, the Internet and the Importance of Small Talk
    I (Still) Don't Believe in Digital Dualism
    The Anatomy of a Trolley Accident
    The Allure of Technological Solipsism
    The Quixotic Dangers Inherent in Reading Too Much
    If Science Is on Your Side, Then Who's on Mine?
    The High Cost of Endless Novelty - Part II
    The High Cost of Endless Novelty
    Lock-up Your Wi-Fi Cards: Searching for the Good Life in a Technological Age
    The Symbolic Analyst Sweatshop in the Winner-Take-All Society
    On Digital Dualism: What Would Neil Postman Say?
    Redirecting the Technoscience Machine
    Battling my Cell Phone for the Good Life

    Categories

    All
    Academic Life
    Acquiescence
    Automation
    Bias
    Black Mirror
    Cognitive Limitations
    Common Sense
    Community
    Conspiracy Theory
    Continuity Arguments
    CrossFit
    Deficit Model
    Democracy
    Diagnostic Style Of Politics
    Digital Dualism
    Digital Technology
    Disaster
    Disconnection
    Economic Democracy
    Economics
    Energy Reduction
    Epistocracy
    Fanaticism
    Foulcault
    Gmo Food
    Governance Of Technoscience
    Green Chemistry
    Green Illusions
    Gun Violence
    Inequality
    Intelligent Trial And Error
    Internet
    LBGTQ
    Legitimacy
    Megachurches
    Mesh Networks
    Nanoscience
    Narratives
    Nature
    NCAA
    Neophilia
    Net Neutrality
    Networked Individualism
    New Urbanism
    Nuclear Energy
    Panopticon
    Paranoia
    Permissionless Innovation
    PhD
    Philosophical Liberalism
    Political Talk
    Politics
    Progress
    Pseudoscience
    Renewable Energy
    Science
    Science And The Military
    Scientific Controversy
    Scientism
    Social Capital
    Social Networks
    Sweatshops
    Technocracy
    Technological Liberalism
    Technological Momentum
    Technological Solipsism
    Technological Somnambulism
    Technology
    The Facts
    The Good Life
    Thick Community
    Tristan Harris
    Trust
    Uncertainty
    Unintended Consequences
    Virtual Others
    Wall Street Journal
    Winner-take-all Society
    Worker Cooperatives

    RSS Feed

    Blogs I Follow:
    Technopolis
    ​Responsible Innovation
    Rough Type
    Technoscience as if People Mattered
© COPYRIGHT TAYLOR DOTSON 2016. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Thoughts
  • The Divide
  • Technically Together
  • Current Research
  • Teaching
  • About Me
  • Vitae