On the Harms of Agnotological Practices and How to Address Them

Abstract

Although science is our most reliable producer of knowledge, it can also be used to create ignorance, unjustified doubt, and misinformation. In doing so, agnotological practices result not only in epistemic harms but also in social ones. A way to prevent or minimize such harms is to impede these ignorance-producing practices. In this paper, I explore various challenges to such a proposal. I first argue that reliably identifying agnotological practices in a way that permits the prevention of relevant harms is more difficult than it might appear. I focus on an identifying criterion that many find apt for the task: bad faith motives. I then consider an objection --that reliable criteria are unnecessary to successfully address the concerns raised by agnotological strategies--and I show that it fails. I conclude by exploring other ways of conceptualizing the problems attributed to agnotological practices. In particular, I challenge the focus on misinformation as the main problem of concern.

Value transparency and promoting warranted trust in science communication

“…To what extent (if any) should science communicators be transparent about such values and the roles they play throughout the research process? This question is particularly pressing in cases where there is significant resistance among some non-experts to accept certain scientific claims or adopt science-based policies or recommendations (de Melo-Martín, 2023;de Melo-Martín & Intemann, 2018;Goldenberg, 2021). There are concerns that making such values explicit is impractical (Schroeder, 2021) and may even decrease public trust of science, particularly among those who are inclined to think that scientists are biased if they are influenced by non-epistemic values (John, 2018) or among those who do not share the values of scientists (Odenbaugh, 2003;Schroeder, 2021).…”