Climate skepticism and the manufacture of doubt: can dissent in science be epistemically detrimental?

European Journal for Philosophy of Science 5 (3):261-278 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to address the neglected but important problem of differentiating between epistemically beneficial and epistemically detrimental dissent. By “dissent,” we refer to the act of objecting to a particular conclusion, especially one that is widely held. While dissent in science can clearly be beneficial, there might be some instances of dissent that not only fail to contribute to scientific progress, but actually impede it. Potential examples of this include the tobacco industry’s funding of studies that questioned the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the attempt by the petroleum industry and other groups to cast doubt upon the conclusion that human consumption of fossil fuels contributes to global climate change. The problem of distinguishing between good and bad dissent is important because of the growing tendency of some stakeholders to attempt to delay political action by ’manufacturing doubt’. Our discussion in this paper focuses on climate science. This field, in our view, is rife with instances of bad dissent. On the basis of our discussion of climate science, we articulate a set of sufficient conditions for epistemically problematic dissent in general, which we call “the inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent.”

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,505

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Inductive risk and epistemically detrimental dissent in policy-relevant science.Tyler Paetkau - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (1):1-20.
When Is Scientific Dissent Epistemically Inappropriate?Boaz Miller - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (5):918-928.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-06-19

Downloads
300 (#91,997)

6 months
35 (#112,647)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Justin B. Biddle
Georgia Institute of Technology

Citations of this work

The new demarcation problem.Bennett Holman & Torsten Wilholt - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C):211-220.
Costs and Benefits of Diverse Plurality in Economics.Teemu Lari & Uskali Mäki - 2024 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 54 (5):412-441.
When Is Scientific Dissent Epistemically Inappropriate?Boaz Miller - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (5):918-928.

View all 50 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas Samuel Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Otto Neurath.
Criticism and the growth of knowledge.Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave (eds.) - 1970 - Cambridge [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press.

View all 28 references / Add more references