ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Trust, Distrust, Faith and Disbelief

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

In an era when even governments distrust the institutions of science and many publics have questioned vaccination, the question of lay engagement is ever more significant. Recent political developments follow more than 50 years of debate about the cultural legitimacy of scientists’ claims and the authority of decisions nominally based upon them. This session aims therefore to focus historians' understanding of lay communities’ engagement with science.
Four papers address these issues in a multinational panel, with authors all of whom are historians of science, but who collectively provide a multidisciplinary approach to the deeply held beliefs around the authority of science, trust in its institutions and the power of its findings. Bud, retired from a museum background, provides a methodological framework for future research in the field, which will look at issues of trust, belief, and fear and awe. Three case studies explore these issues in detail for specific audience communities, time periods, and topics. Kohlt will examine the 19th-century case of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, which sought to use hagiography to enhance the status of scientists and science. This she will link to issues of the uses of history to build faith in science. More recent examples of ambivalent issues around trust in institutions speaking in the name of science, and belief in the consensus are to be examined in two further papers. Hrehor, a Cambridge doctoral student from the US, will report upon a community of American Christian reconstructionists who have selectedly rejected the scientific consensus. Finally, Gennermann, an early-career German scholar, has researched the ambivalent interpretation of psychopharmaceuticals and science, as seen through the lenses of pharmaceutical company marketing and the British press. The chair will be Jaume Navarro, a Spanish historian distinguished most recently for his work on science and religion.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Jaume Navarro, University of the Basque Country

Individual Presentations

• Trust, Belief and Power - Robert Bud, The Science Museum, London

• “In Science we Trust?”: Hagiography, Science and the Ethics of Trust in the Constructed Public Scientist - Franziska Elisabeth Kohlt, University of Leeds

• Christian Deconstructionist Climate Science, Distrust and "The Scientific Consensus" - Mallory Anne Hrehor, University of Cambridge

• Good Medication or Evil Intoxicant? – Discussing Psychopharmaceuticals in British Newspapers, 1960-1980 - Paulina S. Gennermann, University of Marburg

Session Organizer

• Robert Bud, The Science Museum, London