This paper addresses the representation of scientific uncertainty about global warming and climate change in the U.S. popular press. An examination of popular press articles about global warming from 1986 to 1995 reveals that scientific uncertainty was a salient theme. The paper describes several forms of uncertainty construction and means through which it was managed. I argue that scientific uncertainty was used to help construct an exclusionary boundary between “the public” and climate change scientists. This rhetorical boundary delegitimated lay knowledge by suggesting that the public did not hold appropriate reverence for scientific uncertainty and the need for more research.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Sociological Review.The boundary between science and religion has long been a site for cultural and professional conflict. We examine the testimony of scientists at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925 and at the McLean "Creation-Science" trial in 1981-82. The two trials were public occasions for scientists to present ideologies of science .that legitimated their professional claims to cognitive authority, public financing and control over part of the public school curriculum. The rhetoric of scientists at each trial was directed toward a separate professional goal: at Scopes, scientists differentiated scientific knowledge from religious belief in a way that presented them as distinctively useful but complementary; at McLean, the boundary between science and religion was drawn to exclude creation scientists from the profession. Both goals-41) differentiation of a valued commodity uniquely provided by science, and (2) exclusion of pseudoscientists-are important for scientists' establishment of a professional monopoly over the market for knowledge about nature. Each goal, however, required different descriptions of "science" at the two trials, and we conclude that this ideological flexibility has contributed to the successful professionalization of scientists in American society. The 1925 trial of John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, is a landmark of American cultural history. Scopes was indicted for teaching Darwinian theories of evolution to a public school biology class, in violation of a recently passed statute making it illegal to teach ideas thatcontradicted the Bible. The famous "Monkey Trial" was neither legally nor culturally decisive. The verdict against Scopes was later overturned on a legal technicality, and in 1981, creation and evolution returned to court in Rev. Bill McLean et al. v. Arkansas Board of Education. U.S. District Court Judge William Overton was asked to rule on the constitutionality of a statute requiring "balancedtreatment" of two theories of origins-" 'creation-science" and "evolutionscience -in science classrooms of Arkansas public schools. Although a comparison of Scopes and McLean would seem natural for a cultural sociology of American society, neither trial has attracted much sociological attention. The few available studies examine the trials (mainly) as expressions of enduring efforts by Christian fundamentalists to make curricula of public schools consistent with their religious values (Cole, 1931: Furniss, 1954: Hofstadter, 1963; Grossbach, 1964: Bates, 1976; Nelkin, 1982: Marsden, 1980: Numbers, 1982: Cavanaugh, 1982). Our strategy is di...

Sociological research on global climate change (GCC) can be found in several subfields, but it has primarily emerged within the theoretical and substantive domain of sociology of the environment. This review provides an overview of sociological literature on climate change and identifies key areas for further research and development. The review focuses on four broad areas: social causes, construction of the problem, relationship between GCC and social inequality, and social dimensions of mitigation and adaptation. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:129–150. doi: 10.1002/wcc.328 This article is categorized under: Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge

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Much research in social studies of science addresses scientists' interpretative flexibility in the construction of scientific knowledge. This flexibility is readily visible among different scientists' competing knowledge-claims as well as in their accounts across different social settings. This article illustrates this process and discusses some of its implications through a case study of descriptions of acid rain in published scientific papers and Congressional testimony. As acid rain was flexibly reconstructed in Congressional testimony, its meanings and implications for control legislation became more contested. Some descriptions of acid rain that were intended to usefully clarify the phenomenon actually contributed to an impression of scientific uncertainty, and thereby further polarized debate.