Demarcation Aftershocks: Failing to Understand Uncertainties

• In Event: Conspiracy, Controversy, and Doubt: Consequences of Knowing and Unknowing

Abstract

In the aftermath of the deadly L’Aquila earthquake of 2009 and the social aftershocks that reverberated throughout scientific communities, many were left wondering how a fundamental misunderstanding of science and scientific uncertainty could lead to the convictions of six Italian scientists for manslaughter. Some observers have tied this and other recent controversies to a larger narrative. They claim that the very fabric of science is under siege, and as a result, there is a wide-ranging and irrational war on science. I’m not sure that there is a formal war on science, but there does seem to be a significant erosion of confidence in our scientific institutions over the past several decades. Although it is impossible to identify a singular cause for this trend, what seems to be missing in much of the discourse surrounding it is a reflection on how science and its practitioners are complicit in all of this. In particular, we should be asking how scientist-storytellers and the myth-historical stories they tell have contributed to a fundamental misunderstanding of science and a corresponding public mistrust. In the case of L’Aquila, a group of Italian policymakers and scientists engaged in aggressive acts of demarcation in order to control public anxieties over seismic uncertainty while preserving the purity of their myth-historical scientific ideals. What this case shows is that the fundamental dissonance between the practices and portrayals of science is difficult for non-scientists to metabolize and undoubtedly contributes to the current culture of scientific doubt.

Author

• Jose Perillan, Vassar College