Why Don’t We Care about Electrosmog? Undone Science and the Public Sphere

• In Event: Corporate Influence on Science and Regulation – I

Abstract

This paper broadens the study of ignorance and undone science to the public sphere of media coverage and public policy debate, with an empirical focus on the topic of electrosmog, or non-ionizing radiation from radar, cell phones, wi-fi, smart-meters, and high-voltage power liens. It begins with the history of the corporate and military influence on research on the health effects of microwaves and power lines in the 1970s and the subsequent cessation of government funding for EMF health-effects research. It reviews the “merchants of doubt” phenomenon generated by industry-funded research that enables industry and policymakers to portray the research field as lacking consensus, and the paper expands the study of ignorance by moving from the issue of suppression of science and scientists to the mechanisms that lead to inaccurate media coverage or non-coverage of both the research results and the politics of funding. However, the paper also examines how the internationalization of the research field, the regulatory field, and the media field may such containment strategies difficult to maintain.

Author

• David J Hess, Vanderbilt