Research Statement

 

In my research, I seek to understand and reimagine the role of science in deeply divided democratic societies.

 

In rethinking the scientist-public relationship, I focus on a characteristic essential to both scientific progress and democratic governance: responsiveness. Responsiveness, as I conceive it, leaves room for agents – scientists, policymakers, journalists, educators, the public – to hold their own views and remain open to and acknowledge those of others. Along with work across philosophy, my approach is informed by my time as a journalist fact checking politicians’ often polarizing claims about science and social scientific studies on science communication. 

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My research program has two interrelated threads, the first more theoretical and the second more applied. The first concentrates on utilizing and responding to work in philosophy of science, political philosophy, social (including feminist) epistemology and ethics, and American pragmatism to find ways to cultivate warranted trust in science amidst pervasive pluralism. Ultimately, my aim is for this thread to culminate in a book that argues that legitimizing science in democracy requires systemic reform across various institutions, including journalism and education. The second thread puts my philosophy in conversation with practical debates in journalism, policymaking, and the social sciences. However, a Deweyan at heart, I take theory and practice to be one and the same iterative process. 

 

Theory: Cultivating Warranted Trust in Policy-Relevant Science

 

During the coronavirus pandemic, we were often told to “follow the science.” This raised multiple questions. When scientists disagreed, which ones should we follow? And when they did agree, if their advice conflicted with what we value, should we listen? Embedded in this oft-repeated phrase is a traditional picture of why we should trust science: Scientists are certain, objective, and, thus, in consensus, and it’s scientific consensus that we’re told to follow. The problem is, most policy-relevant science is rife with uncertainty, value judgments, and, therefore, disagreement. Does this mean it’s all untrustworthy? No, I argue. It just means traditional arguments for trust in science fail. Instead, in my research, I ground trust in scientists’ responsiveness to both leading and alternative hypotheses (epistemic responsiveness) and the public’s diverse values, even those in the minority (political responsiveness).

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For example, in the paper “Saving the Legitimacy of Policy-Relevant Science,” I reconcile the ethical, democratic, and epistemic legitimacy of policy-relevant science by defending what I call the responsiveness model of trust in science. Many philosophers of science argue that, given inductive risks, science’s ethical legitimacy relies on non-epistemic value judgments. Still, some ask why we should trust scientists when their judgments violate our autonomy, challenging value-laden science’s democratic legitimacy. With the responsiveness model, and help from Dewey’s experimental political philosophy, I resolve this tension and sidestep an issue prior attempts faced: accounting for the disagreement inherent to democracies. Under my model, epistemic and political responsiveness must guide scientists in how they communicate with the public and conduct research. The model also requires trained journalists to act as the public’s watchdogs by verifying whether scientists are, in fact, being responsive.

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In the paper “Reconciling Public Reason and the Administrative State,” I fold educators into the responsiveness model as well as scientists and journalists. In political philosophy, public reason says all must agree with the reasons justifying coercive policies. However, many don’t understand or agree with scientific reasons. Since the administrative state needs science to justify policies, some argue it conflicts with public reason. Highlighting responsiveness, I note that most support scientific methods as key to learning about the world. Thus, to reconcile public reason and the administrative state, I argue one needs educators to teach scientific methods with responsiveness in mind and journalists to build on that education by translating policy justifications for the public, along with acting as the public’s watchdogs. 

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In the future, I plan to further explore work in political philosophy with particular interest in Amartya Sen’s anti-transcendental vision of public reason that accounts for pluralism and Jane Mansbridge’s and colleagues research on systemic approaches to deliberative democracy that argues all institutions must unite to legitimize policy decisions. While the philosophy of science and political philosophy literatures are clearly vital to my project, to create a thoroughly novel picture of science in democracy, I knew I had to investigate the work on trust in social epistemology and ethics, with which surprisingly few scholars who study trust in science have engaged. 

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In the project “A Feminist Take on Trust in Science,” I’m integrating a more sophisticated conception of trust into the responsiveness model by utilizing seminal research by Annette Baier on the role of vulnerability in trust. First,I argue that scientist-public trust relationship has historically been, using Baier’s words, morally rotten, as it’s relied on concealing science’s pervasive uncertainty and value-ladenness. In contrast, my model fosters a morally decent trust relationship because it’s honest about these features of science, where this honesty offsets the public’s vulnerability to scientists. I then point out that scholars who argue scientists should align their values with the public’s ignore that trusting necessitates allowing the trusted to make value judgments on one’s behalf. Thus, I argue this solution fails to count as trust at all under Baier’s conception. I’ve already presented some of this work at conferences. 

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Beyond Baier’s philosophy, in the future, I’ll explore how the literature on trust in groups, institutional trust, and testimony might bear on debates about the role of science in democracy. Of particular interest is Katherine Hawley’s and Karen Jones’ research in this area. Given its parallels with work on inductive risk in philosophy of science, I also plan to investigate how arguments for moral and pragmatic encroachment might inform discussions about trust in science. This has already begun with a paper that compares the two literatures. Lastly, to paint a truly systemic picture of science in democracy, I’ll examine the roles of social media and AI in influencing the public’s relationship with science. Of particular interest are debates about Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act, which absolves social media companies of legal responsibility for user-generated content, and AI’s capacity to tailor scientific information to specific audiences, generate hallucinations and deepfakes, and further destabilize the institution of journalism. 

 

Practice: Collaborations with Social Scientists, Journalists, and Policymakers

 

Along with the theoretical work I describe above, as a postdoctoral researcher I’m collaborating with social scientists to test the efficacy of the responsiveness model at garnering trust. Philosophers who examine trust in science often aim to identify how scientists must act to warrant the public’s trust in theory. However, they largely ignore social science research on science communication and, thus, propose solutions that may not work in practice. Conversely, social scientists aim to identify communication interventions that strengthen trust in science in practice but pay less attention to which ones should warrant the public’s trust. To bridge this gap, I’m testing how responsive communication shapes people’s beliefs, intentions, and behaviors around health and climate policy, especially those from diverse backgrounds. I’m also writing a chapter for a new philosophy of science compendium on ‘philosophy of science communication’ that calls for collaboration with social scientists and outlines their research. 

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As a postdoc, I’m also creating a global network of journalists to better understand and improve how they communicate science. This is a practical extension of work I’ve done in applied ethics. In the Synthese paper “Journalism and Public Trust in Science,” I argue that the public’s faulty image of scientists as trustworthy only when in consensus makes it difficult for journalists to ethically communicate scientific disagreement. I then show how journalists can overcome this problem with the responsiveness model. This paper has spawned another that uses work in philosophy of science on scientific objectivity to analyze journalistic objectivity. It argues that we can preserve individual journalists’ democratic right to freely express their values if the journalistic community has recognized avenues for criticism and is sufficiently diverse. Notably, journalists are paying attention to my research. For example, a fellow at Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said that he’s spotlighting my research in his report on science journalism’s role in democracy because it “solves many of the problems” he describes, adding that he hasn’t “seen anyone else discuss journalism in this way – and it is much needed.” 

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Lastly, since my research program finds its roots in American pragmatism, I’m exploring how this philosophical tradition can be mined for solutions to problems that define the 21st century. In the paper “The Quest for Certainty in Climate Policymaking,” I investigate how Dewey’s ideas have found their way into the adaptive approaches to climate policymaking. Enabling continual experimentation, such approaches are better suited to overcoming deep uncertainties than traditional approaches, which covertly rely on scientific certainty. Uncertainties are deep when agents can’t agree on problem characterizations or desired outcomes. In the future, I plan to collaborate with advocates of adaptive policymaking, such as Robert Lempert, to better understand their approach and contribute ideas for practical application.