This book examines how scientists around the world embrace their responsibility as citizens, and how science is being used and abused by non-scientists in public spaces. As right-wing politicians, conspiracy theorists, and modern robber barons assault science in the current moment, it is time for the rhetoric of science to reconceptualize itself as a crisis/care discipline. The essays in this volume help us do that by scrutinizing particular cases of science activism, examining the public modalities of resistance that scientists are increasingly taking up as they modify their public engagement to fit evolving rhetorical situations. These essays also reveal how the authority of science is being distorted and exploited by non-experts in ways that are more dangerous than ever in the shadow of climate change and global pandemics. The book ends with a look at new possibilities for collaboration between local communities and scientists and a reflection on how a rhetorical conception of ethos can help us comprehend the negotiation of asymmetries between experts and laypeople in the current era.
Section I: Scientist Citizens.
Chapter 1: We Feel That It Is No Longer
Possible to Remain Uninvolved: A Rhetorical History of the Union of
Concerned Scientists.
Chapter 2: What Do We Want? Evidence-Based Claims!
When Do We Want It? After Peer Review!: Advocacy and Activism in the March
for Science.
Chapter 3: Publish and/or Perish: Scientific Journal Commentary
for Social Action in the Climate and Ecological Emergency.
Chapter 4:
Activism in Science: Saying No to the Objectionable Appropriation of
Research.
Chapter 5: Reflections on a Scientists Public Engagement: A
Dialogue with Roberto Burioni.- Section II: Public Engagement with Science.-
Chapter 6: Prodused ethos: Trust, ethos, and expertise in Facebook fan sites
for health experts.
Chapter 7: Vituperation and Expert Ethos in Public
Science: Censure of Public Health Officials in the COVID-19 Era.
Chapter 8:
The Bro as Disingenuous Scientist Citizen.
Chapter 9: Vigilante
Pseudoscience in a Science Denialist Data Dashboard.
Chapter 10: The Cook
Inlet Beluga Whale: Global Whaling, Oppositional Activism, and Community
Science.
Chapter 11: Balancing Acts: Asymmetries of Character and Community.
Pamela Pietrucci is Associate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Leah Ceccarelli is Professor of Communication at the University of Washington, in Seattle, USA.
