ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Villains in Science and Nature

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

English Abstract

The enduring stereotypes of the dedicated biologist, mad scientist, or benevolent conservationist wholly dedicated to scientific research for the public good are well-established in the realm of popular culture. These stereotypes have permeated public consciousness across many cultural genres – children’s books, novels, comics, film – and are readily used to promote science, engineering, math, and technology as dynamic, often positive, forces in the world. At the same time there are the moments when scientific research and scientists are launched into the public eye due to their own “villainous” behavior. There are examples of Nobel Prize winners whose excellence in science seems to have provided them an immunity against troubling behavior. There are also examples of practitioners who have been cast in the villain role and whose personal and professional histories have become emblems of “bad” science. This roundtable on villains in science and nature aims to interrogate and examine the different meanings of “villainy” in a range of scientific and medical fields across the globe. Presenters will critically examine the villain (n) as an entity, and villainy (v) as a strategy. Presenters will address topics such as the role of expertise in defining arson and arsonists in the British empire; the history of constructions of the “mad plant” known locally as gando baval in Gujarat, India; the role of U.S.-American geologists in the history of Brazil’s energy transition to a petroleum-centered society; the use of the villain narrative in debates about probabilistic science; the construction of the hero in the quantum physics archives; and histories of harassment and troubling behavior in modern science.

Sub Unit

• Roundtable

Chair

• Nuala Caomhanach, New York University/American Museum of Natural History

Participants

• Jenna Tonn, Boston College

• Megan Formato, Stanford

• Nasser Zakariya, UC Berkeley

• Catherine Evans, University of Toronto

• John Paulraj, Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland

• Henrique Brenner Gasperin, Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland

Session Organizer

• Jenna Tonn, Boston College