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ABSTRACT
What, if anything, should we do when someone says they don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change? Or that they worry that a COVID-19 vaccine might be dangerous? We argue that in general, we face an epistemic duty to object to such assertions, qua instances of science denial and science sceptical discourse, respectively. Our argument builds on recent discussions in social epistemology, specifically surrounding the idea that we ought to speak up against (epistemically) problematic assertions so as to fulfil an important epistemic obligation – namely, preventing epistemic harms in others. We show that both science denial (SD) and vaccine hesitant (VH) discourses are harmful in a distinctively epistemic sense, and as such generate an especially strong duty to voice our disagreement. As we also argue, this obligation is nonetheless defeasible: depending on the situational features of those involved, voicing an objection to VH discourse may actually end up doing more harm than good. We conclude by tracing what seems like a promising path towards restoring well-placed public trust in scientific testifiers. Doing so is key in order to guarantee equitable access to warranted beliefs about important subject matters, such as the safety of vaccines, to all segments of society.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank the sponsors of the IJPS Robert Papazian essay competition and the organisers of the workshop Themes from testimonial injustice and trust, where a version of this paper was presented. We are also extremely grateful to Sanford Goldberg and Christopher Clarke for numerous insightful and important comments on an earlier draft, which helped us clarify our discussion considerably. This paper is the winner of the early career PERITIA prize of the 2020 IJPS Robert Papazian essay competition on the subject of ‘Testimonial Injustice’. The PERITIA prize is funded by the UCD Centre for Ethics in Public Life. The project, ‘Policy, Expertise and Trust in Action (PERITIA)’ has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 870883.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. More broadly, Johnson argues that our obligation(s) to voice disagreement may stem from different, non-mutually exclusive sources (Johnson Citation2018, Section 5).
2. This is not a criticism, to be clear – indeed it is perfectly understandable given that the authors’ primary aim is to defend the claim that our duty to object is distinctively epistemic in nature, a thesis on which our own discussion builds.
3. In what follows we will assume both that agents have transparent access to their own beliefs, and that an agent’s assertions always reflect that agent’s beliefs, i.e. that they are sincere. In other words, we will disregard cases in which agents assert content that is not included in, or contradicts, their belief set. Given these assumptions, we will often use the terms ‘discourse’, ‘beliefs’, ‘belief set’, etc. interchangeably.
4. It also hardly needs saying, though we’ll say it anyway, that expressions of SD are importantly distinct from expressions of scientific dissent or disagreement. An example of the former might be the claim that face masks are ineffective at preventing infection; an example of the latter might be that face masks are only 80% rather than 85% effective at preventing infection. The difference is not just one of degree, of course; indeed, it is widely acknowledged that scientific dissent is a mark of healthy science. See e.g. (Longino Citation1990).
5. From the official White House press conference transcript, found at https://www.c-span.org/video/?471458-1/president-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing. This and all following webpages were accessed in March 2021.
6. Tweet published by Bolsonaro on April 8th, 2020; our translation. From https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/lupa/2020/12/30/informacoes-falsas-bolsonaro-covid-19/.
7. Jair Bolsonaro, during a meeting with supporters on November 27th, 2020; our translation. From https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/lupa/2020/12/30/informacoes-falsas-bolsonaro-covid-19/.
8. Coronavac had already been approved as safe and effective by Anvisa, the Brazilian health agency. From https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2021/03/relembre-o-que-bolsonaro-ja-disse-sobre-a-pandemia-de-gripezinha-e-pais-de-maricas-a-frescura-e-mimimi.shtml.
9. The characterisation of SD we adopt is broad enough to capture also those cases – such as Scenario A – in which the scientific claims being rejected have not been explicitly asserted in the relevant conversational context.
10. Although we don’t have space to discuss this in much detail, it is worth noting that Lackey’s account allows for an even more fine-grained analysis of Scenarios A and B. For instance, Scenario A seems a straightforward case in which the duty to object applies, applies to one person specifically, and is indefeasible. As the only and therefore most qualified person to speak authoritatively on medical matters, Dr. Birx clearly faced a duty to object to Trump’s comments, and to do so there and then. Moreover, few if any of the ‘usual’ defeaters (cf. also Section 1) applied here. This is due both to her unique position as a scientific authority (had other such figures been presented, and had they objected adequately, Dr Birx’s own duty might have been defeated); and also due to the actual and potential harmful consequences of Trump’s comments. These certainly include practical consequences, but they also include distinctively epistemic consequences, as we will next argue.
11. Here we also agree with Lackey that the burden of proof lies with ‘those who espouse the […] intra-personal [thesis] of epistemic duties to explain why we ought to promote epistemic ends with respect to only my own beliefs’ (Lackey Citation2020, 38).
12. There is some debate over whether accepting someone’s testimony as evidence for one’s own beliefs necessarily commits one to refrain from seeking further, independent evidence for b (see e.g. Bailey Citation2018; Dormandy Citation2020).
13. Different authors seem to have slightly different conceptions of expertise in mind. For instance, it seems that some assume that expertise is built in to the notion of trustworthiness (e.g. Anderson Citation2011; Rolin Citation2020), whereas others treat trustworthiness and expertise as separable (e.g. Goldman Citation2001). See (Baghramian and Croce Citation2021) for an overview of different views on scientific expertise.
14. This is sometimes referred to as ‘the novice-expert problem’ (De Cruz Citation2020; Goldman Citation2001). See (Hardwig Citation1985; Zagzebski Citation2012; Keren Citation2020) for arguments to the effect that deferring to epistemic authorities, and a fortiori scientific experts, is also the rational thing to do, and so something we ought to do.
15. In fact, we believe that SD discourse is also epistemically harmful in a third and separate sense, insofar as it interferes with, or stymies, scientific progress. A separate paper making a preliminary case for this thesis is in preparation. For a discussion of the detrimental effects of manufactured dissent (vs. science denial) on scientific progress, see (Leuschner Citation2018).
16. It’s worth repeating that contextual factors may affect the strength of this duty in a given situation. For instance, we can now better parse the urgency of the duty faced by Dr. Birx in Scenario A. In particular, we can observe that by failing to object, and given that silence is often a reliable indicator of assent (see Goldberg Citation2020, Chapter 8 and references therein for more in-depth discussion), Dr. Birx made herself complicit in Trump’s epistemically harmful behaviour; she demonstrated herself to lack sincerity/benevolence. In so doing, she effectively undercut not only the trustworthiness of scientific expert testimony in general, but also her own trustworthiness as a representative of the scientific community.
17. By contrast, it is important to distinguish vaccine hesitancy or scepticism from the cognitive attitudes displayed by, and motivating the actions of, so-called anti-vaxxers. It is also important to note that vaccine sceptics and anti-vaxxers are distinguishable primarily, and often solely, on a doxastic level – since their vaccine-related actions (receiving/refusing vaccination) will often converge.
18. Even prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the WHO named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health (https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019).
19. Although what we say applies to vaccine hesitancy in general, e.g. directed at MMR, HPV and influenza vaccines.
20. Drawn from personal exchange, edited for clarity and brevity. Importantly, the concerns expressed by Y in this scenario are anything but unique, as a quick online search will easily confirm. Notably, moreover, such concerns are not exclusive to the lay public: for instance, ‘a survey by the Royal College of Nursing [in the UK] found the most common reasons cited by nurses for refusing the [coronavirus] vaccine [range from the] worry that it was unsafe, or had not been tested enough, to fears about side-effects.’ Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/02/healthcare-professionals-uk-moral-duty-covid-jab-vaccine.
21. Although the role of mistrust has been surprisingly under-emphasised in empirical research on VH, as Larson et al. (Citation2018) note. For further discussions of the determinants of VH see e.g. (Guzman-Holst et al. Citation2020; Goldenberg Citation2016).
22. The worry about the vaccine being developed ‘too quickly’ is just one among several recurring expressions of VH. Other examples include e.g. worries that the vaccine contains the virus, that the vaccine acts by ‘changing’ a person’s DNA, as well as conspiracy theories that frame the pandemic and/or the vaccination campaign as façades for secret ploys to control the world, exterminate seniors, etc.
23. Hardwig argues that an agent who refuses to defer to expert authority in the name of epistemic autonomy is irrational: ‘if I were to pursue epistemic autonomy across the board, I would succeed only in holding relatively uninformed, unreliable, crude, untested, and therefore irrational beliefs. If I would be rational, I can never avoid some epistemic dependence on experts’ (1985, 340).
24. Grasswick would describe Y’s mistrust of the scientific authorities as irresponsibly-placed. This is contrasted with ‘responsibly-placed trust – trust granted in cases in which one has good reason to take one’s source as trustworthy’ (2018, 75). We’ll come back to this in Section 4.
25. The strength of X’s duty may further depend on the nature of X’s relationship with Y: Lackey (Citation2020, 42) argues that ‘there are duties to object generated by special relationships,’ such as friendship – even if objecting to a friend’s assertion ‘prevents no additional harm than is already prevented by [others’] objections.’
26. The obligation to voice disagreement stands even if there is not a clear guarantee that it will be effective (i.e. changing the interlocutor’s mind). Relatedly, it seems plausible to think that the effectiveness of an objection could come in degrees; for instance, X might succeed in changing Y’s mind about the safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, while failing to restore Y’s trust in scientific testifiers with respect to the safety of other vaccines.
27. Eugenia South, ‘I’m a Black doctor who didn’t trust the Covid vaccine. Here’s what changed my mind’, retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-m-black-doctor-who-didn-t-trust-covid-vaccine-ncna1255085.
28. We might describe this as a ‘cascading’ dynamic of trust, in this case affecting hierarchical trust relationships. Various studies have observed there is a strong correlation between hierarchical trust (resp. mistrust) and horizontal or social trust (mistrust), i.e. trust in other members of society (Eek and Rothstein Citation2005; Rothstein and Uslaner Citation2005).
29. See e.g. (Jamison, Quinn, and Freimuth Citation2019; Callaghan et al. Citation2021). Most of these studies focus on attitudes of institutional mistrust – both vaccine- and non-vaccine-related – in the US; for discussions of vaccine hesitancy in countries other than the US see e.g. (González-Block et al. Citation2020; Mosby and Swidrovich Citation2021; Facciolà et al. Citation2019).
30. It is thus tragically unsurprising that in the US, ‘of those who have received at least the first dose of a vaccine, 5.4% are Black people, compared to 60% who are white people. According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, about 35% of Black Americans said they don’t plan to get the vaccine, citing fears about safety and concerns that the vaccines are so new’ (https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210202/black-vaccine-hesitancy-rooted-in-mistrust-doubts).
31. In fact, Grasswick’s paper helped reassure us that we were on to something.
32. We are only concerned with scenarios in which a lay agent’s (positive or negative) confidence in a particular vaccine is a byproduct of an underlying attitude of (positive or negative) trust in the vaccine-promoting institutions. We are thus not considering cases in which an agent somehow comes to harbour an attitude of vaccine confidence through evidentiary channels other than testimonial trust exchanges involving the vaccine-promoting institutions. This is partly because, even if genuinely ‘trust-free’ evidence-gathering were a possibility for lay individuals, it is quite clearly not the norm (cf. Section 2); nor should it be, on the assumption that testimonial exchanges based on well-placed trust and equitable divisions of epistemic labour are part of the normative ideal (Grasswick Citation2018). And it is partly because one of our aims here is to bring to light certain specific (but not uncommon) circumstances in which speaking up against VH assertions can bring about new epistemic harms.
33. Thanks to two external commentators for pushing us to clarify our discussion on this point.
34. A useful concept here is what Dotson (Citation2011, 239ff.) terms situated ignorance, which ‘follows from one’s social position and/or epistemic location with respect to some domain of knowledge.’ Situated ignorance ‘can be mostly non-culpable and unconscious, but it is also reliable.’ In turn, ‘ignorance that is reliable, but not necessarily harmful in one situation’ – such as Scenario C – ‘could be reliable and harmful in another’, and thus pernicious – as in Scenario F. As Dotson (Citation2011) also notes, a further potential upshot of structural marginalisation in scenarios such as these is what she terms testimonial smothering: ‘the truncating of one’s own testimony in order to insure that the testimony contains only content for which one’s audience demonstrates testimonial competence.’
35. For instance, Z might think that W should seek additional evidence about the vaccine through alternative, trustworthy testimonial channels. Even if this were feasible (which it typically is not), this would place an unjust burden on W, and indeed it would further compound existing epistemic injustices.
36. In effect, Z would be demanding that W behave irrationally – by trusting the testimony of untrustworthy authorities.
37. It can also entail speaking up against the downgrading of the speaker’s testimony by a third party.
38. Amanda Machado, ‘Why many Latinos dread going to the doctor, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/why-many-latinos-dread-going-to-the-doctor/361547/.
39. For instance, different segments of society may count as ‘most vulnerable’ depending on whether greater importance is attached to bodily concerns such as age, presence of co-morbidities, etc. vs. shared cultural concerns, such as preservation of linguistic heritage; see e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/opinion/covid-lakota-language.html.
40. Johnson (Citation2020) defends a similar conclusion when she argues that recognition of an agent’s epistemic vulnerabilities ‘that come from having basic and legitimate epistemic needs’ – such as forming warranted vaccine-related beliefs – ‘generate obligations for those who are well-positioned to meet this need’ – such as trustworthy health professionals.