Vaccine Hesitancy by Maya J. Goldenberg

Author:Maya J. Goldenberg [Goldenberg, Maya J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780822988014
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

TRUST AND THE EXPERT/HERO IN SCIENCE

Trust was characterized in chapter 5 as both invisible and ubiquitous in the workings of science. But how does this complex picture of trust relations remain latent, obfuscated by a robust and seemingly compelling account of science as characteristically skeptical and untrusting? Shapin and Schaffer (1984) argued that trust relations operate quietly and pervasively in science by being tied to the Enlightenment-era image of the scientific hero—the trustworthy scientist whose observations reflect true or objective representations of nature. The scientific expert qua hero is central to trust in science.

Shapin and Schaffer saw the idealized figure of the scientific hero as underwriting objectivity in science, that is, science’s unique epistemic ability to discern matters of fact. The birth of modern science came with new technological innovations that worked to justify science’s elevated epistemic status. One of those technologies was scientific writing. Its stipulations were heavily formulated by Boyle in the late seventeenth century, and it is still employed today to convey the results of an experiment to an audience much wider than those who were physically present to bear witness to scientific advancement (see also Lareo and Reyes 2007; Shapin 1984). But with that social distance between the scientist and his4 audience, “it was the burden of Boyle’s literary technology to assure his readers that he was such a man as should be believed. He therefore had to find the means to make visible in the text the accepted tokens of a man of good faith” (Shapin and Schaffer 1984). Boyle promoted a sober style of writing that contrasted the rhetorical flourish of the philosophical tracts of the time. This terse literary style promoted a nobility of character in the author, permitting the writer to be seen as more interested in the advancement of “natural philosophy,” as science was then called, than in furthering his own reputation. This added to the perception that the accounts were truthful (Shapin and Shaffer 1984). When coupled with the trust already afforded to the new experimentalists due to their status as gentlemen (see chapter 5), the objectivity of the scientific claim could be accepted. The author was trusted to describe nature faithfully—both as an honest reporter and an unconflicted observer. The confluence of new technology and class-driven expectation of virtuous character firmed up an image of a scientific hero and “modest man”: a “man whose narratives could be credited as mirrors of reality was a ‘modest man’; his reports should make that modesty visible” (Shapin and Schaffer 1984; Shapin 1984). Haraway (1996; 1997) similarly characterized the hero as a “modest witness,” noting the reversed gendering of a traditionally feminine virtue (modesty) that was now uniquely unavailable to women. Women did not possess the ability to truthfully witness matters of fact, not due to inferior intelligence5 but because they lacked the independent status of aristocratic men (Haraway 1997, 27). Only gentlemanly circumstance permitted cultivation of the strength of character required to do the important act of modest witnessing.

Modest witnessing was seen

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