On the Harms of Agnotological Practices and How to Address Them

ABSTRACT

Although science is our most reliable producer of knowledge, it can also be used to create ignorance, unjustified doubt, and misinformation. In doing so, agnotological practices result not only in epistemic harms but also in social ones. A way to prevent or minimise such harms is to impede these ignorance-producing practices. In this paper, I explore various challenges to such a proposal. I first argue that reliably identifying agnotological practices in a way that permits the prevention of relevant harms is more difficult than it might appear. I focus on an identifying criterion that many find apt for the task: bad faith motives. I then consider an objection—that reliable criteria are unnecessary to successfully address the concerns raised by agnotological strategies—and I show that it fails. I conclude by exploring other ways of conceptualising the problems attributed to agnotological practices. In particular, I challenge the focus on misinformation as the main problem of concern.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Although strictly speaking the term ‘agnotological’ means the study of ignorance, many working on these topics use ‘agnotological practices’ to mean ‘ignorance-producing practices.’ I use it here in that sense.

2 Although after-the-fact analyses can be quite valuable, if what we want is to prevent or minimize relevant epistemic and social harms, then we need criteria that are applicable in a forward-looking way.

3 I do not mean to imply that these strategies, e.g. promoting dissent, producing a consensus, are always independent strategies.

4 Although see (Johns and Oppenheimer 2018) for a challenge to these claims.

5 For a detailed discussion of various criteria that have been proposed to reliably identify agnotological practices that attempt to undermine scientific dissent and a challenge to those criteria see (de Melo-Martín and Intemann 2018).

6 I do not mean to suggest that all of these authors have taken the research mentioned to be suspect only on grounds of bad faith motives. In fact, several of them have proposed other criteria in part because they recognize the problems that bad faith motives have as a criterion to reliably identify ignorance-producing research. I am simply calling attention to the intuitiveness of motivation as grounds for considering some research problematic.

7 Of course, intentions are relevant to judgments about agents’ moral culpability.

8 It bears emphasizing that the challenges pointed out here are related to the criteria’s ability to reliably identify suspect research. Hence, those challenges need not affect the usefulness of these criteria for other purposes. For example, consideration of bad faith motives may be important in pointing out epistemic vices; attention to the distribution of inductive risks can be helpful in promoting alternative research options that distribute risks more fairly, and so on.

9 This would also be the case for some of the other criteria that have been proposed. See de Melo-Martín and Intemann (2018, ch. 6) for a detailed discussion of those criteria.

10 In fact, this would be the case even if the criterion in question were reliable (de Melo-Martín and Intemann 2018, ch. 6). This is true also regarding the strategies discussed later.

11 Note that it does not follow from the existence of these problems that scientific communities should give up on scrutinizing research, pointing out methodological problems, indicating biases, etc. There are many other good reasons why scientific communities should engage in these appropriate activities, such as avoiding error; correcting misconceptions; strengthening evidentiary claims, contributing to an informed citizenry, etc.

12 In what follows, I refer simply to misinformation as my concern is with the creation and dissemination of false or inaccurate claims regardless of the motivations.

13 Of course, these problems are compounded when determinations of bad faith motives are also at stake.