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RELATIVISM AND POLITICS OF SCIENCE

RELATIVISM AND POLITICS OF SCIENCE. Sheila Jasanoff Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. OVERVIEW. Build up academic discipline of science and technology studies and their implications of social sciences in decision making in political aspects.

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RELATIVISM AND POLITICS OF SCIENCE

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  1. RELATIVISM AND POLITICS OF SCIENCE Sheila Jasanoff Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

  2. OVERVIEW • Build up academic discipline of science and technology studies and their implications of social sciences in decision making in political aspects. • Nature cannot be used to explain rejected claims and beliefs as “true” or "false”. • The laboratory can be a very rich site for examining the relationship between knowledge and social order. • Politics is never far from view when one is observing science in topics of social concern like AIDs, DNA fingerprinting, animal rights among others. Discuss.

  3. Despite criticism from Malcolm Ashmore and Steve Woolgar, the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) continues to debate on reflexitivity with support from Pam Scott, Evelleen Richards and Brian Martin. • Approaches taken by SSK and by other science studies tend to be more qualitative rather than quantitative. • A renowned physicist, a Nobel Laureate conducts an experiment that shows how the O-ring part of the rocket was faultily made to fail at freezing point which Sociologists of science claimed that is the physicist love for theatrics. What do you think?

  4. Scientific claims and counter claims abound in the public disclosure with the purpose of political work. • For example in early 1990s,a number of books by politicians like Dix Lee ray ,Rosh Limbaugh and George C. Marshall denounced the accumulating predictions of the effect of the ozone depletion and climatic changes as “scam". US authorities took this into account yet it had been subjected to no scientific screening or peer view leading to delay in political actions on global warming and made the US consider a pullback from its commitment to barn Chlorofluorocarbons under the Montreal Protocol. • Ashmore points out that being the “under dog” in political salient debates like on the tobacco company and the asbestos manufacturers once occupied high grounds on the safety of their products though political advantage has shifted to the pro-health opponents on risk assessment to resist regulation through corporate experts. What influence will SSK have on this debate?

  5. Conservative critics of judicial decision-making had been arguing for several years that judges were far too lax in admitting into evidence of scientific claims considered unacceptable by majority of working scientists. • This led to the claim that only scientific claims that meet the test of “general acceptance” should be introduced into evidence in law courts. Discuss.

  6. Relativism will no longer be a barrier against taking positions on matters of social moments or using an individuals capacity to advance their argument as forcefully as possible. • Question What processes go into the creation of and maintenance of knowledge?

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