Evidence contestation : dealing with dissent in knowledge societies / edited by Karin Zachmann, Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio, Saana Jukola, and Olga Sparschuh.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Evidence Critique and Contestation as a Challenge in Academia and Society -- PART I: Theoretical Framing: Evidence Critique and Contestation -- 1. What Is Scientific Criticism for? Some Philosophical Reflections on Criticism and Evidence within the Scientific Ethos -- 2. Questioning Evidence: Three Modes of Contestation -- PART II: Striving for Diverse Evidence: Ecological and Biological Evidence Critique -- 3. How Many Plots Can the Data Hold? Reconciling Stories and Evidence in Evolutionary Biology -- 4. Rethinking Evidence Practices for Environmental Decision Making in the Anthropocene: What Can We Learn from Invasive Species Research and Policy? -- PART III: Questioning the Criteria for Evidence: Health Sciences -- 5. Surgical Caps and Trouble with Evidence: Epistemology and Ethics of Prioperative Hygiene Measures -- 6. Negotiating Consensus for Diverging Evidence: An Application of the Explanatory Approach to Guidelines for the Treatment of Substance Use Disorders and Addiction -- PART IV: Challenging Academic Evidence: Counter Science, Citizen Science and Environmental Activism -- 7. Evidence against the “Nuclear State”: Contesting Technoscience through Gegenwissenschaft in the 1970s and 1980s -- 8. Appropriating Evidence: Scientific Criticism and Environmental Activism in the Global Pesticide Controversy during the 1970s and 1980s -- 9. Participation as Evidence Contestation: The Ambiguous Balance of Social and Epistemic Involvement through Citizen Science -- PART V: Interpreting and Communicating Academic Evidence: Consumer Behavior and the Media -- 10. Exploring Consumers’ Interpretation of Contested Nutritional Evidence: The Relevance of the Moral Foundations Theory -- 11. Stories about Villains, Mad Scientists and Failure: Patterns of Evidence Criticism in Media Coverage of Genomic Research -- Index

"This book examines the practices of contesting evidence in democratically constituted knowledge societies. It provides a multifaceted view of the processes and conditions of evidence criticism and how they determine the dynamics of de- and re-stabilization of evidence. Evidence is an essential resource for establishing claims of validity, resolving conflicts, and legitimizing decisions. In recent times, however, evidence is being contested with increasing frequency. Such contestations vary in form and severity-from questioning the interpretation of data or the methodological soundness of studies to accusations of evidence fabrication. The contributors to this volume explore which actors, for what reasons and to what effect, question evidence in fields such as the biological, environmental, and health sciences. In addition to actors inside academia, they examine the roles of various other actors, including citizen scientists, counter-experts, journalists, patients, consumers, and activists. The contributors tackle questions of how disagreements are framed and how they are used to promote vested interests. By drawing on methodological and theoretical approaches from a wide range of fields, this book provides a much-needed perspective on how evidence criticism influences the development and state of knowledge societies and their political condition. Evidence Contestation will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, epistemology, bioethics, science & technology studies, the history of science and technology, and science communication"-- Provided by publisher.