“More than at any time since Francis Bacon invented what we have come to regard as the scientific method (and Galileo began to put it to use), Americans fear science at least as fully as we embrace it”
From the new book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Michael Specter
In Renaissance Europe, the Cabinet of Curiosities (or wunderkammer) was a storehouse of unusual items—fossils, shells, bones, semi-precious stones, corals, preserved animals and plants, and sometimes scientific instruments (microscopes, telescopes, tools, clocks, and the like).
At some point in the 18th century, this kind of wonder was excised from proper scientific practice (see Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750), but it remains OK for amateurs. So why not get yourself one of these?
Real fetal beaver specimen - $45
Mini cabinet of curiosity - $32
The New York Times posted this article today detailing a study of the effectiveness of posting calories in New York fast food restaurants. According to the NYTimes:
About 28 percent of those who noticed [the calories posted] said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.
But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008.
The full study is available for free here.
These findings are interesting to me because I’ve been reading Jessica Mudry’s rhetorical study of the USDA’s nutrition advice, Measured Meals. Mudry argues that the USDA has used a “language of quantification” to describe food (2)—they communicate ideas through statistics and quantities (calories, serving sizes, etc). This approach started in 1917 with the first USDA food guide and continues today. Mudry argues that this quantitative approach to a healthy national diet has been a failure (3), since it undermines the subjective, cultural, emotional, and qualitative factors that shape what we eat.
Mudry suggests a few alternatives to the discourse of quantification: discourses of taste. These approaches would be primarily qualitative, drawing on subjective experience, cultural traditions, or regional preferences. These approaches would “supplement and complement a discourse of quantification” (138).
To go back to the New York study, we could consider how geography shapes food preferences. The study in question was carried out in poor black and Hispanic fast-food customers in the South Bronx, central Brooklyn, Harlem, Washington Heights and the Rockaways in Queens.” Poor, urban regions are sometimes known as “food deserts” given the lack of options besides fast food restaurants and convenience shops. What (affordable) alternatives did the study participants have to fast food? This is not addressed in the article. Nor was the fact that people who are concerned about money (as were some of the participants quoted in the NYT article) often seek out those menu items with the highest calorie density for the lowest price. While the article does mention “additional [behavioral] policy changes,” it does not describe those alternatives in detail. It seems like Mudry’s approach might be useful to help move nutrition policymakers beyond the rationalistic, quantitative approach—an approach that doesn’t seem to work.
A side note: see this article for an alternative approach that has been implemented in Detroit: community gardens.
There’s an interesting discussion going on at The Intersection about civility and science—with explicit mention of Robert Boyle.
In graduate school I got pretty interested in science in the Seventeenth Century, so I was interested to see Chris quote a passage from Boyle’s The Skeptical Chemist.
I definitely agree that civility is important to scientific discussions. But here’s what I wrote about Boyle:
See also Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air-Pump. They suggest that the scientific method Boyle advocated (and argued about with Hobbes) crystallizes a particular social organization and form of interaction. Given the highly divisive context in which he was writing, Boyle advocated that the “natural philosophers” focus on the facts (those items to which everyone could assent) and to avoid metaphysical or causal claims–natural philosophers were to spend their time cataloging facts about nature.
But Boyle had in mind a particular type of natural philosopher–a Christian gentleman. Only men of a certain class status could be considered sufficiently “modest” (i.e. disinterested) to engage in this discussion about facts. The Royal Society excluded women and viewed less “gentlemanly” members (like Robert Hooke) with suspicion.
The point is that any conception of an ideal speech situation depends on some basic assumptions about the social order–who is valorized to speak, who isn’t, who is considered reasonable and who isn’t. And usually these conceptions (see also Habermas) cast out emotion, which is considered to conflict with rationality. Antonio Demasio has demonstrated that we don’t make decisions on the basis of rationality alone (see his book Descartes Error), but that emotions also play a necessary part.
Today, we can no longer confine scientific debates to “gentlemen,” or scientists, or people with certain kinds of credentials. So we need a new kind of “order” that would address the widespread public involvement in scientific debates without dismissing people as “irrational” or insufficiently educated.
Studies have suggested that the “consensus conference” or “public deliberation” models developed in Europe can be quite effective. Usually, citizens selected to participate in the discussion receive an intensive introduction to the topic at hand before they engage in deliberations. Some studies suggest that these can be quite effective (see, for instance, Einsiedel, Edna F.and Deborah L. Eastlick. "Consensus Conferences as Deliberative Democracy: A Communications Perspective." Science Communication 21 (2000): 323-43.)
But to return to emotion, most people who engage in scientific debates do so not just because they are interested in arguing facts, but because they feel passionately about the issue. Many of the models underlying consensus conferences implicitly (or sometimes explicitly) rely on Jurgen Habermas’ model of the “ideel speech situation,” which stresses rationality, consensus, and individuality. Chantal Mouffe has argued that these models are overly positivistic (assuming truth will prevail), that they avoid difference, and that they over-emphasize consensus as opposed to productive conflict. The key, Mouffe says, is that participants should seem the adversary not as the enemy, but as a legitimate participant worthy of debating.
This brings us back to rhetoric, which has historically emphasized agon, but also valorizes arguing from shared, public values and from emotion as well as from logic. Ignoring the role of emotion in persuasion has inhibited scientists’ ability to persuade audiences about important issues—it is like arguing with one hand tied behind your back. Is there a fair, “civil” way to engage in public, scientific deliberations without denying the emotional attachments people bring to the table?
