In the Wake of Scientific Controversy: The 'Chilling' of Scientific Dissent in Agricultural Biotechnology?

在科学争议之后：农业生物技术中科学异议的冷却？该项目探讨了20世纪90年代后期关于农业生物技术的高度政治化的科学争议对目前正在研究转基因作物的健康和生态风险问题的科学家产生了寒蝉效应的说法。即使在21世纪初，对这种持不同意见的研究的机构支持有所增加，该领域仍然存在争议，并且容易受到政治，经济，专业和社会压力的影响，这些压力有利于继续开发和部署转基因作物。这项提案通过调查一群科学家来考察这种影响的一个竞技场，这些科学家一直致力于研究转基因作物的潜在风险，但他们避免成为专业攻击或谴责的目标。这些科学上的异议者，很少受到关注，在关于农业生物技术未来的辩论中占据着潜在的关键地位。通过对这些科学家的半结构化访谈，观察他们在会议和听证会上的专业行为，以及对记录他们研究的科学文献和公共媒体的检查，该项目探讨了三个基本问题：1。科学家是否预料到他们的工作会遇到阻力，这会如何影响他们的研究计划？2.科学异议如何在呈现结果、传达意义、创造科学和非科学受众方面发挥作用？3.在科学异议的实践中，科学和政策之间的界限是如何维持、解构、改变或超越的？智力优势： 本计画遵循研究科学争议的传统，着重探讨科学异议的两面性。异议的一面表明科学作为通往有用和可靠知识的途径的理性和民主性质;另一面揭示了科学的不确定性，从而威胁到科学指导社会行动和公共政策的权威。因此，异议作为一个理想的网站，探索权力和脆弱性的科学领域与高political relevants.The建议的分析调用的概念边界工作（Gieryn 1999）和科学作为性能的镜头，通过它来了解复杂的景观演员，机构和修辞资源在agbiotech竞技场。持不同意见的科学家必须同时做足够的边界工作，使他们的研究具有相关性，并以某种方式避开可能破坏他们职业生涯的技术政治边界竞赛的风暴。他们的数据表现为合法，他们的研究计划表现为社会所需，他们的专业知识表现为与政策辩论相关，这些都揭示了在专业和公共话语中管理科学-政策边界的复杂性。更广泛的影响尽管科学异议者的战略实践可能为研究转基因作物的健康和环境风险创造了一个受保护的利基，这一项目可能揭示出一种寒蝉效应，即高度政治化的科学争议削弱了科学探究的敏锐性，削弱了研究人员批判性地参与科学和技术治理的力量。调查这些微妙的影响对科学界内部异议的管理，科学机构在政治和经济压力下体现公共利益的能力，以及将科学数据和专业知识纳入公共政策的过程都有影响。

In the Wake of Scientific Controversy:The Chilling of Scientific Dissent in Agricultural Biotechnology?Project SummaryThis project explores the claim that the highly politicized scientific controversies over agricultural biotechnology in the late 1990s have a chilling effect on scientists who currently pursue questions about health and ecological risks of genetically-modified (GM) crops. Even as institutional support of such dissenting research has grown in the early 2000s, the field remains controversial and vulnerable to political, economic, professional, and social pressures that favor the continued development and deployment of GM crops. This proposal examines one arena of that influence by investigating a group of scientists who have remained committed to researching the potential risks of GM crops, but who have avoided becoming the target of professional attack or censure. These scientific dissenters, who have received little attention, occupy a potentially critical position in debates over the future of agbiotech. Through semi-structured interviews with these scientists, observation of their professional conduct at conferences and hearings, and examination of the scientific literature and public media that document their research, this project explores three basic questions:1. Do scientists anticipate resistance to their work, and how does this affect how they approach their research programs?2. How is scientific dissent performed in terms of presenting results, communicating significance, and creatiing scientific and lay audiences?3. How are boundaries between science and policy maintained, deconstructed, altered, or surmounted in the practice of scientific dissent?Intellectual Merit: Following in the tradition of studying scientific controversies, this project focuses on the janus-faced character of scientific dissent. One face of dissent signifies the rational and democratic nature of science as a path to useful and reliable knowledge; the other reveals the uncertainty in science and thereby threatens its authority to guide social action and public policy. As such, dissent serves as an ideal site to explore the power and vulnerability of science in a field with high political relevance.The proposed analysis invokes the concepts of boundary-work (Gieryn 1999) and science as performance as lenses through which to understand the complex landscape of actors, institutions, and rhetorical resources in the agbiotech arena. Dissenting scientists must simultaneously do enough boundary-work to make their research relevant and somehow steer clear of the tempest of technopolitical boundary contests that could undermine their careers. Their performances of their data as legitimate, of their research programs as socially desirable, and of their expertise as relevant to policy debates reveal the complexity of managing the science-policy boundary in both professional and public discourse.Broader Impacts While it is possible that the strategic practices of scientific dissenters have created a protected niche forresearching the health and environmental risks of GM crops, this project may reveal a chilling effect, in which highly politicized scientific controversies have dulled the sharpness of scientific inquiry and muted the power of researchers to engage critically with scientific and technological governance. Investigating these subtle effects has implications for the management of dissent within the scientific community, thecapacity for scientific institutions to embody the public interest under conditions of political and economicpressure, and the process of incorporating scientific data and expertise into public policy.