Expertise and Inauthentic Scientific Controversies: What You Need to Know to Judge the Authenticity of Policy-Relevant Scientific Controversies

Abstract

Weinel, M. (2012). Expertise and inauthentic scientific controversies: What you need to know to judge the authenticity of policy-relevant scientific controversies. In J. Goodwin (Ed.

Expertise revisited, Part II: Contributory expertise

“…This requires an understanding of the specialist community and is thus only available to those with at least some interactional expertise in the target domain in order to provide a focus for the application of social science contributory expertise (Weinel, 2010;. 11 Weinel (2007Weinel ( , 2012, for example, using sociological discrimination, has argued that the publicly visible controversy about the toxicity of anti-retroviral drugs that stalled an effective response to HIV/AIDS in South Africa for several years was an 'inauthentic scientific controversy'. A social scientist familiar with HIV/AIDS research in the late 1990s would have been able to argue that Mbeki was not representing the scientific consensus accurately.…”

Understanding “Understanding” in Science Communication

“…As such, scientific literacy or "understanding of science" should start with the grammar of science so that public actors understand the limits of not being immersed in the scientific community. In this sense, it is a rudimentary training in the theory of knowledge and expertise which delivers the skills of sociological discrimination (for more detailed discussion of sociological discrimination, see Weinel, 2007Weinel, , 2012. An example here emerges from the case of Thabo Mbeki's understanding of science, which has been explored at length elsewhere (Weinel, 2007).…”