SOCI 325: Sociology of Science

Agenda

Local knowledge

  1. Final poster reminder
  2. Expertise
  3. Citizen science
  4. Group discussions

Final poster

Posters

  • Posters are due Tuesday, Dec 5 at 23h59 on Teams
  • Please do not include your name or ID number on the poster
  • You will receive a link to the ‘virtual’ poster session and four peer-evaluation assignments
  • Peer evaluations are due Friday, Dec 8 (worth 2.5% of your total course grade)

Evaluation criteria

  • Knowledge and presentation of the topic (20%)
  • Clarity and strength of argument (24%)
  • Engagement with course themes (24%)
  • Clarity of visual presentation (16%)
  • Appropriateness of references (16%)

Expertise

Expertise

Scientific knowledge is political

  • State actors (policymakers, regulatory agencies, local governments) frequently consult with scientific experts.
  • Governments utilize scientific language and findings to justify policies.

Legitimate expertise

  • What makes someone an ‘expert’?
    Who has the ‘correct’ expertise on a subject?
  • The ideas from this class should make it clear that there are no straightforward answers to these kinds of questions.
    e.g. Haraway (1988), Callon (1984), Adams (2002), TallBear (2013), …
Elon Musk in a radio studio smoking a joint, looking like he's about to say something he finds to be very profound

Political decision-making

Traditional (representative) democracy

  • People (individuals & communities) are represented by elected officials.
  • Nature (the non-human) is represented by scientists.

Deliberative (participatory) democracy

  • Citizens (non-scientists and non-politicians) are directly involved in political decision-making.
  • Laypeople assess the legitimacy and consequences scientific and technological options discursively.

“I am not arguing that an average citizen is able to design a nuclear reactor or a river dike, but I am arguing that more is involved in designing large projects such as nuclear power stations and water management systems than is described in the engineers' handbooks” (Bijker 2001, pp 31-32)

Bijker, Wiebe E. 2001. “Understanding Technological Culture through a Constructivist View of Science,
Technology, and Society.” In Visions of STS: Counterpoints in Science, Technology, and Society Studies, edited
by Stephen H. Cutliffe and Carl Mitcham. State University of New York Press. muse.jhu.edu/book/9022.

Citizen science

Citizen science

Citizen science is the “doing” of science by non-scientists (laypeople)

  • Citizen science is a very broad concept.
  • Public science, participatory science, civic epistemologies, crowdsourcing, …

Classifying citizen science

  • Technoscience is multifaceted, and laypeople can be involved in any aspect of it.
  • Allen describes 4 “levels” of public participation in science.
    (from Irwin 2015 and Haklay 2013)
A man in full protective gear, including big silver glvoes and a helmet and a greeen plastic coat, standing in front of some home-made lab equipment

Citizen science

Level 1

Crowdsourcing and
public data collection

screenshot of a webpage showing an image of an old, (19th century), hand-written log book. next to it is a text entry field prompting the user to enter a date from the image

Shadows on Stone: Identifying Sing Sing's Incarcerated

Citizen science

Level 2

Public arbitration of
scientists’ research

Danish ‘consensus conferences’

  • Model originally conceived by the Danish Board of Technology
  • Panel of non-scientists arbitrates between diverse scientific research on a topic
  • “Public trial” of scientific findings
A large meeting of people

Levitt Center’s 2019 consensus conference:
“Inventing Social Emergency Medicine”

Citizen science

Level 3

Participatory
science

Public involvement in both the definition of the scientific question and the collection of data and evidence

A woman holding a plastic water bottle full of brown water

Tracie Johnson demonstrating the drinking
water from Potlotek First Nation in 2020

A woman holding a plastic water bottle full of brown water

The #FilmYourHospital hashtag aimed to collect evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax

Citizen science

Level 4

Strongly participatory
science (SPS)

Incorporates lay expertise in all aspects of research.

Image credit

Elon Musk in a radio studio smoking a joint, looking like he's about to make some sort of point

Elon Musk on YouTube via Esquire

A man in full protective gear, including big silver glvoes and a helmet and a greeen plastic coat, standing in front of some home-made lab equipment

Photo by Gabriel Gurrola on Unsplash

screenshot of a webpage showing an image of an old, (19th century), hand-written log book. next to it is a text entry field prompting the user to enter a date from the image

Screenshot via Zooniverse

A large meeting of people

Levitt Center

A woman holding a plastic water bottle full of brown water

Photo via Vice

Because science is inherently political, the question of citizens’ role in science is linked to the question of citizens’ role in politics. E.g. traditional vs deliberative democracy

The term “lay” refers to non-professionals in a field — in this case to non-scientists Origins from non-clergy

2020 Vice article abstract: After going decades without clean drinking water, 15 First Nations in Atlantic Canada have signed an agreement with the federal government to create the country's first Indigenous-led water authority.

SPS believes that citizens have unique expertise due to experience, context, etc