The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (or SSK) is a field within STS which is divisible into the weak and strong versions. Weak versions, such as Mertonian approaches, were based upon attempting to explain the social basis of 'false' claims to knowledge. This approach was highly flawed and significantly positivist. The strong programme, by contrast, seeks to explain all scientific knowledge in its social context. The latter approach is a far more useful and productive way of analysing modern science. (This approach has more recently been called the second of three 'waves' within the sociology of scientific knowledge.)

The strong programme (and more modern forms of the sociology of science that have followed on from it)  present unique utility in the analysis of science, as they seek to gain a more complete picture of the influences that serve to create the science itself. Such approaches to the study of science evaluate the role of factors like political, economic and professional vested interests, the disciplinary and personal interests of scientists, political problems and biases with the diffusion of ideas related to science and peer review processes, and the rhetoric and minutiae of social construction of scientific knowledge (e.g., ethnomethodology) in the production of scientific knowledge. 

It is by acknowledging such factors as active components in the generation of scientific knowledge that we are able to best understand the scientific process, and it's limitations. Hence it is an ideal medium to combat both scientism and transscience. Similarly, as an analytic form it has the potential of highlighting and deconstructing the often implicit, aberrant and prevalent concept of 'science as deity'.

Not surprisingly, the academic movement has come under a considerable volume of attack from those who seek to maintain the unquestioned and positivistic authority of science. Dialogues in this controversy have come to be known as "The Science Wars", upon which much energy has been expended by partisans. The position of this web site is unaffected by such futile and agenda laden misunderstandings of the SSK and other methodologically relativistic positions. (Some essays addressing this topic will slowly appear below.)

This Science Studies section of Consumercide predominantly utilises material and methodologies from the SSK domain of analysis and inquiry.

Today the pervasive concept of 'science as deity' occurs most often in a subtle and implicit form, since its overt articulation would incur immediate ridicule from most epistemological perspectives. Nevertheless, in academic circles, some that would never consider themselves positivist or objectivistic, (i.e., well known science philosophers of the realist persuasion) often maintain positions that cannot be seen as anything else but positivist / objectivistic. Perhaps the lack of understanding of the constructivistic and methodological relativist positions articulated in SSK leads to a failure to see the implicit assumptions of objectivistic or positivistic knowledge inevitably embedded in their realist stance. Perhaps it is the case that either you just get it, or you don't...

Having said that, in wider society the positivist/objectivist worldview could reasonably be assessed as a surprisingly insidious and quite endemic 'thought virus' (or to use reductionist Dawkin's term ,'meme'), particularly in the world view of scientists and public policy decision-making authorities. It's effects for science, and consequently for mankind's understanding of and interaction with the world, is profound.

This section of consumercide.com seeks to present ideas in strong SSK (and post SSK), and to also present some of the more interesting and controversial arenas in current scientific knowledge production.

Further development of this topic will see a new approach involving the integration of the abovementioned methodologies with broader (some would see functionalist) perspectives that nonetheless allow for the strong relativism of the SSK approach. 

Forthcoming Works:

About the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, or SSK.

Thomas Kuhn and Revolutionary Science; a useful thesis for work in SSK.

Steve Fuller's dissent to positive Kuhnian impact in the social studies of science.

Kuhn's structure of scientific revolutions; chapter nine plus a postscript

Another work on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Towards a Post-Constructivist Science Studies.

The Future of Science Studies: Evelleen Richards

Williams and Edge- the social shaping of technology

Social Construction of Science
A very brief discussion on Hoyningen-Huene's analysis and some contextualisation of SSK and Kuhn.

Analytic Index & Conclusion of Feyerabend's Against Method

A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century

Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective

Academia Becomes Target for New Security Laws

Ulrich Beck, Post-Materialism and The Risk Society
merely some student notes on this important work...

The Unabomber Manifesto (& caveat!)

"Science Under Siege: The Bush Administration’s Assault on Academic Freedom and Scientific Inquiry" -- An important ACLU analysis of US science policy post 911... (external .pdf)

The War Against Cold Fusion: Plotkin

Perceptions by Tim O'Shea
An interesting essay on PR, the battle for the public mind, the foundational corruption of some institutions and foundations, rhetoric in knowledge assertions, and consensus "reality".
Also a bit of a realist account of the nature of science (but a nevertheless useful perspective for the integral model as it understands the power of political intrusion into the scientific realm).

Some analysis from within the HIV-doesn't-cause-AIDS arena of controversy:
Why Science Can't Cope With Mbeki: Steven Epstein

The politics of jury competence: 
Gary Edmond and David Mercer
An excellent analysis of some difficulties present in the interplay between science and the legal system...
 

New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and Lancet studies often refuted

Report Faults Scientific Journals on Financial Disclosure

Phillips: Conspiracies, Plots and  Other Anti-Democratic Notions

Home page of Brian Martin, Department of Science & Technology Studies, University of Wollongong.

STS at the University Of Wollongong.
Also see useful works by a number of other academics such as David Mercer (Politics of EMF emitting technologies and health; science and the law) and Sharon Beder (environmental science/politics).

NCSU's STS links page

Coercive psychiatry, human rights and public participation by Richard Gosden

Restoring Scientific Integrity
Union of Concerned Scientists voice complaint against the Bush Administration

www.scienceinpolicy.org

www.socialcritic.org
Social Criticism Review - Selected readings on modern society and its ills.
Focus on alienation between man, nature and a dysfunctional technical
complex. Plea to restore a responsible community. Forum for ideas that go
against the current. Items relating to STS.

Centre for Science in the Public Interest

Science Studies discussion group

Feyerabend discussion group

Foucault discussion group

Bhaskar discussion group
 

Next, the DNA police?

Hubble Images too crisp?

"Future Science" links
 

Center For Implosion Research
cold fusion technology

Dr David Schweitzer - Thought form Phototgraphy

Earth Resonance
ESP Research - Russell Targ & Jane Katra

Federation of American Scientists

Global Sciences Foundation

High-Spin Monatomic Research

International Space Sciences Organization

John Hutchison's Web Page

KeelyNet Website

LaFonte Research Group

Mad Scientists & Weird Science

National Inventors Hall of Fame

Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory (OBRL)

Pappas - Ion Magnetic Inductor
Paramahamsa Tewari

Rex Research Home Page

Sacred Geometry - Dan Winter website

The Academy For Future Science - J.J. Hurtak

United States Patent and Trademark Office
 
 

Vedic Maths resources and information

Why do we assume scientists have all the answers? And what do we do if those scientists are the problem?
 

Last week I was asked by a group of anti-vivisectionists to discuss on radio a WHO report about the use of primates in medical research. I declined, despite strongly held views. Sound bites may be the oxygen of broadcasters, but they make for very unsatisfactory debates. 

It always comes down to what you choose to assume. No science is possible without making some assumptions from which questions are framed for the scientist to answer. To start with, we assume that the methods of science are appropriate for answering questions. 

That in itself may not be a problem. The trouble is that we let scientists ask the questions as well as answer them. That is unwise, because scientists tend to ignore the big picture in favour of their special interests. Inevitably, they frame questions which they will enjoy tackling. They then invariably find that the answer, at least in part, is the need for more research. 

In consequence, we find ourselves endorsing a huge haze of abstract ideas we do not understand. We, our politicians and commentators avoid challenging these ideas, lest we appear foolish. The scientific establishment, meanwhile, seldom admits to the fragility of its ideas – far less its assumptions. It has awarded itself a god-like status, and we tolerate that. 

But what if scientists’ undeclared assumptions are in fact false? In that case, any questions and answers that follow from them will merely compound the initial falsehood. 

Take research on primates – or any other animals, come to that. The initial assumption goes like this: human rights supersede animal rights. It matters not that the human disease being researched might result from self-abuse – the wrong food, or too little exercise, for instance. No, we conduct research on animals to find cures for our self-inflicted illnesses, instead of looking at what we are doing wrong so as to stop these illnesses from occurring in the first place. 

Secondly, we assume that similar genetic codes mean similar animals. Yet the few genes that distinguish us from other mammals cannot possibly account for the striking contrasts in form, function and talent. Genes are the same in all the cells of one individual, yet different cells within the same animal have radically different forms and functions. What makes one cell part of your eye, another your heart and another your brain? Hi-tech gene-speak only camouflages our ignorance. 

OSTRICH MENTALITY 
In September 1997 The Lancet – an internationally-respected journal of medical science – published an analysis of the findings of a series of scientific trials of homoeopathic medicine. It set out to check whether the apparent benefits of homoeopathic medicine were actually just examples of the placebo effect – in plain language, self-delusion. 

The result was positive. The studies found that homoeopathic remedies did indeed have a net positive effect after self-delusion, bias and all other confounding factors had been carefully ruled out. The paper then survived review by at least two other experts before The Lancet agreed to publish. 

Even then, in the same edition The Lancet published not one but two leading articles by placebo sceptics. One simply refused to accept the result at face value – ultimately, because ‘the “infinite dilutions” of the agents used cannot possibly produce any effect’. The other conceded that ‘there is enough in the study to [ask] for good controlled trials’, but doubted whether ‘resources [for] these trials can be justified when a rational basis for… homoeopathy… is lacking’.

In other words, even though a system of medicine has effectively been acquitted of quackery in the highest available scientific court, it remains in the dock because the scientists don’t know how it works. 

That’s as philosophical as it gets. Fixed mind-sets and vested interests are the usual obstacles. The UK’s Medical Research Council (MRC) is, for example, about to publish its thoughts on how to fill the embarrassing black hole in research on the fluoridation of water. 

A fabric of dogma, constructed through 70 years of tendentious research, hailed water fluoridation as the best way to correct inequalities in dental health. That dogma began in the US with the then reasonable assumption that people only obtained fluoride from water. But Americans don’t drink much tea, which is a rich source. And then toothpaste became fluoridated anyway, and food items began to be processed and manufactured with fluoridated water. 

Now, the facts are that many people in non-fluoridated areas consume as much fluoride as those with fluoridated water supplies. Sometimes they consume a lot more flouride than could ever possibly be good for them. This effectively rubbishes all the studies that compared populations simply on the basis of the fluoride content of their water supply. 

Yet it took a systematic scientific review and about five years to force dental academics – their banners long nailed to fluoridation – to take into account personal consumption of fluoride from all sources. We have yet to see if this concession finally makes it into the MRC report. 

I can’t help noting the parallels between the fluoridation saga and the way the MMR story is unfolding. Creating MMR was little more than an act of technical cleverness. But it also exceeded nature, and was, therefore, wrong in principle. But so little do its protagonists care for public opinion that they intend to compound the error by adding chicken pox vaccine to MMR. It will then become a quadruple hit. A pathologist friend of mine reacted to this proposal with dismay: ‘Two immuno-suppressant viruses in the same vaccine? Whose bright idea was that?’ Were he a Pharmaceutical industry employee instead of a private practitioner, he wouldn’t have to ask. 

This sort of ‘science’ abuses both the resources and trust of the public. As Richard Asher said: ‘If you can’t explain a complex technicality to your landlady’s daughter, you don’t understand it yourself.’ Nor are you earning your corn.